Ever notice how some people always seem to get ahead while others seem to plod along, doing good, but not  exceptional work?  What is the difference?  How can you make a name for yourself, even if you are ‘average?’

Here is one absolute law of the workplace: After the work (project, task) is finished, someone ALWAYS has a better idea.  Many people find this frustrating.  “Why does he always have these ideas AFTER I am finished?  Why doesn’t he tell me before I have spent all this time and money getting it to this point!!!”

You can complain about this law, but wishing so will not make it go away.  Recognize this law early in your career and you can make any job you have better and more productive.  There are no small jobs, so if you embrace this law and understand how you can make it work for you, the opportunities will open up for you.

Here is how.  In any project or task you do, get out ahead of the project.  Make the job bigger, do not settle for doing it as expected.  Make sure you accomplish the basics, but add your own inputs to it.  Pixar has even instutionalized this idea.  They have a department called “Plussing.”  This department only  looks at projects that are all done and completed.  Their job is to search and find  ‘Plus ideas.”  These added small details often create a winning movie vs an average one.

Real world example:  Here at Jobdig, we give our customers and prospects a cute little plush dog, that looks just like our logo.  Our customers love the dog, request replacements, and offer up all kinds of suggestions on ways we can use him in our business.  Most businesses might have a nice logo, ours happens to be a cartoon dog.  So, our plus concept was to make him into a plush toy and give him away.  The next plus idea was to send him out via the mail, but not in a standard box.  That would have been too easy.  We thought it’s a dog, so why not send him out in a doghouse shipping carton?  This plus idea demonstrated that we are engaged, that we ‘get’ the humor behind our dog.

Are you with me so far?  After the doghouse had been designed and created, we took another look…even though we were proud of our work,  we were still intent on adding one more thing to make this idea (let’s send our customers a plush dog) an even better one.  We needed one more Plus.  What did we do?  We punched air breathing holes in the dog house roof.  Perfect! What had been a simple job of sending the dog out in a “normal” box was improved and plussed several times.

Did every customer  ‘get it?’  Did every recipient see the air holes in the direct mail package?  No.  But one of our content providers (we have regular JOBDIG contributing writers), told me when  he received the dog in the doghouse, he noticed the air holes RIGHT AWAY and thought to himself, ‘these guys get it.”

If you want to ‘get it’ at your job, find your own air holes.  Do the expected, but stretch yourself and do more. 

 

 

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