‘Their Work’ Versus ‘My Work’

When you work in an organization or within a team, you can think of it as ‘doing the work for someone’. For the company. For the manager. For the client.

Or you can think of it as ‘doing your work’. There is a big difference.

Our work is a way to express ourselves. A programmer expresses himself through code. A dancer through her dance. A writer through her words. A leader through his actions. In that sense, our work is our statement. It carries out stamp. It tells something about us.

When you say, “I am doing my work”, you make it personal. It is only when you take the work personally that you can stamp it with excellence. Thinking that you do the work for someone else, you generally do it for the sake of doing it. Simply getting through it. It does more harm to you than you can possibly think of, in a long run.

So, the next time you ship your deliverable to someone (a client, your boss, your peers), think about the statement that your work makes. The stamp it carries.

This Monday, you have a choice. To stamp your work with ‘mediocrity’ or with ‘excellence’. This choice and how it is exercised consciously everyday determines your future and the difference you will make to the organization, team and society.

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Engaging in Alternative ‘Creative Pursuit’ to Be More Effective

Most people love to remain engaged in their ‘core’ area of expertise. They spend long hours over the years to understand, study, apply and innovate ideas in this core area. Most of the growth happens when we stick to one thing and do it really really well.

In my experience, the key to remain innovative in your core area is to find an ‘alternative’ – a creative pursuit that you love, that is different from your normal work and where you spend at least a few hours in a week. It could be playing a guitar, learning salsa, hitting the gym, writing a blog, reading novels, learning how to cook, starting a social initiative and so on.

I know a doctor who is passionate about music. He does not miss a single live music concert that happens in city. “It just refreshes me, pours new energy into my system and makes me more effective at work” – he says. He also started taking tuitions on music in the weekends to explore his passion. What a fun and what a refreshing change.

Studies have shown that these ‘alternate’ activities have a huge impact on your stress levels as well. They could be your greatest tool to bust that stress you accumulate by doing the routine. These activities can also stimulate different faculties (emotional, creative and logical) of our mind.

For me, writing is refreshing. I love the written word and I get a kick when my mind works in tandem with my fingers ferociously hitting the keyboard to produce ideas in form of words. I practice my passion for Quality – the core. But I stay effective because I write. Writing then, is more of a selfish activity for me.

Biggest folly is to think that these ‘alternate’ activities are time-wasters and that we could have produced better results had we spent that time doing our core work. In my view, it could have been counter-productive. Spending a few hours on these alternative activities is not a ‘waste’ but an ‘investment’.

The key however is -

• To experiment with yourself and do things you like doing (or you wished you did).
• Find out activities that gave you most pleasure. (you wished you did them more).
• Eliminate the rest and focus on these one or two activities.
• Devote/plan at least a few hours a week to do these set of activities.
• When you do these, don’t plan too much. Just go with the flow. Enjoy those moments.
• Create an alternative body of work that you could be proud of.

So stick to your core and get better at the ‘alternatives’ – they could be so much of a fun, so much of refreshment and a great tool for making you more effective in your core.

On that note, have a super-effective week ahead!

P.S: My post “On Leadership, Opening Up and Being Prepared” is featured in February Leadership Development Carnival, along with a number of fantastic posts from Leadership community and friends. Check it out.

Book Review – ‘There’s An Adult In My Soup’ By Kim and Jason Kotecki

I am currently reading a simple yet amazing book titled “There’s An Adult In My Soup” by Kim and Jason Kotecki. Thanks to Kim and Jason for sending me a signed copy. They are on a mission fighting “Adultitis” – typical adult syndromes that infect us as we grow. In that process, we loose our child-like qualities that made us happy and jovial. Our daily conundrums trap us and we forget that life happens to us when we are busy making other things happen. This book is a gentle reminder to remain open, optimistic and child-like to enjoy the simple joys of life.

Excerpt From chapter “Trading the Cracker Jack Prizes for the Peanuts”

God has scattered these free prizes all around us: a watercolor sunset, the smell of fresh cut grass, the intricacy of a snowflake. We’re so busy being self-absorbed and stressed-out that we miss them all because they’re hidden just below the surface of our hurried consciousness.

Any book that relates well with your current circumstances will quickly hit you. So if you are going through a “busyness” syndrome and looking out for more from life, this book will quickly break the ice and become a good guiding friend. Better yet, this book will lead to some self-revelation if you are suffering from adultitis but don’t know about it yet! Jason’s illustrations in the beginning of every chapter makes it more interactive and light-weight.

Excerpt From chapter “While you were busy, life passed by”

Here’s what’s really happening: life is passing us by. We miss out on important stuff because we’re convinced that the busyness is a standard operating procedure. And we’re deceived by the mirage that someday, if we work hard enough, our to-do list will be cleared. As David Allen reminds us in Getting Things Done, you will die with things STILL in your to-do list. This never-ending hamster wheel is a part of adulthood we need to escape from now and then.

If you like the book, you will also love reading Kim and Jason’s Blog. 

Explicit versus Tacit - Content versus Process

Difficult situations like slowdown force organizations/managers to do cost-benefit analysis. Salary you are paid is a cost and what you do in the organization for that cost generates value.

Value has two components – tangible and intangible.

Tangible value (easier to visualize) is explicit knowledge of subject (e.g. knowledge of .NET programming or software testing), revenue, efficiencies, numbers etc. This is important.

Intangible value (which is also hard to visualize) is tacit knowledge, knowledge on processes, knowledge on how to deal with typical situations/clients, attitude, different ways of doing things, workarounds etc. This is hard to visualize and measure. But impact of this value is huge.

So from organization/manager’s standpoint – it is important to see value as a sum-total of tangible and intangible value that someone brings on board while rewarding or hiring.

In this regards, I loved what Seth Godin has written in his post “What are you good at?”. He writes about explicit versus tacit knowledge. Crux is that explicit knowledge on subject can be easily learnt. Tacit knowledge only comes with experience within and outside the organizations. There are no shortcuts to acquire tacit knowledge.

Seth Godin writes:

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you’ve developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.
Domain knowledge is important, but it’s (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it’s usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it’s hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Knowing difference between explicit and tacit aspects of one’s knowledge is very crucial from an individual standpoint.

I can easily relate contents of this post with Tom Peter’s saying “Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.” More elaboration on this in the next post.

Have a fantastic weekend!