10 ways to succeed as an employee (Part II of III)

Just 2 months ago I was delivering what may be my last downward feedback to the engineers on my team. At my company, we go through a lengthy process of 360 feedback and several rounds of calibrating with other managers to ensure fairness. And as I reflect back on my 6 years of being a people manager, there are qualities of employees that are more highly rewarded than others. In this 3-part blog series, I will break down the behaviors that are needed at different stages of your career in a big company. This is Part II, where I will cover 3 more behaviors and skills needed to excel after showing some success at your job. You can find Part I here. Are you ready? Standby.

4. Work on important things

The biggest difference between those who get promoted and those who don’t is their impact on the business, not their behavior or skill. Certain behaviors and skills may yield higher results or make it easier to get consistent impact, but promotions are generally awarded based on prior success, not actions.

Earlier in my career I had a rude awakening that talent and effort are not the leading factors for job promotions. I remember seeing someone get promoted twice before I got promoted once because he was working on a really important project for the company. I happen to intimately know of his technical and leadership skills and they were nothing special. It wasn’t until I became a manager and had to objectively reward people based on results, that I swallowed my pride and admit that my way of looking at the world was wrong. It may have been pure luck that he was put in that position, but the truth is because of him the company was better off. And the truth is despite the many accolades from my peers and managers, my total impact to the company didn’t come close to his. I had only worked on things that impacted my 30-person team, but he worked on things that impacted our 400-person organization.

If career progression is important to you, the most important thing is to find a team and/or company that will allow you to make the biggest impact for your skill level. Do not work on an easy team whose purpose is to “keep the lights on” and expect good career progression. 

As the saying goes, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

5. Be proficient at written communication

In a big company, your ability to communicate through writing is very important. All important communication takes place in written form. If you want to be the leader of any initiative, you will undoubtedly need to send out emails or write documentation. 

You may be thinking what does writing well look like? My standard for a well written email or document is the following:

• Can the reader skim the first section (e.g. paragraph) and understand if it’s worth reading now versus later?

• Is it concise? 

• Does it provide reasonable context for someone who has no prior knowledge?

• Is it easy to follow with sections that have a natural progression?

• If it is a call for action, does it explicitly list out what those are?

• If it is a call for action, what is your storyline to convince the reader that it is important?

• If it is an update, does it truly contain the most important updates or are the important updates mixed in with the less important ones?

• Finally, and most importantly, is it accurate? I’ve seen a good number of published documentation or important emails with inaccurate information. The most common example is when someone mischaracterizes the decisions made in an important meeting. The last thing you want is a piece of communication that is meant to unify and align a group of people to do the exact opposite.

The irony in this point is that I never got an A in any of my English classes in High School or College. And here I am writing to the internet about the importance of writing. 

6. Leverage human capital around you

As you become more senior, you will have the luxury of leveraging the people around you to do bigger things. The pitfall for many introverts like myself is that we tend to do everything ourselves. We don’t want other people to feel like they are being used or told what to do. I’ve also seen some people simply believe that they can get things done faster and better if they just do it themselves. This leads to unnecessary stress. I’ve certainly been there. But more importantly it retards the team’s potential total impact.

I tell the senior folks on my team that their impact is no longer just the immediate output from their 8-hour days. It is the summation of their output and of those who they set up for success.

Several months ago I had a newly promoted senior engineer tell me he gave 10% of a particular type of work to another engineer. I asked him “why didn’t you give him all of it?” He told me it’s pretty boring work and doesn’t want that person to feel like they are doing grunt work. In other words, the way he was going to leverage the other engineer was by giving him small chunks of many different types of tasks instead of big chunks of fewer types of tasks. I thought it was a good coaching moment, so I asked him what will the other person write on their annual performance review as their contribution to the project? If we actually went down that path, the only possible summary will be “contributed to feature A, B, and C.” Ultimately, I told him the other engineer would learn more, be better rewarded, and thus happier if his headline for the project was “fully owned and drove the execution and launch of feature A.”

If you can figure out how to maximize the help you get from those around you, it will be very evident. People will be generally happier, you will see more high-performers, you will get better results with less stress, and most importantly you will magically have more time to take on bigger initiatives.

Closing thoughts

As you progress even further in your career, these behaviors become baseline expectations for someone who is “senior” and new behaviors are needed to excel at the next level. That will be a subject that I cover in part 3 of this series!

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