JARVARM

When you are in the Corporate world, one of the common things that you hear is that you HAVE to “walk the extra mile”. That is a good advice and there is no harm in following that. There is only one problem though. If you don’t design this well, your “extra mile” will be treated as a part of your “standard offering” and you are always forced to walk ANOTHER extra mile.

Meanwhile, walking these “extra miles” on the professional front is leaving you no time to work on yourself and you are constantly “a mile short” on the personal front.

If you want to walk the “extra mile” personally or professionally, you need “extra capacity” and you get that by working on yourself - not on tasks but just on lifting yourself up.

The more you shy away from “working on yourself”, the harder it will be to walk those “extra miles”

Software Professionals or otherwise, we are always responding to requests based on our understanding of the request. If you get the request wrong, then…

Little Bobby asked Mom – “Where did I come from?”. Mom struggled for fifteen minutes to explain things around sex. Bobby responded with a blank face - “This is a bit confusing. Pinky told me she is from Patna, Bihar and I wanted to know where I came from…”

Are you open to feedback?

Yes?

Now, are you REALLY open for feedback?

Most people who say they are open to feedback or really not open to feedback. They like feedback that validates what they already know and believe in. If they get feedback that is not in line with what they already believe in they will typically “shoot the messenger” and move on.

Now, are you REALLY open for feedback?

You ask for something and you get rejected. Sounds familiar?

If you are in the “self help” world, you just “motivate yourself” and “persist” and go and ask some more people. If you get rejected again, you “don’t give up” and you “walk the extra mile”.

Before you do all that, please think what is the cost for the other person to TOTALLY ignore you. If it is bordering zero, may be you have to first work on your identity and then go back to making requests.

What you see is typically a very small part when compared to what you don’t see.

There is only so much visible in the foreground. So much more is in the background. Unless you have the maturity to “see the background” without actually seeing it, you may have missed a large part of what is in front of you.

What you don’t see is equally or more important than what you see sometimes.

Are you better at what you do than you were a month or two ago?

A lot better?

How did you get better? What did you read or try? Did you fail at something and learn from it? Does that mindless stuff you do at work when the boss isn’t looking make you better or just pass the time?

If you got better faster, would that be a good thing? How could you make that happen?

A lot of questions…. But the truth is that work rewards improvement. It didn’t used to. It used to reward stability.

When the leader moved on, nobody seemed to notice it. Some people said that the leader didn’t do much before – “See everything seems to work like magic without him.”

What most people missed was that the hardest thing for a leader was to make himself not required in due course.

Most of the time we do the work. The work is our initiative and our reactions and our responses and our output. The work is the decisions we make and the people we hire.The work is what people talk about, because it’s what we experience. In other words, the work tells a story.

But what if you haven’t figured out a story yet?

Then the work is random. Then the story is confused or bland or indifferent and it doesn’t spread.

On the other hand, if you decide what the story is, you can do work that matches the story. Your decisions will match the story. The story will become true because you’re living it.

While the advice may end up being similar, each firm lives a story in who they hire, how they present themselves, etc.

The story creates the work and the work creates the story.