In the last year or two, I have been to many coffee chats and given a number of interviews. As a part of these short conversations and interviews, I’ve had to communicate succinctly about my career journey, what I’ve been able to accomplish, and where I see myself going in the future. I’ve done this so often that the story I narrate, the accomplishments I share, and the aspirations I portray have become second nature. Particularly, the accomplishments that I shared, the highlights that demonstrate the best of the impact I’ve had in my career, over and over again, got me to think about how it became possible for me to get those done. In my opinion, thus far, there are three critical factors at play here:
- Drive/Initiative
- Values
- Something I call the origin story
I want to reflect on the initiative/drive in this article. When I reflect on how I accrued these career highlights, two things, namely drive and initiative, stand out. And this is how I am defining them for the context of this article:
- Drive – The act/ability to go at least one step beyond a task or responsibility that was assigned to you.
- Initiative – Taking on new tasks or responsibilities that were not readily assigned to you.
In many ways, drive and initiative are interwoven with one another, but the key differentiator is whether the point of origin was an assigned responsibility or not. When I demonstrate what I call drive, imitative, or both to a project, it has ended up on the significant accomplishments list or on my resume. After all, job responsibilities are something everyone in a said role performs. As much as I would like it to be the case that I demonstrate initiative and drive all the time, it simply has not been possible, nor, in my opinion, is it necessary. Some tasks just need to be done. It has also been my experience where I need to do a task a number of times to understand why we are doing things the way we do them and to evaluate if the said task needs any new innovation, if at all. Bringing drive and initiative to all tasks one performs daily is a tall order that could exhaust an individual’s reserves and dilute the potential impact.
But drive, initiative or both, when directed at a limited number of tasks and projects could have outsized impacts. The best thing for me thus far has been asking one small question and taking on one small new responsibility. Eventually, whether it be one day or one month after taking on this small new responsibility, you will create something that will be worthy of the aforementioned significant accomplishments bucket. Even when directed at selective tasks or projects, the results you get from the significant accomplishments may only sometimes be proportional to the drive and initiative you demonstrate.
I’ve had a few where the accomplishment turned out to have a far greater impact for the amount of drive and initiative I demonstrate and a few where the inverse was true. I could never tell with one hundred percent certainty that X amount of drive and innovation will produce Y amount of impact on a significant accomplishment. Over time, I have had the ability to bring a better gauge, but that gauge only works in what I consider to be my domain of expertise. As I continue to expand my domain of expertise, the act of ganging becomes one of trial and error and one that is driven either by demonstrating drive and imitative to the things that I am good at or the things that I am excited about or better yet- things that I. discover. to be ones that I am good at and become to be excited about and I am excited about and become good at.
But all of this only matters when drive and initiative are demonstrated by taking a small step beyond a task or a responsibility that was assigned to you.