How to kick a$$ at your first job... and maybe your second
🎨Back to basics 📊 People that are good at work are good at these things 🧘♀️ Agency
Welcome to “Day by Jay!” A combination of topics I find interesting and enjoyable, I hope you do as well. You can find previous editions here.
The thing I love about job interviews is that they are bi-directional.
As much as the employer chooses the employee, the employee chooses the employer. This is particularly true when teams are small as in VC or when job markets are as tight as this one is.
Acknowledging this bi-directional-ness comes in the form of allowing candidates to analyze you. Sometimes it includes wooing, like dinners or interview days. Always it allows for asking questions. As an interviewer, you learn about a candidate by what questions they ask. What topics do they gravitate to? How do their prior experiences color the lens through which they look at you? What are their values and interests?
One of the candidates that we hired for our analyst role at CV asked me a good one.
"What are the common things that every successful analyst does?"
I like this question. It's not about background or skill sets or prerequisites. It's about putting in the work. Doing the actions.
People that are good at work are good at these things
There are three things you can do to excel at their first job. Three things, executed well, will make you successful. At least, if you master these three things, you're ready for your second job (or promotion). The caveat is that these three things must come alongside a good attitude and humility.
Of note, these are also mastered in order. You cannot be great at step two without first being great at step one, and so on. But, the framework is simple enough that you can practice them all, anytime.
These three things are completed work, so what, and agency.
Completed Work
Completed work is finished product. It is free of revisions, unanswered questions, and half-baked ideas.
It is not following the "letter of the law" but rather the "spirit of the law."
For example, a task often implies another. Completed work includes finishing the explicit and implicit tasks. To illustrate, I remember when we were children and my parents asked us to clean or help with chores. Vacuuming was a common one. If I vacuumed the floor but went around the pillows and other items left out, that would be incomplete work. Picking up the items and putting them away before vacuuming would be complete work.
For another example, a question often leads to another question and another. When one pulls on the thread of questions until the spool unravels, that is completed work. If the question at hand is "What is the market size?," an incomplete answer is "$5B." A complete answer is one that includes the market size, if it is growing or shrinking, if it is fragmenting or consolidating, and other relevant characteristics that help inform how big the market is and will be.
Completed work requires intellect (or common sense), intellectual curiosity, and a work ethic.
I credit my partner, Lindsay, with sharing a memo that gave me the succinct descriptor of completed work. I urge both managers and their reports to come back and read Completed Work by Art Nielson.
So what.
Completed work goes a very, very long way. But, once you have all the "facts" you need to be able to interpret them. We need to answer, "So what?"
Is the data that you are reporting good or bad? How does it affect us?
Early in our careers, we depend on our managers to tell us if something is good or bad and what we need to do next. Many of us do this for a longer time than we should. Even when we should start calling our shot, we don't. Making the wrong call can be scary.
However, doing so is a disservice to you, your career, and the organization. Why?
Be a sparring partner. There will be times you have a different opinion about a matter than those working with you. Sometimes, you'll be wrong but many times your perspective will be just that, different. Different can be additive. It can foster discussion. It can reaffirm other points of view. By keeping your thoughts to yourself for too long, you could deprive your team.
Practice makes progress. If you compare your hypothesis to what was ultimately done you become an active learner.
Develop a track record. The more you "practice", the more data you have to inform how good you are. As you show more proof of this track record, more decision-making or action will fall onto you.
Over time, becoming good at the “so what…” and acting on the “what’s next” allows you to take on more of the work cycle of any one assignment.
You become a self-sufficient contributor to your team.
Agency
You’ll notice in the diagram above that the cycle is still reliant on a catalyst. The "self-sufficiency" is limited to executing and interpreting the work. We rely on our leadership and our managers to identify and assign work in the first place.
This flywheel has a dependence. It is open looped.
What if you could do your manager's job?
You could close the loop.
This is agency.
The sense of agency (SA), or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world. It is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that it is I who is executing bodily movement(s) or thinking thoughts. In non-pathological experience, the SA is tightly integrated with one's "sense of ownership" (SO), which is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that one is the owner of an action, movement or thought. If someone else were to move your arm (while you remained passive) you would certainly have sensed that it were your arm that moved and thus a sense of ownership (SO) for that movement. However, you would not have felt that you were the author of the movement; you would not have a sense of agency (SA).
Agency is not just taking ownership of work but taking responsibility for what work to do.
"Thinking like an owner" is by far the most difficult element of the three. It is ambiguous, lacks data, and can be difficult to prioritize... especially if not explicitly included in your job.
The key is knowing where to start. There are natural advantages to being closer to "the work" than your manager. You know "the work" and "the problems" and "the players." You can speak with confidence knowing you know the matter better than anyone else.
Are there issues you see on the horizon? Places where you and the team can do better? Shifts in the market that you are well-positioned to see coming?
These are perfect opportunities to practice agency. Identify problems or growth areas (agency). Diligence them (complete work). Figure out what they mean and what to do next (so what).
Work yourself into your next job
The more loops you make around the work cycle, the more confidence you, and your managers, will have in you… In your ability to identify initiatives. In your ability to execute them. In your ability to understand what they mean to your organization and the market.
This confidence is what unlocks further opportunities. Usually, that means a promotion or a new role.
Then, the work cycle starts all over again.