Professional Development 101
Welcome, new hybrid work environment hires! Ha ha.
We live in a fast-paced, post pandemic, hybrid work world where communication and ‘professionalism’ across technologies and locations and countries and languages are more important than ever. The risk is that more junior, remote employees will commit some gaffes in front of more jaded, experienced employees.
Here are a few Pro Tips for any newish, distributed workforce employee who wants to raise their professionalism game.
What is the goal?
For every task you work on and every proposal you present, start by addressing the question “what problem are we trying to solve?” Even better is asking what the goal of the task is. Everyone in the room should know what we’re doing here. If you are working on a problem that isn’t clear to everyone, more senior folks will ask if it’s worth doing. What are you trying to accomplish?
Related, “prove to me that this is a real problem” is a major first step that many startups miss. Startup founders get obsessed with building the solution that they are married to, rather than obsessively deep-diving on the problem that their solution will address. Founders should be open to always re-evaluating what problem they are addressing, and experimenting with various solution hypotheses.
How do you measure success?
Is more work better than less work? Not necessarily!
The risk is that people will start measuring VOLUME of work as a success metric. Be careful of measuring ‘amount of requests handled’, ie requests come in, requests are processed. This is a factory mentality. Most likely your team is more than just an output factory that processes requests.
The opportunity is to measure quality, ie “how can we move the needle?” The needle should be measured in terms of business objectives, ie making more money, being more operationally efficient, saving money, higher customer satisfaction, etc. It is not “I got 10 emails and I answered all of them. Yay, me!” Your job is probably not to check off tasks, your job is to do a good job. Choose a metric that represents moving the needle for your business.
Related, startups often prioritize false-flag success measurements like hours worked, venture money raised, number of people at the company, number of lines of code written, if cool t-shirts were made, how late people stay at the office, etc. None of these metrics matter. The only thing that matters to a startup is how you solve customer problems, ie how are you creating value and doing heavy lifting so the customer doesn’t have to?
What will viewers / my boss / users think of this?
Know your audience. Never show a slide or proposal to your manager without first getting feedback from peers, for example. How will what I produced resonate with viewers / my boss / customers? Get a sanity check from a colleague before you present anything. Avoid showing something messy that shocks your audience.
The lesson here is to focus on quality. The task is not just to write a report, the task is to do a thorough job on the report. Quality comes from getting feedback, doing multiple drafts, and optimizing content based on what you learn from reactions to your first draft.
Just like Agile methodology: build, learn, iterate.
Connect with your co-workers
Go to lunch with colleagues you don’t know very well. On video calls, turn on your camera. Make eye contact. Have personal conversations. Build relationships. Work is a human endeavor. It’s a myth that the content you produce is all that matters. Work is a combination of human relationships and our output.
Will someone you work with recommend you for a job in 10 years? If they do, it won’t be solely because of the work you produced, it will be because they liked working with you. And why did they like working with you? Because you were generous, kind, helped them and made the job fun. Without presence and professional maturity, more senior people may dismiss you as a junior employee that has a lot to learn.
Be your own project manager
Your title may not be ‘project manager,’ but every employee is their own project manager. Manage your to do list daily and religiously. Don’t let tasks fall through the cracks. Write down and prioritize everything you do. If you are leading a meeting, start with a clear agenda and goal for the meeting. Once you have accomplished the goal of the meeting, end the meeting.
Show that you are focused and detail-oriented. The risk is becoming responsive, but responsive only. Responsiveness is important, but it is one of many attributes you need to sharpen. Don’t let your Inbox be your to do list. Be proactive and track everything.
Show me, don’t tell me
Probably my biggest work-related pet peeve is when colleagues try to verbally explain something incredibly complex without any visualizations, ie “hand waving.”
Show a work flow or flow chart or a slide or a wireframe or a prototype or something that visually explains the concept you are trying to get across. Sadly, many very smart people are great at a lot of things, but generating creative visuals is not one of them. Learning to create great visualizations to demonstrate their point will help you excel.
Obviously, the “soft skills” listed above aren’t just for junior employees fresh out of college. They are for all of us. Even the most senior work-pros among us can re-learn and sharpen these tools. In the spirit of life-long learning and self-improvement, learning these important teamwork skills will help build the collaboration tools required for success in today’s hybrid work environment.
