Year One
Earlier this summer, I hit my one-year milestone at my current job. I spent a lot of that year frustrated that I wasn’t given the slack to run as far and as fast as I wanted. I kept thinking: they hired me because I’m smart and good at my job, so why won’t they let me do it?!
Some of that resistance came down to the fact that I was moving from a very startup-y environment to a more mature one, with more processes and approvals required to get things done.
But I also realized that I was trying to run before I could walk. I hadn’t yet proven to my manager that I knew how to make good decisions; I was just making them.
A year in, I’ve learned to slow down to build trust. Bring your manager into your decision-making process; demonstrate to them how you think about problems. Take her on the journey from scenario to solution.
In other words, don’t just share the outputs; share your inputs as well as the decision making process required to get from input to output.
Meh: Sharing just outputs
Better: Sharing inputs as well as outputs
Best: Sharing inputs plus the decision-making process that brought you to your recommend outputs
In the beginning, you’ll be doing this without a full understanding of the context of how your new employer operates. This means that even if your inputs are good, your decision-making process might be a little off before you get calibrated to the quirks of your new employer.
That’s okay!
In the beginning, the goal isn’t to get to the right outputs 100% of the time. It’s to show your manager (or whomever your stakeholders are) how you make decisions. Then they can help you calibrate your decision-making process, layering the particularities of your new place of work with your existing knowledge of How to Do a Good Job at your Job.
Eventually, they will trust that your decision-making process is refined enough to get to the right outputs. But you can’t build that trust by starting with outputs only.