Are You Doing Your Best Work?
I’ve had the pleasure of being a manager for most of career, and one of the questions I ask on a fairly regular basis is this: Are you able to do your best work? I want to know what I can do to help obliterate the obstacles that prevent my team members from doing their absolute best. Now, this isn’t always something I can actually help with, but it is certainly something managers should care about in the people they help support.
In my experience, there are a few really big things that contribute to someone doing their best work:
- Purpose — Why are you doing what you’re doing?
- Role — What is your job description, what are you doing day to day, who do you collaborate with?
- Personal Life — There’s a whole world outside of your job. Relationships, hobbies, illnesses, children, etc.
- Company — Pretty self-explanatory…what company are you working for? How do they operate? What type of culture or environment do they have?
- Management — Your direct manager makes a huge impact. Do they support you? Are you learning from them?
It’s certainly possible to work for a great company, but in the wrong role. Also possible to work for a great company, but with a poor manager. Both of these situations can lead to unfulfilling days, frustrating weeks, and ultimately, a desire to leave a job that would otherwise be fantastic.
Purpose
I have certainly taken jobs in the past solely for the money. When I finished graduate school, I had nearly $180,000 in debt. My first job paid $42,000 a year, and I was simply not able to afford to exist as a human. I left that job after 8 months, for a number of reasons, but my financial situation was by far the most important. I can speak from experience…when money is the only purpose behind taking a job, it will fail to fulfill, and you won’t be in a situation to do your best work.
There are many reasons people end up in the jobs they have, and it’s pretty easy to tell the positive reasons from the not-so-positive. There’s a masseuse at The Essex in Vermont who talked about a life-changing massage she received when traveling India. She said if she could bring people that same experience, that’s what she wanted to do. For the record, the massage I received was indeed pretty great. She is an example of someone working with a positive purpose.
Role
There’s been a lot written about how the job market required folks to take positions for which they were over-qualified. In addition to being tough financially, this also sets up the individual to be in a role where they can’t do their best work. If you’re a fantastic manager and aren’t managing any people, there’ll be an entire portion of your skillset left unused. It’s hard to do your best work when there’s more you know you could be doing. Working for a perfect company in a role that you don’t fit is an incredibly frustrating, and far too common, scenario.
Personal Life
I don’t have children yet, though I hope to one day soon. My desire to be a great father is going to have a super significant impact on how I want to work. Working 9 to 5 will be less important than having the freedom to choose which hours I work (this is a major reason behind my attempts to launch BPCO).
So many things fall in this category, it’s impossible to capture them in a 5 minute read. The key thing is this: all employees are people. You are a people. The same stuff you deal with, they deal with. The more forgiving you are, the more you can facilitate working within the world of “real life things,” the better your people will be able to perform. Given current events in my personal life, I’m living this firsthand and can’t possibly begin to describe how important it is that companies, managers, and teammates understand this subject.
Company
Some people work best in a dark room with headphones on, while others want to be chatting and bouncing ideas back and forth all day. Some want to be told exactly what to do, with others wanting to influence the direction. Some folks need total transparency, but others are happy to only know what they need to know. The environment and culture of a company definitely make a difference with regards to the quality of work people are able to put forth.
I’ve seen many “corporate transformations” totally bomb because they didn’t take this into consideration. Let’s say you have a team of engineers who like to work from 6am to 2pm, giving them the entire afternoon to spend with their school-aged children. When you bring a transformation initiative that now mandates everybody is butts-in-seats from 9 to 5, you’ve taken away one of the key reasons those folks joined, and stayed, at your organization in the first place. If you’re a founder, manager, or executive, it’s critical that you understand your culture, understand why people joined your company, and understand what keeps people there.
Management
It’s been said that good employees don’t leave jobs, they leave bad managers. I can believe how this is true. If you have high performing individuals getting passed over for promotions in favor of lower-performing folks with more tenure, it sends a specific message. The type of people who become managers, especially during promotion periods, speaks volumes for the organization as a whole. Are you looking for specific skills in a manager, or just grabbing the “next in line?”
Your direct manager sets the tone for your tenure at a company. This person is responsible for monitoring your performance, identifying areas to improve, vouching for your growth, pointing you toward opportunities, checking on your mental sanity, and so much more. When your manager isn’t competent, isn’t attentive, doesn’t have time for you, isn’t facilitating growth, and is acting as a gatekeeper instead of a partner, you’re going to disconnect reeeeeeeally fast from the organization.
I Want to Do My Best Work
I can confidently say that in my professional career, I have not encountered an individual that isn’t seeking to do their best work. They may not be able to vocalize it as such, but they can all feel when something is just…off. As you build teams, organizations, and companies, it’s important to keep asking the question of your employees. What do they need to do their best work, and how can you help them?
With the Better Product Company, I want to help Founders, Product Managers, Product teams, and Corporate Leadership build better software. There’s a better way to build products, and I think “my best work” is helping others execute. If you’re interested in learning more about what Better Product Company is up to, connect with me on LinkedIn, post a comment on this article, or shoot me a note at andrew@betterproduct.co. Until next time!
