The Golden Triangle of Work

Image courtesy Miguel Ugalde from FreeImages.com

As mentioned in the previous post, all work you undertake falls somewhere within the following triangle:

Impact: how valuable your contribution is to the business

Effort: how difficult it was to implement

Visibility: how aware the rest of the organization is of your contribution

Today I want to talk about this triangle a little more, and explain how staying at any of the extreme points of this triangle can be superbly detrimental to your wellbeing and your career.

So, let’s take these one at a time.

Visibility

Examples (high visibility, variable effort/impact):

1. Your manager asks the team if someone would like to work on a demo to the VP. The volunteer would probably have to work their ass off for a few days to get the demo to be awesome, but they’d get visibility up five levels of management. You immediately volunteer, jumping at the chance to have your name be visible at that level.
2. A new Director of Development joined your organization. You send an org-wide email, welcoming them to the team.
3. A coworker of yours does something awesome. You send an email out to the org, praising them for their accomplishment.
4. You find a new 3rd party tool for static code analysis. You send a team-wide email (including your skip and his manager), recommending the tool for adoption.

Ah, the political Pandora’s box, and the aspect of work aspiring careerists are most concerned about.

Is there something inherently wrong with visibility? Of course not. Everyone wants to be recognized and appreciated. That’s normal. It’s when the search for visibility takes priority over other considerations that you venture onto the Cynical career path.

Should you never pick up a demo, send welcome emails, give kudos, or recommend new approaches? Of course you should. In fact, all of these are super-desirable, especially praising others. Just be truthful with yourself about your…