Keeping it Real: Some Tips on Being ‘Good’ at What You Do
After spending some time thinking over situations that I perceive to have been especially successful in my career, and reflecting on pitfalls I’ve fallen into and mistakes I have learnt from, I found a common theme start to emerge which I wanted to take some time to write down in case it helps other people.
The crux of this article is that if you’re happy and motivated, you will probably do a better job. But there is hopefully some amount of strategy you can put behind being the best version of yourself in your job, as often as possible.
Play to your Strengths
Nobody is good at everything. Be honest about what you’re good at and what you’re not. Pretending that you’re really good at something that you’re actually not that good at, or trying to ‘fix’ your shortcomings will absorb a lot of your energy in one of the least productive ways possible. If you focus on what you’re good at and capitalise on it, it will feel easier to see yourself improving and you will probably achieve more day to day success.
That’s really not to say you should completely ignore what you’re less good at. But it’s a different mindset. You’ll be faster to seek out help, delegate or suss out a smarter/more creative way of solving a problem if you don’t see the things you’re less strong at, as things to be ashamed of or hide. Or if you can leverage your strengths to do things a different way.
For example, I know I am good at communicating, working with people and organising things. I am less good at sitting down and burying myself in hours of rigorous documentation. But I often need to produce well documented accounts of strategy approaches, high level requirement breakdowns, the value of potential/planned work, tickets for the engineers and so on. So if I translate my strengths into an example where let’s say I am incepting a new but complicated piece of work. It is much easier for me to start things off by getting key stakeholders/team members together and running some interactive sessions to digest research findings, collate key information, collect open questions, spot gaps, etc. I find this one of the easiest ways to ‘break the back’ of what subsequently still needs to be consolidated into clear documents. It also helps me get buy in from other people who can help me collect information and ensure we have produced a well-rounded view of, in this example, a project that is going through discovery. In short, I often get other people to help me with the detail. And when I have a lot of information, I go off and organise it/ strategise with it and shape my plans.
On the flip side, you might be really good at sitting down and detailing requirements and prefer broad stroke input and reviews from other people to help you uncover blindspots or challenge/refine the detail. It might be easier for you to outline what you want, consult individuals 1–2–1 and only bring larger groups of people together when you have already collated a clear picture of where things are headed. You need other people to help you with the big picture, but you’re all over the details.
In both of these situations, the work gets investigated, the correct people are consulted and inputting into the project, you can achieve an understanding of the requirements and start to breakdown the work into logical phases and understand their respective values. But as they say, there are many ways to skin a cat, and if you’ve not gone about it playing to what you’re good at, you may have felt like it’s an arduous job when it didn’t need to be.
I have to caveat this and say there will always be times when we have to get on with a task or get a job done which is getting tough, and that is life. But by and large, a bit of thought can make sure you’ve been smart about how you’re approaching the controllable aspects of your work.
Make Accountability Your Friend
I enjoy working under some amount of pressure. It helps me focus and makes me sharper. And over time I have learnt to proactively generate forms of pressure to help me uphold a pace and standard of work. An example of this can be as simple as booking in a checkpoint meeting to run people through something you’ve committed to doing, so you have an audience and a deadline.
It’s not a stroke of genius to say that shying away from accountability is tempting. Not having someone on your back, being able to go at your own pace, and ‘seeing what happens’ are all luxuries we have craved or orchestrated one time or another. And I think there is a time and place to go really fast and a time and place to slow down a bit with what you’re doing in order to take stock or allow for more creativity and innovation. So I am not advocating you always target to work at your maximum capacity. You don’t run everywhere you go, so why would you work like that.
That said, being transparent with what you’ve set out to do––for example setting upfront KPIs on what you believe a certain product feature is likely to do, or committing to setting a goal professionally, as a team or personally––will get you closer to success. As long as you don’t see success as perfection. If you commit to setting KPIs on an experiment that you’re not entirely sure how your users will respond to, you are more likely to put the thought and research into the experience itself and the commercial context justifying it, than if you ‘chuck it out there are see what happens’. It may be that the experiment does something completely different, or flops, or even makes the experience worse. But you’ve put enough thought and framework around it to observe and learn from it. Success in this sense, is that you’ve maximised the value of the work that you delivered, not that you hit the KPI you set.
For accountability to mean anything it’s probably worth noting what in my mind are a few upfront must-haves. You must set out a realistic expectation. Don’t come up with some ridiculous goals that neither you or anyone else can buy into, they won’t have any power. You must articulate the context and risks. Resist glamming stuff up. People will trust you if you keep it real and are on the ball. ‘This is what we hope for; we’re doing everything we can to drive towards it. This is what we know could present a challenge. This is what we don’t know, which will also present a challenge.’ You must stay true to what you commit to. If you put that meeting in to get yourself to sort something out, make sure you hit it. If you put your hand up to own an action, make sure you follow through on it. If you are asked to do something you do not think you can feasibly do, say so or negotiate it until it is something you can do. Don’t be a ‘yes man’ then hope people forget about half the things you never had any intention of doing in the first place. I firmly believe doing what you say is the best way to build trust and respect within your organisation & team.
Lastly on this point, for goodness sake tell people about what you’ve done. Frame it well, keep it positive. Shout about successes, learnings, even failures. This will not only raise your profile, but it will make people want to work with you and buy into the story and be a part of it.
Think About What Motivates You
Finally, and on a similar note to thinking about what you’re good at, think about what gets you up in the morning. Be honest. If you’re pretending to be motivated by money because you think that’s the best measure of success, but you’re actually motivated by autonomy, then doing a job where someone else pulls your strings will see you miserable. If recognition and praise are important to you and you’re not getting it, send an email round and ask people for feedback on how you work. Do you like getting lots of stuff done, or doing a really thorough job of one thing? There will be a place for you to thrive when you understand and reflect on what actually gives you a kick.
In conclusion, the above are a subset of things that might provoke some thought on how you approach work or relate to people at work. And I think the times I have been happiest are when I am challenged, autonomous, honest and doing more stuff that I am good at than stuff that doesn’t come naturally. It’s not to say you shouldn’t acquire new skills, you should, and that will feel uncomfortable until you achieve some level of competency. It’s also not to say you should dodge anything you don’t like doing or torture yourself with a never-ending stream of hoops you’ve set out to jump through. It’s just to say that taking the time to recognise what you like, what you’re good at, and how honestly you present your work will probably help you be better at what you do.
