Validation - how to know you’re doing well when no one understands what you do
I’ve been thinking recently about external validation for a job well done, as it has come up several times with people I mentor. All of my 3 mentees, as well as a couple of informal ones, are in the Operations side of the business. Each of their responsibilities look different, and are at different levels of their organisation (across both very small and very large orgs), and yet, the same theme has been raised.
‘Why does no one ever say I’m doing a good job, or even when I'm not? No one really knows what I even do’’
It got me thinking about the roles that prevent things from going wrong, rather than creating new things. Enabling, risk reducing / preventative roles like InfoSec, SysAdmins, Compliance and Risk managers, and yes, Operations people like Operations Managers, Chief of Staff roles, and delivery people. What these roles have in common are, if they do their job right, nothing bites you in the butt. Smooth sailing, no dramas. No one notices when things DON’T go wrong, only when they do. But it is important to people to feel valued, and have a purpose, and external validation often is a way of demonstrating that it's true.
One of the most common statements (compliments?) I get in my role as COO has been ‘I don’t know what she does, but I know it would be bad if she stopped’, which I kinda like, as well as I kinda feel a bit hrumph about. My ego has me thinking ‘can’t you see the effort that goes in? The complexity of the things I do? The areas where you would be dead in the water without my constant attention?’ But my logical brain thinks, no, they can’t see those things. That’s the point. And why would they? All they need to know is that someone’s got this. And that is you.
When you are in a role like Product Management or Sales, as an example, you can constantly show progress. New product launches, usage metrics, customer feedback on whether something is working or not, revenue growth. It's so easy to praise such overt progress. But what about when your key metric is to keep a data point at 0? Or to have no risks turning to issues in that month? What about ticking a whole bunch of compliance boxes with their procedures and processes in place, so that everyone else can do their best work? We are conditioned to praise positive outcomes, and although I see the later examples as positive outcomes, not everyone is even aware that these things are happening, let alone how hugely beneficial and critical they are to the success of an organisation.
So if we are in one of these roles, what should we do to feel like we are succeeding, other than putting up a sign that says ‘21 days since last incident’? Part of my advice to my mentees can be summarised as follows:
‘Gain validation from the evidence around you, not the just the people’.
For people in this type of ‘under the line’ role, you need to have strong internal validation points. I personally have metrics I use for myself to self-validate that I am doing a good job or not. Sometimes these are external metrics too, and definitely should be, but I don’t need the external part to know the value I add. I can clearly see it in the data. Yes I did see that risk early and mitigated it before it hit us, saving us embarrassment and costing us money. Yes I did unblock that decision which meant we got the jump on the competition. Yes I did find that potential security hole and patched that before it went to prod, saving us much pain. Operations types can access frameworks for thinking that help with this fact based validation. It’s our super power. You might like to share these with your manager so they can see it too. In fact, share it with the whole company! Let's no longer hide these things under an operations bushel, so to speak.
Accepting the fact that it is not typical to have people understand and see the work you do everyday can help you feel less frustrated that they don’t. But that puts a lot of onus on you as a person doesn’t it? How unfair!
Leaders and managers need to do some work here too.
Leaders, given the above, have you considered the people in your remit, and whose roles sit where? Do you have appropriate success metrics for all types of work, so you can acknowledge the efforts of these crucial people in your organisation? Have you praised a person for a positive outcome of preventing something happening lately? Do your company OKRs address above and below the line areas? Do you raise and celebrate the fact that things DIDN’T go wrong in the same way you do when new things are launched? If you do then you are a rarity and I celebrate your awareness of the situation. It is something we need to be much more proactive about.
I do feel sad in some ways, that people in very senior positions can still feel undervalued because of the type of work within their remit. It shows me we have yet to solve this problem, and I hope we can do better for these key people as I don’t want to find out what will happen if we all suddenly stopped doing what we do.
If you can, find one person in your organisation who is in a role like this and tell them you see their efforts, you know that they are hugely valuable, and praise them for keeping you safe. If you are a leader of people, have a think about what you raise up as examples of success. See what happens when you change focus, and become proactive about acknowledging preventative actions - you might be surprised how much happier and purposeful people become.
