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How to be Awesome at Your Job

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I was on Pete Mockaitis’s How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast the other day, and really enjoyed it. You can listen below or at the website, where you will also find helpful links to the various books mentioned and some relevant previous episodes (for example, his episode with David Allen).

Pete is doing great work and I highly recommend his website and podcast for specific, actionable insights that will boost your work performance.

Here’s a summary of the show:

Matt Perman explains how to tell the difference between important tasks and urgent tasks, and how to make room for what’s important in your life and work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why you should plan your day with your time, not your tasks
  2. Four tips for effective personal management
  3. Two ways to prioritize like a pro

337: Choosing the Important Over the Urgent with Matt Perman

 

 

Rescuing Ambition in the Workplace

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I think you’ll benefit from this excellent series of articles from Dave Harvey, author if Rescuing Ambition (also highly recommended!).

This is how Dave introduces his series on ambition in the workplace:

A few years ago I wrote the book Rescuing Ambition and called for a rescue. I wanted to  snatch ambition from the heap of failed motivations and put it to work for the glory of God. I wanted Christians to realize that to understand our ambition, we must understand that we are on a quest for glory. And where we find glory determines the success of our quest. Since I wrote that book, many suggested that I address God’s design for ambition in the workplace and in one’s daily calling. 

Here are the links to Dave’s multi-part series, “Rescuing Ambition in the Workplace”: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

 

The Goal is Not to Show How Bright You Are By Shooting Holes in Ideas

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Anyone can do that.

Right?

Jim Collins nails the problems with this in his excellent book Beyond Entrepreneurship:

Most of us have been trained to do just the opposite [of acting on good ideas rather than spending hours deliberating on all the reasons they can’t work]. We’re well schooled in criticism, having learned that the way to show how smart we are is to cite all the reasons that something is a stupid idea or doomed to failure.

We’ve noticed many new MBAs, for example, are adept at finding all the flaws in a business idea, but they’re much less practiced at coming up with ways to make the idea work.

Many times we’ve stood facing a self-satisfied person who has just done a marvelous job of demolishing a new product idea during a discussion. Then we ask, “Yes, we know it’s an imperfect idea. But then no idea is perfect. So, now how do you intend to make this idea successful in spite of its flaws?”

Some people rise brilliantly to the challenge when they realize that the goal is no longer to show how bright they are by shooting holes in ideas.

But, alas, others do not. They’ve been trained too well in the ethos of criticism, and to build a great company, they’ll have to overcome this negative training.

Successful Careers Are Not Planned

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Peter Drucker, from his article “Managing Oneself” (pdf):

Successful careers are not planned.

They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person — hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre — into an outstanding performer.

A helpful resource that fleshes this out is Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need.

Is it Smart to Allow Your Job to Involve a Lot of Things You Don't Like Doing?

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Marcus Buckingham gives a good answer to this question in The One Thing You Need to Know: … About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success:

Some people will tell you that you need a little difficulty in your life, a little grit; that, as an oyster makes a pearl, this grit will strengthen you, round you out, and polish you into something fine and valuable. No grit, they say, no pearl.

Now, of course, there is a sense in which this is true. Especially in life in general, suffering and difficulty plays a critical role in our sanctification.

But this doesn’t mean we should seek it out for it’s own sake. And, more to the point here, Buckingham is talking specifically about career choices. When it comes to your career, it is not advisable (and, I would argue, it’s not biblical, either) to purposely take a job, or allow responsibilities in your current job to be added, which grate you down.

This can sound irresponsible at first. And, of course, there are times when we just need to do things we don’t prefer for the sake of the greater mission. When it is necessary for the sake of others, we should do whatever needs to be done to serve them and make things better.

But Buckingham is here responding to the idea that it will somehow make us more effective in our work if we intentionally seek out tasks that grate us down — or allow others to impose them on us out of the misguided notion that it will be good for us.

We should be skeptical of this notion, and here’s why:

When it comes to your career, grit will only grind you down. Every minute you invest in an activity that grates on you is a poorly invested minute. It is a minute in which you will learn little and that will leave you weaker and less resilient for the next minute. It is a minute you could have spent applying and refining your strengths, a minute in which you could have taken leaps of learning and that would strengthen you for the minutes to come.

In other words, the notion that taking on tasks that drain you will make you more effective in your work is actually another form of the fallacy that we will grow most by focusing on our weaknesses. For, as I’ve blogged before, your weaknesses aren’t ultimately what you are bad at, but what drains you.

To focus on your strengths means carving out your role such that you are doing on what you do best and what strengthens you most of the time. This is how you will be most effective in your role and for your organization. I think most recognize this; but what is hard for people to see is that this means, by definition, seeking to cut out of our roles the thing that drain us, at least to the greatest extent that we can.

This is not a country club approach to work. I’m not advocating that we slack of and not work hard. Quite the opposite. We ought to work hard, be diligent, and excel in what we do, taking great pains even to do this. And we will be more effective in doing this when we are working in our strengths — the things that energize us — rather than our weaknesses.

Does It Really Matter if You Love Your Job?

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A lot of people say it doesn’t matter much if you love your job. If you do, that’s great — it’s a bonus. But the main purpose of a job is to put food on the table, and actually liking what you do is secondary.

This is actually bad advice. There are lots of reasons, but let me mention just one: if you don’t love your job, you risk being a poor steward.

I’m not talking here about people who have no choice in the matter. In the NT exhortations on work, slaves are the best example here. A slave had little or no control over his work, and Paul said “don’t worry about it — you are serving the Lord in what you do, and he values it and will reward you” (see 1 Corinthians 7:21; Colossians 3:23-24).

But we aren’t slaves, and we do have a choice in our work. This increases our responsibility to choose wisely. And it that choice in what we do for our work is a stewardship.

And here’s how that relates to why you should do your best to seek out a job you love (or, sometimes better, turn your job in to something you love most of the time): you will be more effective in your job if you love it.

We can, of course, work hard in jobs that we don’t love. But the extra effort, the mastery that takes us above and beyond and makes us maximally effective, is fueled by enthusiasm. To the extent that you lack this enthusiasm for the activities of your work, you will be less effective. You will not be able to stretch and push yourself and grow in your knowledge and skill as highly as you could otherwise.

Which means you will not be contributing as much as you could. Which is another way of saying: you won’t be making the difference you could and serving others to the extent that, perhaps, is truly needed. You will be leaving things on the table — things that could have benefited others, and wouldn’t have necessarily required much more from you because, after all, you have to work anyway.

I don’t necessarily want to say here that it is wrong to settle for a job you don’t love. But I do want point out that finding a job you love is not ultimately a matter of serving yourself. It’s a matter of serving others, because you will be more effective for the sake of others if, most of the time, your job is something you love.

Be a Resource, Not a Limiter

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The people that are most helpful in any organization are those who take initiative, rather than simply doing what they are told. What organizations need from their people is engagement, not mere compliance. (And, conversely, this is what makes a job most satisfying — being engaged, rather than simply seeking to comply).

This has implications for managers as well. If you manage in a certain way (namely, with a command and control focus), you incentivize compliance. But if you realize that management is not about control, but rather about helping to unleash the talents of your people for the performance of the organization, and that this comes from trusting your people and granting them autonomy, then you see yourself not as the “boss,” but as a source of help.

A manager is a source of help and a catalyst, not a limiter or controller.

Godin touches on this well in his recent post “Moving Beyond Teachers and Bosses“:

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.’

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a ‘good worker.’

The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the boss will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second… pretty frightening).

The linchpin, of course, can’t abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn’t permit an individual to become irreplaceable.

If your boss is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. “My boss won’t let me,” doesn’t deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, “I don’t want to do that because it’s not worth the time/resources.” (Or better, it can become, “go!”)

The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.

"My Boss Won't Let Me"

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Seth Godin, from Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?:

The single biggest objection to changing the way you approach your job is the certainty that your boss won’t let you do anything but be a cog.

Nine times out of ten, this isn’t true. One time out of ten, you should get a new job.

Let’s take the rare case first.

If you actually work for an organization that insists you be mediocre, that enforces conformity in all its employees, why stay? What are you building?

The work can’t possibly be enjoyable or challenging, your skills aren’t increasing, and your value in the marketplace decreases each day you stay there. And if history is any guide, your job there isn’t as stable as you think, because average companies making average products for average people are under huge strain.

Sure, it might be comfortable, and yes, you’ve been brainwashed into believing that this is what you’re supposed to do, but no, it’s not what you deserve.

The other case, though, is the common one. You think your boss won’t let you, at the very same moment that your boss can’t understand why you won’t contribute more insight or enthusiasm. In most non-cog jobs, the boss’s biggest lament is that her people won’t step up and bring their authentic selves to work.