As many of you saw a couple of weeks ago I answered a bunch of questions that John Sonmez posted on his blog. Unless I have interruptions from other ideas I figured I would use his quiz as inspiration for what to write about.
My answer to his first question: I have a clearly defined goal for my career.
I'm the proud owner of a professional mission statement. You too can own one. There's several different books out there that talk about how to do so - however the way they describe it in Team Geek really spoke to me. I'd highly encourage you to come up with one yourself. Otherwise, how do you know where to go next? Your mission statement does not have to be permanent. But I encourage you to come up with one that sticks around for a while. It should also be something that isn't ever really "done". Otherwise you might allow yourself to become complacent.
Here's my mission statement for my career:
Through servant leadership elevate to a higher standard of quality and productivity all professionals I come into contact with.
It's short, and that is the point. I can reread it (and refactor it) very quickly, so that it sticks to the top of my brain. However, just because it is short doesn't mean that it is low impact. Here's what I mean.
Through Servant Leadership elevate: This is the ongoing point in which I remind myself that the most important success factor in my career depends not at all on me winning. It is my job and passion to make sure everyone I work with wins. Anything I can do to help eliminate roadblocks and propel other people to the top of their game, I will do. The main importance behind this is that as I elevate others higher, my own career flourishes along the way.
Higher standard of quality and productivity This part, while stated generically, applies very specifically to my career in software engineering. There's a plethora of knowledge in our industry about coding best practices, clean coding, maintainable code, testability, and so on. However, just because there's brilliant expertise out there doesn't always mean people instinctively follow it by habit. By introducing the tenets of measurability, continuous improvement, and static code analysis (among others) I help junior developers and fellow senior developers take significant pride in their output. Software engineering has many similarities to artistic crafts, and I expect my teams to drive to match the likes of the most respected masters. Think Michelangelo and Picasso, but in the world of software. There's generally debate as to which "masters" to emulate. However, the point is to ensure that we all know our position in the debate, so that our code intelligently reflects our position on mastery.
All professionals I come into contact with: To put it bluntly, I don't think enough software engineers care enough about people who don't write code for a living (or for fun). Yes, my first priority lies in the quality and output of my fellow engineering team. However, if we're amazingly awesome engineers and the people writing the backlog have no idea how to create value, then we're going to be really efficient at writing software that nobody uses. If the client facing expertise in the company cannot rely upon the engineering team to help them set mission and vision, I strongly feel that the team/company as a whole is dysfunctional. Sure, I consider myself a geek and hang out around my geek buddies way more than anyone else. But I understand that helping anyone I can, geek or not, really drives home my mission.
As I've been writing this, I've been thinking about the fact that I think my mission statement is missing a key aspect - humility. I like to surround myself with people that are way smarter than I am, and also way better at their jobs than I ever could be. So - I need to find some way to incorporate the fact that it's my mission to help make everyone else feel stronger in their careers, but to do so in a way that I don't come across as an egomaniacal prick. If anyone has suggestions for how to start incorporating better humility into my day-to-day, I'm all ears. I'm thinking maybe I need to add something like "through encouragement and companionship" to the end, to make it more clear to myself that it's not necessarily always mentoring I'm doing. Most of the time, in fact, I'll end up being mentored. Stay tuned for my answer to the next question about getting along with my peers - because I think it's well related to my point here.
What do you think? Can we all make mission statements that are both powerful and humble at the same time? Leave me a note if you want in the comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts too.
