Success skills for Engineers — Part 2 — Clarity of Direction
A key part of effective communication is having a clear idea of where you are now and where you are headed. As the Cheshire cat replied to Alice when she asked for directions “if you don’t know where you are going then any road will get you there!”.
If you missed it check out Part 1 — Tell Me a Story and Part 3 — A Winning Mindset
TL:DR — A key part of effective communication is having a clear idea of where you are now and where you are headed. As the Cheshire cat replied to Alice when she asked for directions “if you don’t know where you are going then any road will get you there!”. The same is true for your projects, your career, your life. Spending some time to plan out your work and creating a cadence of accountability will immediately set you apart in the work place. Setting up systems, provides a framework for you to iterate and improve continuously.
The systems in your life will take you exactly where they are designed to take you.
Where you find yourself, you can guarantee that you have got there as a result of the systems in your life. They work together to produce results — both good and bad. If you don’t like the results, then there is nothing to blame but the systems that got you there.
It is within your power to change them, tweak them, experiment with them and own them until they do deliver what you are after.
An advantage of knowing where you are going is the improved communication you will be able to provide to stakeholders, delivering information they need and clear requests for help. This is especially true when communicating to your boss and managing up.
Clarity of Direction
Cadence of Accountability
Setting up a drumbeat for delivering your work against can really help set you apart. Taking tips from the lean and kanban worlds will help limit the work you have on the go and better visualise flow of work you are delivering.
- Personal OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results) — Tips from Google
- Master your metrics — Great summary of The 12 Week Year (12WY) by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington and The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. -
- Limit WIP — Continuous delivery — 1+1 = 3 — This short video provides a compelling example of why you should only focus on delivering the next block of work and not multitask.
Daily Grind
In setting your direction it is important to realise that generally there are no shortcuts and most of the time if you are aiming to be excellent you just have to shut the door and do the work.
- 10x engineer — A comprehensive list of models and tools to 10x your engineering skills. I have found the models on the list useful to develop shortcuts for thinking about how to approach various problems I especially use it when I am stuck in a rut, unsure about how to move forward — often there will be a spark of inspiration by approaching something a different way that is just what was needed.
- A simple strategy for becoming exceptionally good — Cal Newport is a terrific author having written several books on the benefits of deliberate and concentrated work. This article provides a good summary of several of his concepts
- Are you optimising to deliver value or look busy
Managing up
- Communicating with your boss and managing up — This is written from a leadership perspective but think of it in terms of what your boss wants to hear from you to make their job easier.
Additional Reading
There are lots of great techniques for managing your time and productivity through increasing your focus (reducing distractions!) and reducing your to do list. I find everyone is different and you should experiment with different tools to find the ones that work for you.
- Personal productivity methods summary — A comprehensive summary of many different productivity techniques
- Pomodoro explained
- Bullet Journal
- Jake Knapp — My burner list
- Warren Buffet “2 List” Strategy
- 30 days of getting results — great agile summary with lots of useful tips.
- The Ivy Lee method
- Ryan Holiday “In the chaos of … life, process provides a way. A way to turn something very complex into something simple. … Let’s say you’ve got to do something difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.”
