what he got working is not a bad thing. In fact that is how people in a chain of command should act. Impressing your chain of command means, achieving what they want done quickly and efficiently which inturn means what the company's big plan needed your team to achieve. You might not know the big plans of the company's heads, but as long as you get done what are asked to do you can't go bad. Say the task other team who asked for help got for him might be of a lesser priority for the company (if it was a higher priority it would have came through his chain of command that he help these folks) he would be screwing up the company plans if he decided to help because of his misguided attempt to "help" the overall company. His only bad thing was not helping other IF he has some free time. that might have helped him reach the GM role even faster, instead of just looking good infront of other teams they would have talked about him good too.