Stop waiting for permission to knock someone's socks off
Matt Hall
When I had a normal job, this was the time of year when we set our goals for the coming months. Actually, we sometimes didn't do it till March. Then we'd have the end-of-year review in October... Anyway, when I thought of this, it made me think about my own goals for the year, for Agile, and my career (if you can call it that). Here's my list:
1. Knock someone's socks off.
That's it. That's my goal. I know it's completely stupid. It's not SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, or timely. I don't believe in SMART. For a start, it's obviously a backronym. That's why there's attainable and realistic in there—what's the difference? They're equally depressing and uninspiring. Measurable, attainable goals are easy, and I'm going to do them anyway: it's called work. It's the corporate equivalent of saying my goals for the day are waking up, getting out of bed, having a shower, making a list of attainable goals... Maybe those are goals if you're in rehab, but if you're a person with a job or a family they're just part of being a person.
I don't mean we should not make plans and share lists of tasks to help get stuff done. It's important to have everyone working at least occasionally in concert. In my experience people tend to do this anyway, but there's no harm in writing them down for everyone to see. Managers can handle this, and everyone should read them.
Why do these goals seem so dry? You love geoscience or engineering or whatever you do. That's a given. (If you don't, for goodness's sake save yourself.) But people keep making you do boring stuff that you don't like or aren't much good at and there's no time left for the awesomeness you are ready to unleash, if only there was more time, if someone would just ask.
Stop thinking like this.
You are not paid to be at work, or really to do your job. Your line manager might think this way, because that's how hierarchical management works: it's essentially a system of passing goals and responsiblities down to the workforce. A nameless, interchangeable workforce. But what the executives and shareholders of your company really want from you, what they really pay you for, is Something Amazing. They don't know what it is, or what you're capable of — that's your job. Your job is to systematically hunt and break and try and build until you find the golden insight, the new play, the better way. The real challenge is how you fit the boring stuff alongside this, not the other way around.
Knock someone's socks off, then knock them back on again with these seismic beauties.Few managers will ever come to you and say, "If you think there's something around here you can transform into the most awesome thing I've ever seen, go ahead and spend some time on it." You will never get permission to take risks, commit to something daring, and enjoy yourself. But secretly, everyone around you is dying to have their socks knocked right off. Every day they sadly go home with their socks firmly on: nothing awesome today.
I guarantee that, in the process of trying to do something no-one has ever done or thought of before, you will still get the boring bits of your job done. The irony is that no-one will notice, because they're blinded by the awesome thing no-one asked you for. And their socks have been knocked off.
Reader Comments (10)
Great post. I loved it. You could say it knocked my socks off!
These rigid performance management processes are great tools for mediocre managers who don't have the competence (and don't have the guts) to properly manage and reward performance. These tools are really aimed at managing the bottom 25% of the workforce. The corporate perspective is that there needs to be "evidence" of someone not achieving their goals and delivering poor results. Telling someone they're not doing well is not easy and so a process is there so the manager can point to the paper and say, "look we agreed to this and you aren't getting it done." I can't say this is right, but I understand why it's there.
Maybe another way to look at it is: should performance management be the same for all employees? I agree the best employees need to have a framework to take risks and be awesome and I agree with you that I haven't seen that effectively being done.
I will follow your lead and add to my goals to Knock Some Socks Off.
@j: Thanks! I actually laughed out loud when I read that 'bottom 25% of the workforce'. So true, and so obvious now.
Looking back, it's amazing how often my proudest achievements, and those people noticed most, were not things that were expected of me. By definition, those things are expected — you can't win, even when you deliver them against the odds.
I admit though, it would kind of crush creativity to take it too far... At the end of the year, your manager recognizes that you met all your goals, but then looks under the table. "Good work Perkins, but my socks appear to persist in firmly enveloping my tootsies. You're fired!"
I wrote a very clever comment on Friday but it looks like the internet goblins ate it, and because I hate to keep my cleverness to myself I will summarize here (I don't have the heart to write it again as though for the first time).
First, thank you for the post - I felt a charge of inspiration after reading it! And I love the fact that there is a made-up word for words with made-up meanings. And there is a wikipedia page for that word. I started thinking that was very meta, but it isn't really. Then I thought it would be amazing if the wikipedia page for "Meta" just said: "see also: Meta". That would be different than the page for "Recursion" of course, which would loop back to the top once you get to the bottom of the article.
After a bit of reflection on the rest of post though, I'd like to offer a different perspective: as much as it can be a demoralizing (even soul crushing) experience to be one of the "nameless, interchangeable workforce", I would like to suggest that it can be equally demoralizing to work under the constant expectant of excellence. My boss has a comic she likes to quote without the slightest bit of irony: "I don't expect the impossible, I demand it."
One thing that people working for a large corporation, with their carved-in-stone job descriptions and their "work-life balance", learn very quickly is that is it easy to do a good job. Meet your deadlines, be polite to your boss, keep your head down, and you'll be fine, if that's all you are looking for. In fact, as you wrote so well above, it is rather difficult to do an exceptional job working in a place like this.
In a small office environment however, the dynamic changes. When you ARE the department, without the luxury of teams and managers and assistants, all of the low order work falls to you, all of the decision making, and all of the forward-thinking, and you are also expected to provide the greatness as well.
It is of course possible to do a perfectly adequate job in a small office, but the lack of innovation will definitely get noticed. And in an office whether there is an elevated level of expectation, being perfectly adequate will have you fall behind quickly.
In light of this weekend's super bowl, consider the professional athlete. Of all the people in the planet who've ever played football, those 100 or so are the best, the top 0.001%. If you took a random sample of people and threw one of those players in the mix, they would easily be the best football player in that group. They could even perform at a fraction of their full potential, and would still dominate the group. So, they are good at what they do and could easily coast and be successful.
When you concentrate those elite players into groups of only other elite players, now the standard of excellence in the group has risen. Players cannot coast or they will be immediately outclasses (and probably benched). Even a performance that is 90-95% of their potential would be deficient ("they're having an off game"). Each and every day the professional athlete is under immense pressure to perform to the best of their abilities (if not continual push the boundaries of their talent), and anything less that an excellent performance will be scrutinized by teammates, coaches, the press and the fans.
Now that I've compared myself to a professional athlete (I mean I did play a football game in McMahon Stadium, and a hockey game in the Saddledome, so, obviously), let me pose a question: is it a bad thing to work under this expectation?
I've gone on for quite a while now so instead of providing more useful thoughts I'll drop some more rhetorical questions and leave it at that. Although it may feel good to have your occassional great work praised, do you produce better work in general if you are expected to always deliver greatness? If you do achieve greatness under the expectation of greatness, is that achievement diminished by merely meeting the standards set for you? Would it even be greatness? As a boss, is it wrong of you to demand the impossible, or is it necessary?
At this point, I must admit that my experience in large corporations is mostly second hand, but having worked in small teams for the past 10 years I can certainly speak of those environments with some authority. I think it takes a certain type of person to thrive in a small environment, someone with the resourcefulness to get things done, thick enough skin to deal with the pressure, and the courage and foresight to innovate within their position and make the job their own. You have to adapt from being interchangeable to being indespensible.
Now, as we are all about science here, as far as the actual knocking off of socks goes, please refer to the Mythbusters episode I caught recently where they tried just that: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-knock-your-socks-off/
Spoiler alert: you can do it, but it takes C4. And other body parts come off too.
@Reid: Well, as usual with your awesome comments, Reid, I hardly know where to start. I was going to say that I'm sorry the internet goblins ate your original comment, but if this is a synopsis... :)
Another 'as usual'... I forget that there's always an equal and opposite position. You're right, I think the expectation of excellence can be crushing. I've experienced it myself. I think then the boss has to make something quite different clear: 'stop waiting for permission to do something you love'. This might sound a bit idealistic, and with most bosses it surely is, but I think it's the next step in the 12-step programme to All-Encompassing Awesomeness.
One of my top boss experiences was in a large team guided by a man who did not work for the company the rest of the team worked for. Instead he worked for a partner company, and was seconded into our project. He was, is, an amazing leader, but I think the fact that he was free from the corporation's greasy pole was one of the things that freed him to free us.
Thanks again, Reid, always makes my day to hear from you.
This was an inspired rant, Matt - a honestly off-the-wall, out-of-the-park homily to awesomeness. Thanks for the recharge.
As a recovering survivor of the soul-crushing annual goal-setting and performance appraisal circuit, I can only wonder at the response a one-liner goal statement might have produced. During my life in the cube farms, I quickly came to the conclusion that the surest route to maintaining my sanity was to produce one list for the official record, and another list for my personal record. I wish I could claim that my personal list was even half as brilliant as "knock someone's socks off", but the thrust was the same.
I do not mean to belittle my former managers. They were all, for the most part, fine people doing the best they could to manage the expectations of those they reported to (and as Dylan says, we all gotta serve somebody...). Business plans require execution, and the lowest common denominator of management practice simply decimates that plan into bite-sized activities that move the ball downfield. As an employee, you are expected to do your share of the heavy lifting and you are compensated according to your negotiated agreement. In this point, I must disagree with you - you are, in fact, paid to do your job. Don't do your job and the consequences are typically immediate and severe.
However, nothing says that you can't move the ball downfield - or move the goal line for that matter - in a totally awesome fashion. In this respect, your manifesto is spot on. I would add this one fine distinction, however. The constant striving to achieve that one perfect moment, that dazzling insight or brilliant execution that leaves others breathless is most frequently a deeply personal goal. To the extent that it benefits one's employer and possibly improves prospects for advancement is a satisfying fringe benefit. The deepest satisfaction, however, is the rush and afterglow of dazzling yourself.
I'm a corporate survivor as well. It took me by surprise during appraisal and promotion to find out that (even though I had achieved all my SMART targets and ended up above average always and played the system) I couldn't get promoted until I had demonstrated 'presence'. With hindsight I realised that there were two appraisal systems working in parallel; the SMART box-ticking, let's keep HR happy system which was used for managing the herd and under-performers, and then the unwritten/hidden expectation of 'knocking socks off' (or demonstrating leadership) for managing promotion. So I'm in agreement also; cover your bases/deliver on promises but for your own sanity and pride, do something special. How many of us remember what our SMART targets were from 5 years ago, as opposed to that great well we drilled, algorithm we dreamt up, student we mentored?
I just love these comments. I'm so happy I wrote this post, after worrying it was too fluffy.
@Burns: Yeah, OK, maybe I went a bit far with the 'not paid to do your job' thing :) I was on a roll I think. In my rare contact with supervisory roles myself, I admit to strong feelings that people are indeed paid to do their jobs! I suppose I think of it as a given. OF course it's not, and not because people are out to not get their stuff done,... the project may have been badly planned, there may be unavoidable changes of circumstances, and so on. Dealing with those without losing momentum and entusiasm is part of being agile, but it's not easy.
@Peter: Right, I like that way of putting it: other people's (the employer's) goals are not usually fulfilling in themselves; our own are. I have met people who assume the corporation's goals as their own. Not in a superficial way, like we all have to in order to show up at work and do a decent job, but in a more profound way. Deeply rooted ambition can do this. A strong sense of deference or service can do this. It's awesome to see in a person, but I've never felt it myself — perhaps I'm too self-centered! Not until owning my own minuscule corporation were my personal goals the same as my employer's.
This was an amazing post. In hindsight SMART goals really are about feeding the corporate beast not promoting personal and professional growth.
Great post! Inspiring!
And I know you well enough, personally, to state that your socks are so colorful and unique, it would be a bit of a shame to knock them off on too frequent a basis. I also believe that you are a sock-knocker-offer of the highest order.
Now imagine how I feel, when working with a talented group of sock-knocker-offers, and I forget to order their PC and workstation in time, or forget to authorize their access to a project in time, to enable the magic to happen. The point that hit me was that someone needs to do a lot of 'mundane' things to enable the brilliance to shine through.....but when all the 'mundane things are also done well, then a team (in addition to an individual) can consistently knock off some socks.
This post will give me jiuce for quite some time in 2012...... thanks!
@Matt: Evan and I had a bit of a follow-up conversation over e-mail, and I had a few more ideas that I didn't stick into my last comment (it started as a rehash, but the original post was a little sharper I think, not quiet so sprawling). I'll copy my half of the conversation here on the off chance that someone else wants to read it:
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I'm glad you enjoyed my comment, although in reading it again I kinda feel like I didn't quite tie it back in to the original post like I wanted to. I ended up getting a little rambly at the end instead of landing the point. Oh well; it's a discussion, not an essay, so it's okay.
I guess the question I wanted to leave with was "how do you knock someone's socks off if they expect you to knock their socks off every day?" Matt suggested that Managers tend to hope that they'll be wowed each day, but it is rarely demanded or expected of their employees to do so. What kind of corporate culture or attitude does this create where the demand for excellence is unspoken, or wishful thinking? From what I've seen of big corporations, even good, functional ones like where [my wife] works, there tends to be an attitude of "just do your job."
[My wife] often tells me how there are things in her company that are frustrating, and how she can see an obvious way to improve the way the company does things (whether it's in her department or another department), but she is not able to personally execute a change in corporate behavior. She can have a meeting with her boss, who may or may not carry the suggestion to the manager committee round-tables, and they may or may not take any action. At best, she can optimize the way she works within the parameters set out by corporate policy. And wait until she's running the place in a couple years ;).
In my office, on the other hand, my bosses look to us regularly to come up with new and innovative ideas and to literally change the way the company functions. It may seem like a mild case of being lost at sea without a firm direction, but I feel it allows us the flexibility to be able to respond to technology, to changes in the industry, and to maximize the talents of the staff.
For example, my boss needs to see things to really understand them, which is why we tend to have so many last minute changes in our projects. "I had no idea that ceiling was that low, that high, that colour, had that many lights..." and so on. So, me with the 3D modelling experience, I've started to model 3D representations of critical spaces and details, and now in our weekly meetings we can review a scale representation of these important items to discuss and make changes if needed before anyone picks up a shovel or a hammer. It's the sort of thing that saves us time and money and headaches down the road, and results in a better product on the first try.
It also creates an expectation that we should have these representations for everything: the entire building should be modelled and we should be able to explore it interactively. That is work on a completely different magnitude, but it is a door I opened, and it is the logical progression of the work I've been doing. My boss would alway joke/complain that we need to build a 1:1 scale model of each building, and we only know how to properly build a building when we finish it. I've now showed him how we can build a 1:1 scale model before we start construction (hurray for me), and now he wants me to do it (hurray? for overtime).
And back to my original point: if we are discussing a detail or design item and we don't have a representation of some kind, I've suddenly failed to meet expectations and the discussion is not productive, even though a year ago (and for the 25 years prior), the company functioned successfully without my modelling.
Ultimately I guess it's a double-edged sword: I have the opportunity to really make a difference in the way my company operates, and to really knock my boss' socks off, but in doing so I create the expectation to continue to do so. If I were to simply work at what was the status quo level, that is no longer good enough. The bosses get so used to having their socks knocked off that they start to wear old fashioned sock garters, and then they are let down when their socks stay firmly in place.
As a side note, that seems to be the exact place that big corporate managers get to in Matt's post. Interesting that either through excellence or through faceless interchangeability, workers still end up in a situation where the bosses head home most days less than impressed. There is probably something about human nature in that.
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Evan replied with a phrase that I really liked: "the anesthetic of familiarity" . It's true, we become numb to the familar, even if that is excellence.