The work you do is not necessarily what you’re going to be good at. The work in between that gets the work done is where you are going to excel. In every job, whether it’s fast food, retail, building tables, carpentry, electrical, hedge work, programming, testing, requirements, architecture, etc, etc – it will ALWAYS be the work in between that will make you succeed and it’s here that the greatest lessons you will ever learn…
Got too much stuff? Give it away. Don’t know what to do with something after staring at it for days? Give it away. Not sure if you are ever going to use it again? Give it away. Know someone who could use it? Give it away. You don’t need to turn a profit on everything, sometimes you can give it away to those that need it most.
It’s easy to forget why you are somewhere when you have been there for so long. What brought you to this job in the first place? Why are you working with a particular customer? What you’re going to bring to the table? What do you hope to achieve? What you want to achieve? That’s why it’s important to take that moment, not with your team, not on the phone – probably not at your desk…
Maybe you’re the defacto expert who gets called on to fix things. You probably didn’t start out wanting to be that person – it just happened. Now you’re the “Expert”—but you don’t want to be, and you’re the expert only in what you need to know to overcome the problem you’re facing. The only way to stop being the “Expert” is to bring others into the fold, involve others, write documentation, push out information, and…
In every role, in every team, there are gaps – work that needs to be done, that we all know needs to be done, but no one has the cycles to do it. These are the gaps. Good leaders identify the gaps, Great leaders fill them – they take on the task and they get it done. That’s how you go from Good to Great.