Whether you are a rising executive or rank-and-file employee, it’s important to know your organization’s makeup, or “vitals.”

Saj Jetha, an economist and alumnus of the London School of Economics, argues in a recent blog posting that knowing “the vitals” of the organization that employs you is a crucial way to work smarter.

“Traditional medics are trained to relay a patient’s vitals at any given moment. You need to be able to do the same,” Jetha writes in the posting, which can be found on the LSE’s Department of Management blog. “The terms (and numbers) that drive your business should be imprinted on your brain and always ready to go.”

Knowing these data points helps make a worker valuable and can make that work process smoother, he said. Some of these “vitals” Jetha recommends mastering include an organization’s current values, vision, strategy, its leaders, revenues, stock performance (if relevant) and problems it tries to solve.

The full blog posting – “Three ways to work smarter” – can be accessed here.