‘Their Work’ Versus ‘My Work’
Tanmay Vora
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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Hi Sir,
Thanks for the 1 more excellent post.
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” 🙂
Regards,
Jagat
.-= Jagat´s last blog ..Essential Magento Extensions =-.
@Jagat – Thanks for the comment and I am so glad you found the post useful. “Work as if everything depended on you” – that is so true. When we work that way, the work becomes our mission, irrespective of who we work with/for. All hierarchies diminish with that attitude, and it is a starting point for all great things to happen.
Best,
Tanmay
Hi Tanmay
I can see that there are risks to being too attached to “my work”. If something adverse is said about “my work”, it is also said about me; both me and the work become a target for criticism. If I identify myself with my job and then lose that job through redundancy, what happens to my identity?
Isn’t it better to take a more detached view of work; to see that you are only part of a bigger system? Then, seek to fully play your part in improving that system for the benefit of your customers? Surely that opportunity to be engaged in continuous improvement taps into most people’s intrinsic motivation to do a great job?
Glyn
@Glyn – To excel at work with a detached view, a professional needs to have maturity to draw a line between detachment and engagement. My view is that most people are not mature enough. When they work dispassionately and don’t think enough about their work, they don’t excel. That is even more risky, because in cases of job redundancy, such candidates are the first ones to go.
Secondly, I have observed that people who are involved in customer facing / improvement initiatives often tend to own things up (because they are intrinsically motivated) and tend to see that as “my work”.
I have been a strong believer that in order to achieve personal mastery and make a bigger difference to the organization, one has see work as personal. On one side, they work for an organization, but on the other, they also aim to attain personal mastery in whatever they do. Win-win for both organizations and individuals.
Thanks for those thought provoking questions! 🙂
Best,
Tanmay
Nice thought and topic to bring forward Tanmay.
What i believe and also suggest my team / peer is stop thinking that you have to work for your boss or for a company. When you work with this attitude, you always tend to work for the sake of assignments that you are asked / ordered to do and also mostly in the same way as you are asked to do them. In such case you might loose the creativity and ability to think out of the box. It would be just like following the instructions and completing the work – that’s what becomes the ultimate target.
Instead what I believe and follow is that one should work for betterment of project / product. Following instructions and work assignments is obvious but it should not become just a target or instructions completion purpose.
Giving an example of QA, a QA / Tester should not just strive to dig out defects in applications, he/she should also think out of the box and come up with usability enhancements and suggestions for management to give a thought in improvement of some feature or help them inject a new functionality in application. That’s when you donate for the purpose of making a product more matured. And according to me that comes when you work for the Product / Project and not with an idea of My work OR Their (boss / company) work.
In short one attitude makes you simply follow to the guided path / instructions and one helps you bring out smarter ways to reach goals or follow a better path, not just the pointed one.
Thanks for sharing this topic Sir.
Regards,
Jay Chhaya
Thanks for your reply, Tanmay
I think you may have a good point about the level of maturity. Also, I think that how you are managed has a big part to play. If your manager believes that organisational performance results from the best efforts of each worker, it will reflect in the degree of attachment an employee has to his/her job.
What worries me most is to see the worker who wants to do a great job slowly having that enthusiasm squashed out of them by having to work within a totally dysfunctional system.
All the best
Glyn
@Glyn – You make a great point. A lot depends on how people are managed. I think that leadership is at the core of employee engagement, and your point just validates that thought.
I have seen that any reasonably talented individual who wants to do a great job will not stick to a dysfunctional system for long – unless he/she has no other options. But yes, till the time they understand the workplace dynamics, they suffer a lot.
Thanks for adding to this conversation!
Best,
Tanmay
.-= Tanmay Vora´s last blog ..Great Leadership- Beware of These Nine I’s =-.