Do the Job That’s Needed

The first practice of impact players is that they do the job that’s needed. When problems are messy and it’s unclear what needs to be done, and whose role it is, and whose job it is, and where this problem belongs, while other people are doing their job, the impact players aren’t just doing their job, they’re doing the job that’s needed. 

Change your mindset

The difference between doing your job and doing the job that’s needed really is the mindset behind each one of these. The mindset of doing your job is a mindset of competence, it’s a mindset of contribution, and it’s a mindset of diligence, like, “This is my job, it’s what I was hired to do.” You know, in times of change and uncertainty and ambiguity, when problems are chaotic, doing our jobs isn’t what creates impact, it’s figuring out what’s going on around us, what the real job to be done is. Finding out what’s important inside of an organization and then making it important to us. Now, the mindset for the impact player is not one of diligence as much as it is one of service. What’s happening around me? What’s important? And how do I be of service to the most important priorities of the organization? It’s a subtle difference, but it’s powerful. 

There’s a lot of people who are working really hard and diligently, but their work isn’t having impact. So if you are doing your job, working within your job description in your place on the org chart, even if you’re doing it diligently, you’re probably working really hard on yesterday’s problems, because those org charts and workflows and job descriptions have been designed to solve the problems and opportunities of yesteryear. Meanwhile, the impact players are working on what’s hot, what’s relevant, what might fall through the cracks if someone wasn’t willing to step out of the artificial boundaries of their job. 

Get unstuck from ordinary work

People want to be difference makers. But to understand what keeps us stuck in ordinary contributor mode, we have to understand the pressures we feel. For example, a lot of people feel pressure to stay in my lane, or maybe they feel pressure not to step on people’s toes. “I know this meeting needs a leader, but I don’t know, I don’t want to step up, I don’t want to seem too presumptive, I don’t want to seem like I’m making a land grab.” Or maybe people feel pressure to finish everything they start. Like, “Okay, we started this project, I know things have changed, but I want to be a completer.” Or maybe they feel pressure to get it right every time. Like, “I don’t feel like I can make mistakes.” And what we find is that we all feel those kinds of pressures to a degree, they keep us absolutely stuck doing ordinary work and lacking impact. 

And what we need is we need permission to work in more impactful ways. Now, that permission might come from our leaders, our boss, it might come from the culture. In many ways, that permission can come from ourselves. And if we feel pressure to act like it isn’t hard, you know, this weight that we’re carrying in this workload of unrelenting demands, maybe as teams we need to give ourselves permission to keep it real to go ahead and acknowledge the struggle. Maybe we need permission to be lighthearted as we approach really serious challenges at work. Either we can give ourselves permission, teams can do it as a whole. Leaders can give this to the team. Cultures can be shaped so that people feel permission to work in more courageous ways to escape the path of ordinary, less impactful contribution. 

Work passionately

So the impact players, they’re not just doing their job, they’re doing the job that’s needed. They’re finding out what’s important in the organization and they’re making it important to them. But herein lies the problem. What if what’s important to the organization isn’t important to you? What if it’s not something you care about? Here’s what we found. The impact players are focusing on what’s important, which means they often put what’s important to them aside for a moment. They work where there’s heat, where there’s energy, which means that the work that they do is more visible. It’s typically more successful because when you work where there’s heat, budgets flow, meetings get scheduled, feedback flows, kudos flows to you, that work actually becomes easier. And as they find success working on things they aren’t necessarily passionate about, what they do is they build influence, which earns them the right to have a lot more say about their work. 

So it’s not like you have to forsake the things you’re passionate about and just work on things you don’t care about, but by treating passion as a verb, not a noun, by working passionately on what’s important you build the credibility to shape your world and to shape the work and to be able to work on things that are deeply important to you, things that you have a lot of natural passion for.