Everyone has different challenges in their careers from bankers, doctor, lawyers to teachers. The Bankers will be measured on performance against the organisational objectives, doctors are measured on successful operations, lawyers are measured in number wins for their clients and teachers will be measured on successful student pass rates.
The question is how and what do we need to do to achieve excellence. To add another layer of complexity, you are also measured against your colleagues / peers, so the pressure is even more to do something that is a game changer that improves your productivity, deliverables and skills that will get you the promotion you deserve.
Here are some simple foundational rules that you can follow today to start to achieve excellence in your professional life.
Plan Your Success In Advance
Not matter what industry you work in you will have targets set by the leadership team to get certain tasks / projects completed by. One approach is to plan from the end and understand what success looks like. Then, once you get that understanding, then create smaller activities that will enable you to meet your key objective. Then continue to branch out into smaller actionable activities that you can take action on to meet the end objective. This way you will know what action needs to be done and timeline to complete them by.
Be Self Disciple With Your Time
Time is your enemy. When you start off any project or start a new task, job or activity, you think you have all the time, you are wrong. You need to be mindful of how you manage your time effectively and not get bogged down in non-value activities or engagements. You need to think about when in the day you are most productive and when energy levels start to go down. I plan my day first thing in the morning or the previous night. I plan activities that require my full attention at the time of day that I am most productive, energetic and action driven. You don’t have to be action driven all day, but using the 80/20 rule you should use the allocated time effectively to get the results you desire.
It’s all about results, results, results
No matter what industry you work in, it’s all about results, results, results. How you implement the results in any organisation will be focused on but overall, the results you bring in will trump anything else.
You should focus your attention on those tasks that will get you a little closer to getting the results that you want. If you encounter problems, as a leader you should find solutions to overcome these. So, your attention is not only to get the final results, but smaller results to also count to your overall success.
Make sure you communicate your results as wins. If you don’t, then the management won’t know what you’re capable of doing. Over communicating your wins is not a bad thing, remember in any organisation you need to brag about your wins, as no one else will do it for you.
Be responsible for your own action
You are responsible for what you do and do not let others bring you down and take you to account for an action that should have been completed. You should know that you are responsible for your own actions and make it known to everyone that you are taking the lead on certain tasks. Use a RACI chart as a minimum for your role to understand who needs to be informed, consulted, respond or take action based on your role. Be it a teacher, banker or lawyer everyone has someone to either consult, inform, or respond to from the action you take. Using this approach will keep your stakeholders who are responsible for your promotion.
Look for ‘What’s in it for me’ in every situation
No matter what you do, you need to ask yourself what will this achieve and what’s in it for me. This is not a selfish act, but something that will enable you to focus on activities that will gain you results that are relevant for you, the team and the organisation. These key activities will be favorable for your for your promotion. Do not get caught in actions that are not tangible or meets the teams or organisational goals. Many times I have seen people do tasks that give them no benefit or see it as a win in front of the management team. BAU activities will not make you favorable for your promotion, seek out activities or problems that the management team or organisation has put forward and approach the management team with a proposal on leading the project.
Now I want to ask you: Which one of the aboves are you going to put into practice today to get ahead in your career? How do you stay motivated and bring out the maximum of your output? Share your views with me in the comments below.