Are you adding value? I don’t care what your role is within the organization – are you adding value?
If you’re simply holding the fort, doing only the minimum required for your role. Then you have a job, not a career and I would also argue you are not adding value. Look, we are all here for a purpose and that’s to advance the cause. Now for some, that may mean exceeding the expectations of the department down the hall, your peers halfway across the world or the customer actually using a product sold, distributed or given away by the company. Heck, you may look across the deliverables of the team you work with and identify multiple customers. At the end of the day, look back at what you’ve accomplished. Did you move the ball forward and did you exceed the expectations of your customer.
If the answer is no – then you need to look at the way your performing your role, the way that your team performs it’s role and potentially the way that the company responds to its customers. You can definitely change the way you respond to work assignments that you have responsibility for and you have influence on the way that the department and the company provides the product or service that your customers use. Some of the best advice I ever received in my years of work: “under promise and over deliver”. And, that’s not an excuse for padding the work estimates just to make yourself look good!
Early in my career, I not only took responsibility for work that was assigned to me, but I would volunteer to help others, or to take on additional work. Now, all in all, that is not a bad thing, except for the fact that it was preventing me from meeting the deadlines associated with work my boss was expecting me to deliver on assigned projects. Lucky for me, I had a boss that realized I was young; he knew what was happening and took the time to educate me on what I was doing to myself. For a while, I kept up the pretense that I could handle the work – both my own and any additional work where I had volunteered.
Then the backlog started to creep in and I began to miss deadlines. First I would miss them by a day or two and then it began to stretch out further. Finally, my boss called me on it and forced me to admit that the additional work was preventing me from meeting my own goals and was impacting not only myself, but the entire team. Not an easy conversation to have with your boss. This is the person that I wanted to impress, to show him that I was the go to person on the team. Well, I impressed him, just not the way that I had intended.
It took me a while to dig out of the whole that I had made, but my boss was patient and helped me make decisions on where volunteering to take on additional tasks made sense and where I needed to pass. Sometimes that meant telling my co-workers that I was on a deadline, but that I’d be happy to help them once I got past the next milestone. My boss made me realize that sometimes the person asking for help didn’t necessarily need it that minute. Sometimes they could wait, and I needed to be able to determine when someone truly needed immediate help and when it was something that could wait.
He also made me realize that it wasn’t necessary to volunteer for every extra assignment that popped up on the radar. When picking these extra assignments, he showed me how to identify those projects that would have a net positive impact on the team or the company. He also got me to realize that not every call that came in to my desk was an emergency.
Now, I’m not advocating that you ignore requests. What I’m talking about is being able to prioritize the work requests – both requests originating from others and additional work that you identify as important. The feeder that fills your pipeline has many inputs – assigned project activity, departmental meetings, service requests, code defects, project meetings, code reviews, implementation planning, environment builds, etc. However, there is only one output from your pipeline – you must be able to identify the priority of all of the inputs. Now, depending on where you are in the chain of command, you may need to validate the priority with your boss, or you may be able to set the priority within some discretionary limits. Whatever method you need to use – use it! Figure out the priority and then work accordingly to produce results. Meet the deadlines, exceed the expectations by delivering something extra that wasn’t planned and ensure that you wow your customer!
When it is something that you have direct control over – hold yourself accountable. When it is a team or company decision, make your best case for change and don’t give up. Just because someone up the chain doesn’t like the idea right now, doesn’t mean they won’t like it a month from now. If you know it is the right thing to do, find a different way to present your idea. You may need to find out why it was rejected and then provide alternatives that work around the objection.
Take a minute and think about a time you received exceptional service from someone. Maybe it was the last time you went out to dinner with your family. Maybe it was the last vacation you went on. Maybe it was work that a vendor had performed for you. Maybe it was a contractor that had worked on your home. Whatever that moment was – what made it special? Was it the personal contact? Did the person responsible, go above and beyond and exceed your expectations? Now, what can you do to provide that same experience for people you work with on a day to day basis.
So, how are you adding value today?
If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile
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