What is the best quality a professional can have?
Ok, I know it is a little presumptuous to even think I have the final answer to this question, and I don't. But, since this is an open channel to expose ideas and start debates, I have decided to publish some things that came to my mind around this subject during my routine as a design manager.
The truth is that I don't keep asking myself this question all the time, and I believe that neither you do, right? But sometimes the answers falls daily in our laps before we even realize what we were asking about, and only after some time we end up connecting the dots to finally understand the message. Maybe I'm a bit crazy to even think like that, but I hope at the end of this article you will get what I'm saying despite that.
Before I begin, I think I should say that no, I’m not going to talk about personal qualities like empathy or respect, because these are characteristics every human should have in every situation, not just professionally. What I’m going to explain is how I got this feeling that there is a practical skill that, in my opinion, is indispensable to someone who wants to grow in his/her career. And to do that, let's start talking about me.
Me,
Since I'm a product designer, it is part of my job to observe behaviours, and I love to do that. Looking at people during my daily subway ride and guessing where they might be going or what they're thinking is one of my hobbies, and during usability tests at work this is also an essential skill to get how users are actually responding to the interfaces I create. Yes, I enjoy playing Sherlock Holmes for a living.
Among other aptitudes, I believe that this one was important for me to evolve through the years in my profession, and it was fundamental for me to become this "QA" person everywhere I go. I think it’s because I developed an analytic way of observing paths and finding problems, not all of them, but a lot of them, even smaller ones. Being able to do that with the products before launching to real users is very important to guarantee a high value delivery and avoid roll backs. And because of that, people simply trust me to validate all kinds of stuff in a daily bases.
my team,
And speaking of trust, I think we all agree that this is very important to keep a group of people working together towards one goal. If you don't trust someone you work with, you're probably not delivering as well as you could if you were confident that your coworker or employee also wanted or were able to accomplish the same objective you do.
I assimilated that this is true when I realised that every time I was happy with someone's work, congratulating them for doing a good job, was when they have delivered something with caution to have almost or nothing missing, or when they discovered a small change that would make a big difference on the final result. This is when I feel I can really trust them, not when they deliver a perfect product, because that probably doesn't exist, but when I see they're really paying attention, when they worry not just with the whole, but also with the small parts of the product. That’s when I know it’s going to be good, because customers can tell, and they value products made with this kind of care.
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
and Sherlock.
No, I didn't mention him earlier randomly. If you have any clue of why the character became a great detective you will know that it was because of his ability to spot details as no one else. That's what makes him the best at what he does, paying attention to small things. And if you stop to think about it broadly, you will see that this applies to any profession, not only detectives or product designers. Just wonder for a moment:
- What happens if a civil engineer doesn't pay attention to details?
- What happens if a lawyer doesn’t pay attention to details?
- What happens if a doctor doesn’t pay attention to details?
I don't think I need to continue…
"The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe."
The answer?
"Elementary, my dear Watson…"
Looking at details. If it's not the best one, it must be on the top five! In my humble opinion, you may not become fantastic at your job if you just do this, but at least people will trust you, and that matters a lot! At least this is the kind of professional I look for when I need to hire for my team, because I believe that people with this kind of skill can design great products. Makes sense? What about you? What do you think is the best quality of a professional?
