Success at Work

How do you measure success at work?

I am a contractor at a government agency. I remember when I first got the job. Lots of people said, "Oh, that's great! Do you think you'll have a chance to become a government employee? They can never get fired!"

And I think that's true. I think it's almost impossible to get fired as a government employee. For that reason, government jobs are very difficult to get. There are always hundreds if not thousands of applicants and how they select people has a lot to do with little tricks you use to make your resume look good to a computer. (The trick is to make it very long and repeat the key words from the job description as many times as possible.) Anyway, yep, it's almost impossible to be fired from a government job, which is why our government is so smooth and efficient in everything it does. Ahem.

Is that how you measure success? Never getting fired? Or perhaps obtaining a job that you can never be fired from? Is that what success looks like?


Perhaps you dream of being CEO of some huge company. What would you do with all that power and authority? Would you have a putting green in your office? A big mahogany desk? Would you smoke expensive cigars and drink only the finest single malt scotch? Would you sit back with your feet up on the desk all day and simply tell others what to do while you yourself drew a massive paycheck with tons of cheap stock options?

If these are how you measure success, if these are your goals, you're a fool.

And I don't mean fool in the sense of slightly gullible but I'm speaking hyperbolically in order to make a point. No - I mean fool in the biblical sense. I mean you're right up there with those who say there is no God. I mean you are not wise. I mean you are foolish, refusing to embrace common sense. I mean you are choosing the way of death rather than life. I mean pull your head out of your backside and embrace reality.

I don't want a job from which I can never be fired. Don't get me wrong - if my boss said to me tomorrow, "Please sign this piece of paper, after which you can never be fired from this job," you bet your sweet bippy I'd sign.

What I mean is, it is not my goal to obtain a job from which I CANNOT be fired simply because that's how that job works. It is not my dream to not be held accountable. I actually want to be held accountable. I want someone to push me to always do better. I want to live with that healthy fear and respect of those in authority over me. I want them to bear a sword as ministers of God's justice. That sword guards me from myself. I want my boss to be able to fire me for the same reason I want cops to carry guns.

I guarantee you if there were no consequences for murder I would have killed many people by now.

When you can't be fired for incompetence, people who lack other reasons for motivation will quickly stop caring about the quality of their work.

One thing I've noticed about government employees is that many of them, VERY many of them, simply do not own the mission of their organization. These people don't CARE if the work gets done - they only care if they will get BLAMED for it not being done. As long as "it's not my fault" they don't CARE. They're happy for the work to just go undone and care nothing for the consequences.

I'm just the opposite. I don't CARE about BLAME! I only care about the work getting done. I only care about the mission being accomplished. I don't much CARE about what I have to do to get it done. I only care about it getting done.

This is why I often have little tolerance for long meetings where a lot of energy is spent on figuring out exactly whose job is what and exactly who will be held accountable when certain goals aren't met. These meetings are often just a vehicle for people to justify shifting blame later when no one does what they said they would do. "But in the meeting you said you would...so it's not MY fault." "According to what the boss said, that's not my job."

Who cares about what your job is? Roles are always fluid! There's a mission to be accomplished! Quit talking about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it and just get it DONE!

It's really simple. If you want to be successful in the workplace, stop being afraid of being blamed. When things go wrong, take the blame. Who cares? I do it all the time and I get nothing but constant (often embarrassing) praise from just about everyone I work with. I work my butt off and accomplish as much as 4 or 5 government workers in a given day. Why? Because I CARE about the MISSION. I want to see things accomplished. I often skip out on meetings. Why? Because I have work to do. I take lunch at my desk. I don't whine about being entitled to a 15 minute break or a half hour or hour long lunch. I have better things to do than concern myself with such childish nonsense. 

I don't know, nor do I care what the minimum acceptable amount of work is before I get fired. I'm not even interested in that question.

I'm far more interested in how MUCH I can get DONE in a day. That's what I'm interested in. I want to know how far I can push myself, how good I can get at my job, how quickly I can solve new problems, how much sharper my mind can get, how much further I can push my skills. 

What do I care about not being FIRED? Getting fired isn't even on my radar! I want to know when I'm going to have my boss' job!

And it's not because I'm hoping that when I get THAT promotion I'll be the one....IN CHARGE. It's not because I think I deserve the finer things in life. It's not because I want people to serve me. It's not because I think that my boss does less work than me.

Let me tell you why.

Suppose I gave you a Ferrari. Here's the keys. It's yours. What would you want to know the very first time you drove it?

You'd want to know what it's capable of. How fast can it go? How fast can I take a corner? How fast does it accelerate? How are you going to find out? By pushing it to its limits. Or at least as far as you dare.

YOU are a brand new Ferrari. You are capable of amazing things, but you don't know what you can do yet. How are you going to find out? By getting out there and seeing what you're capable of. You've got to push yourself to the limits and go past them.

You don't know how much sleep you actually NEED until you don't get enough. You don't know where your limits are until you go past them.

This is why mistakes are ok on the job. You're going to make mistakes if you're pushing yourself and demanding of yourself more and more all the time. Mistakes are inevitable.

In fact, you HAVE to make mistakes in order to learn something NEW. Think about it. If you never make mistakes, you're either very lucky or you're simply doing something that you already know how to do and it's not a challenge for you. How boring. 

If your goal on the job is to never make mistakes, then your dream job is George Jetson's job. Remember at the beginning of the show, George Jetson would be sitting at work, just pressing one button over and over and over again. Boring. No challenge. You already have the skills. You aren't stretching yourself. You aren't learning anything new.

You have buried your talent in the sand.

You are a brand new Ferrari. Your job is to work to the glory of God. If you want to just push a button over and over and never get fired and never make mistakes, then you aren't glorifying God. If you harbor dreams of sitting around telling others what to do while you yourself enjoy all the finer things in life, and resent that this hasn't happened for you, then you aren't glorifying God.

God made that brand new Ferrari. Get that thing out on the track. He's watching. And when he sees you take off like a rocket - that's when he smiles.

Yes, you'll make mistakes on your new job. Yes, it's going to be hard work. No, everyone won't like you. No, you won't like them either. And yes, you'll probably have to work closely with them. What are you capable of? You don't even know yet. Finding out is how you take 10 talents and make 10 more.

Be interested in everything. Don't just focus on one thing. Don't say, "Nope, I'll never do that on my job, so who cares?" Take whatever training you can get. Learn about as many different things as you can.

Learn by analogy. What you learn in a totally unrelated subject may be relevant someday, because you may come across something that...let's just say works the same way - analogically speaking. Maybe there's nothing similar about two situations, but the principles behind it work the same way.

So embrace being a sponge for as much information as you can get on anything and everything. You never know what sparks creativity and general cleverness. Everyone will think you're a genius, even if you're not.

And that's how you can bring glory to God and keep from burying your talent in the sand.