The changes that have been most meaningful to my career are thing like becoming a tech lead and moving into engineering management. And these have happened when I've become embedded into a company.
* Line management: are you willing to be the man and promulgate the party line? You can be mostly apolitical in this role.
* Middle management: are you willing to be the pawn of a specific member or two of senior management and do their bidding (which probably isn’t fully aligned with the party line)?
* Senior management: do you know how to intelligently break the rules in order to stand out from the crowd of middle managers? This could be by developing a broad following within the lower levels of the company through self-promotion, through cultivating specific relationships with the CEO and/or board, or by (in rare cases) delivering on highly visible and truly remarkable results for the company.
One example I know from the 80's: you're a director of a factory in some South-American country that produces something. It's making a loss of a few million dollars per year, and everyone at the parent company for which this factory is simply a small business unit thinks it will amount to nothing.
In two years, you've turned the situation around and are profitable with 1 million dollars per year.
The company promotes you to your next role and your successor shows how difficult your challenge was, as it's losing a few million dollars per year again.
The trick in this case: be competent, and become friends with the local South-American director, as upon arrival you realize that the company you're running is actually owned 50% by the company you work for. The other 50% is owned by some South-American company and the whole reason it loses money is because they cannot connect with the South-American director.
True story, can't disclose sources, but anyone who has seen the 80's might know similar stories.
That was then though.