How To Do Great Work In A Fast-Changing World

 

Today brings the new book, Effective: How To Do Great Work In A Fast-Changing World, by Melissa Swift.

“Effectiveness is where employer and employee interests come together—you want to be great at accomplishing the goals of your job, and your employer wants that too,” explains Swift. “It’s also a place where we can bring together different organizational and developmental thinking to help move people to action.” 

In the book, Swift, founder of Anthrome Insight, draws on current research and provocative interviews with business and academic leaders to help readers understand how to be amazing in a working world seemingly designed to make us feel incompetent. 

Each chapter in Effective delivers actionable approaches, enabling readers to improve their daily work life immediately with a paradigm-shifting framework for thriving rather than merely coping in modern professional environments. 

The book serves professionals at every level of seniority, from entry-level employees to CEOs. Whether you lead teams, contribute individually, or are building your career, this book delivers practical tools to achieve meaningful accomplishments. 

More specifically, Effective helps readers understand their own sources of effectiveness through the simple Effectiveness Architecture that includes: 

• Knowledge: You have to know things (where you start). 
• Methods: You have to have a systematic approach (what brings it all together). 
• People Ability: You have to be able to collaborate with people (what helps you go far). 
• Technology Ability: You have to be able to work with technology (what helps you go quickly). 

“Knowing where you are strong in this architecture—understanding your main source of effectiveness-gives you both day-to-day power and importantly, better adaptability as the outside world changes fast. Plus, knowing what you are good at makes you a better contributor to your organizations and better stewards of your career.” shares Swift. “In addition, understanding where you find challenges gives you good clarity as to how others may perceive you.” 

Be sure to take the Effectiveness Architecture Self-Assessment found in the Appendix of the book. 

Also, the book features: 

• Strategies to triumph amid four trends making work tough today: work intensification, emotional inflection, hyper-transparency, and sheer chaos.
• Insights on how to make sure your personal sources of effectiveness don’t get disrupted by technological change.
• Lessons to be learned from jobs where you simply cannot make mistakes, such as firefighters, ER physicians, and air traffic controllers, and how to apply them to a corporate environment.
• Actions to take when you discover you can no longer be effective in your job—during situations, such as: 

The job is poorly designed in and of itself.
The job is at odds with the organization’s overall intent or culture.
Your manager prevents you from being effective.
The organization tolerates underperformance.
The job or way the organization operations is in fundamental conflict with your values.
For whatever reason, you can’t seem to get traction.

Finally, Swift shares these additional insights with us:

Question: What are a few good ways to understand your job by looking through others' eyes?

Swift: There are two steps. First, figure out the people whose viewpoints you want to imagine. Your boss, for sure, your customers, of course - but also think about your peers, your boss's boss, and anyone that reports to you. Second, ask a very fundamental question: what does this person want and/or expect from my work? Not what they want and expect from you - what they want and expect from your work. This gives you a nicely neutral way of thinking about how they envision your job...focused on the end result. 

Question: How do you know when your job is just not set up for effectiveness – and what best next steps should you take?

Swift: Many jobs are just broken - the results expected don't match the resources provided to the person to do the job (money, time, staff, or power within the organization). But there are other, subtler ways to not be set up for effectiveness. 

You may be in a job the organization doesn't want - challenged to do things they are fundamentally not ready for (and won't be ready for anytime soon). You may have a manager who is intent on doing your job for you.  You may be embedded in an organization that tolerates underperformance, or in one that's in fundamental conflict with your values. You may simply be mysteriously failing to get traction. 

Depending on which of these is the case, there are different first steps. If your job is the issue, having a conversation with your manager and others about whether your job can be better set up for success is a rational first step, and conducted properly, often one that is appreciated by others. If your manager is the issue, definitely have the discussion - but be prepared to start looking at other options (internal first, then external) if that conversation fails...overbearing managers often struggle to rein themselves in. If the organization is the issue, or the causes are more mysterious, an exit strategy wrapped in a really solid financial plan is what's called for. You will likely not change the entire organization.

___

 

Swift is a leading voice on how organizations, teams, and individuals can succeed in an ever more challenging world of work. As founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight, she is a consultant and keynote speaker helping organizations make their people successful in chaotic times. She has held leadership roles at Capgemini, Mercer, Korn Ferry, and Deloitte, and is also the author of Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace. 

Swift is a member of the MIT Sloan Management Review’s Editorial Board, and one of their most widely read columnists. She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.