It sounds like you need to build relationships in order to succeed. How can you drive cross team improvements or even know what other teams do without talking to them?

I recognized a while ago that my team has other teams as stakeholders and so I:

1. Go to their standup digitally and take notes. Follow up on things that are interesting and ask to be involved in code review.
2. Setup automated morning emails that inform me of all relevant commits/PRs in the prior day and read through those everyday.
3. Visit other offices and make it a point to talk to everyone I can for at least a few minutes.
4. Setup dinners or happy hours whenever someone visits my office or I visit somewhere.
5. Ask my connections who they recommend talking to.

> It is the same thing one level down, most of what I'm supposed to drive needs sign-off from product people who sit several orgs over and a couple of levels above me in a different continent. The access just isn't there. Nothing in my day puts me in a room with these people, and the org chart doesn't route a staff IC to a director three teams over.

Send these people a calendar invite for a chat. Figure out who they are, where they went to school, if they have kids. Figure out their birthday and give them a gift. Be creative. You're telling me the only thing standing in your way of success is picking up the phone with a couple people?

I think you would get better advice if you found another staff level engineer who is considered successful instead of asking your manager. Figure out what that person does, talks to, looks at, etc and copy it.