Know Your Workplace Currency to Get Ahead
Doing a good job may not be the way to get ahead.
Have you ever done such a great job that your boss is furious with you?
In our professional careers, we’ve internalized the platitude that if we work hard, we’ll get ahead. But not all managers believe in meritocracies, and far too many bosses judge their employees’ worth as equal to the number of hours spent in the office. Unfortunately, the fact is that great work isn’t always a prerequisite for company advancement. What they don’t teach you in Business 101 is that doing a job well done often is only one factor in workplace success. Other factors—politicking, for example—is the name of the game in offices around the world.
Working harder doesn’t mean you’re doing work that will hold you in high esteem with coworkers and superiors. So how do you continue to be a quality producer in the workplace and move up the corporate ladder at the same time?
To really get ahead in your job, identify and embody the currency that is actually valued at your organization.
Rapid Success Can Look Like Failure
Sam is a float decorator at Bernice’s plant shop, Green Growing Things, and just finished designing a parade float for Lonnie’s Landscaping. Sam, so enthusiastic about doing an outstanding job, finished the float two days before the parade. The deadline was met well in advance, and there were no other floats that needed designing, so Sam figured it would be fine to take a few days off work. After all, the client is happy, and there’s no work waiting for Sam in the extra two days.
Sure enough, Lonnie the Landscaper was delighted with the quality of the work, and the float looked so great that Green Growing Things gained half a dozen new leads for future projects during the parade. Sam reported this great news to Bernice and asked for a promotion. Instead, Bernice read the riot act over the two days of missed FaceTime. As Bernice puts it, “In nature, the honey bees never stop their subtle and intricate dance. They are always there for the hive! You can not be a honey bee who takes two days off. That would be an affront to the Goddess.”
Everything seemed to be going off without a hitch! What went wrong? Sam wants to balance being a great employee with being an efficient worker. In short, Sam wants to harvest the vegetables and eat them too.
Know Your Tradeoffs
To avoid a situation like this, start by getting your personal priorities straight. Sam believes that being productive leads to being liked, getting complimented, and being promoted to Regional Vegetable Wrangler Level I. So the formula for success is simple: relentlessly pursue productivity, and everything else will follow.
In the real world, however, these don’t all come together. And to get what matters most, the next step is to unpack the different priorities. What’s most important, personally? Doing a great job? Having free time? Making money? Being a great employee? Being liked by coworkers? Getting promoted? Priorities may change over time, but if some are more important than others, keeping that in mind is necessary to achieve them.
You can still go home early, but people will think you’re shirking.
Discern Your Workplace Priorities
Next, you need to get your workplace priorities straight. Find out what matters to the people who are in charge at work. To figure out how merit is awarded at Green Growing Things, Sam need not look further than the chain of command. Who gets promoted into what positions? What are their skills? Who do they eat lunch with? What are their dietary restrictions?
Look and learn! Understanding workplace priorities is all about observation. Look around your workplace at who’s successful and what they do to get there, other than being productive.
Sam stakes out the plant store for a week and realizes that everyone in positions of power seem to chat with Bernice regularly, giving her status updates and making it clear how devoted they are to the store. The currencies at play are communication and devotion.
Decide Where to Put Your Efforts
Now, compare your priorities and the company’s priorities. If they don’t line up, you’ll need to reconcile them. Look at your two lists and pull out the priorities and currencies that you share with the company. Those will be the places where your efforts will, indeed, be valued in the way that you’ve come to expect. Yay! Status quo works!
Now look at the workplace priorities that aren’t personal priorities. Since these are the keys to the kingdom where you work, decide which of them you’re willing to pay attention to, even though you may be sacrificing some personal priorities. If face time matters, then face it (see what I did there?): face time is as much part of your job as finishing your work. You can still decide to go home early, but you’ll understand why others perceive you as shirking part of your job.
Sometimes you can find compensating strategies. If Sam still wants to take a couple of days off, it can be done by catching up on the communication and devotion currencies. A few choice conversations with Bernice making sure she’s up-to-date, and thoughtfully expressing how important Green Growing Things is to Sam may be all that it takes to get Bernice to view the 2-day vacation as evidence of Sam’s productivity, rather than evidence of slacking.
Irreconcilable Differences Lead to Divorce
It’s possible that there’s no overlap between your priorities and your company’s priorities. Plus, you may not want to devote effort to the currencies that your workplace does value. In that case, it’s time to start honing your resume and looking around for another job. Ultimately realizing that it would be too great a burden to communicate and be devoted, Sam decided that there was too big a mismatch with Green Growing Things’ priorities. Sam quit, joined Goldman Socks, and pioneered a line of fabulously successful overpriced stockings.
If you find yourself working hard, doing everything right, and still being passed over for promotion, reassess. Look at your own priorities and what you think your job is. Then look around to see what actually gets rewarded in your company. Confront the difference and, if you really want a successful career at your company, change the game you’re playing to the game that the company truly values.
This is Stever Robbins. I help people be Extraordinarily Productive, and build extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com
Work Less, Do More, and Have a Great Life!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
