It’s one thing to put all your energy into a goal, but its another to attain it. Working hard alone may provide you a consolation gift but never the grand prize for the effort you exert.
Recently I’ve discussed with my brother about company performance in general, while we both give the benefit of the doubt of being blessed with hardworking teammates, some just don’t think enough to perform beyond mediocre.
Work that majority consists of toil is now replaceable in different channels: the growing pool of new blood and automation by technology to name a few. So here’s a reminder to all you who work under the corporate ladder:
Be Indispensable
It has been a challenge from the early years of the company to make oneself irreplaceable: to be a master of skills, to progress from the doer to the thinker and to translate experience to expertise.
It’s not enough to be able to type 500 words per minute if all that you were writing is gibberish, be more than a consistent action of process, live more than a set of “ifs”, learn to break the rules, forget the meta, risk away, discover and live in complexity and the uncertain. Because in the end, even animals learn to follow commands when trained enough, its only easier to do so with humans.
Jogging hard to distances will never be as efficient as riding a car in this generation, no matter if you’ve trained a year to build your body’s resilience, stamina and speed, you will fail behind by a huge gap. So, don’t. The resources are all available to you in the internet to sharpen your skill set, research, extract and apply. Companies don’t hold your time, you do. So to reason your way away of this gift can only be assumed about your lack of motivation to grow.
Be a master of many and a grandmaster of one.
Growth & Comfort
The root cause of halting improvement is selfishness. The moment you consummate your desire to be idle is the beginning of your outlook to focus on self and disregard the environment you reside. In a team, you start to place comfort above performance and the result will leave your group’s conclusion to tasteless and bland. This is especially true if you hold a position of influence, rather than as a person with potential.
For those that don’t reside on a position of power (yet), remember there are multiple reasons why people are placed with more authority than you, and its not always because of the ability, it could be the lack of thereof that they were placed to occupy the seat. So don’t let it stop you from making the vibrant impression. Who knows? You might just be the right one to make the right revolution and throw down the current regime as the one who’s truly worthy for your commander’s seat.
Muscle is mediocre, knowledge is nice but application is the key ability. Do things faster, better than harder and you’d go further than what others have. If you are led to do to on what you just can, start adding what you will now.
Photo by Danka & Peter
1 comment