We’ve discussed in a previous chapter how you shouldn’t get caught in a rabbit hole—going down a lost path of confusion for more than a few hours, you will seldom solve it, so you need to be cognizant so you can step back.
But here’s the thing: the same will happen to your boss or client, but on a much bigger level. They’ll assign work to you, and do this, and do that, and they’ll forget their own objectives. It’s human nature!
Keeping this psychological observation in mind, as well as the super-importance of business objectives, you can easily keep a magical path to power open merely by reminding everyone you work with of the objectives.
“Let’s redo the logo.” “Well, what are the business objectives of our unit again, and does this help achieve them?”
“Let’s speed up our website.” “Well, what are the business objectives of our unit again, and does this help achieve them?”
“I’m going to go to the bathroom.” “Well, what are the business objectives of our unit again, and does this help achieve them?”
The last one was a joke. Sort of.
Looking at the first two examples, it becomes clear. People just want to do more and more, but always focusing on the priorities is important from the bottom up.
Of course, there is a time and place for this—and careful ways to word it. If you’re an intern and want to be professional, you don’t want to tell your boss that you won’t fulfill a request. But even if you are an intern, you can say:
“I’m happy to help post to social media! I’d love to understand your business objectives and then see how posting to social media can help achieve them.” (Best Intern Ever!)
Now, intern or high-level—or anything in-between—there’s an even better version of this strategy. That is, to take this question to the next level, to proactively and explicitly map your work to the company or division objectives. The new employee just does what he’s told; the sophisticated employee understands what the group is trying to accomplish, and connects his work to that, at every point possible.
This is always easier said than done. Sometimes you don’t want to question The Boss. Sometimes you don’t know how to make that connection. Sometimes you want to work on stuff that may not even help the objective directly.
How do you connect your work to your objectives? That’s a whole separate issue, and far out of scope here, but the one-sentence version is: there’s no magic sauce, and just trying to do it, as well as you can, goes a long way.
