Would You Sign Your Name To It?
I’m not going to lie: those visible screws ruin this for me, but you can only find so many pictures of brick moulding…
As I stepped back from the door, I was frustrated with the angle the brick moulding was connecting at. It wasn’t 90 degrees – it was closer to 87. If I straightened the trim piece out to 90, there was an easy-to-see gap between the top and the side components. I contemplated just slapping some silicone in there and calling it a day because cutting a perfect 45 to join the trim pieces together was hard, especially since I didn’t (still don’t) own a table saw. I was trying to cut this with a circular saw and an angle guide on not the best sawhorses – not the ideal situation - and I sort of thought that the piece that was up there was good enough. After all, I’ve seen worse angles on work that people had contracted out. Still, I knew that everyone who stepped into the house would know that this was my house, that I put that molding up, and that I didn’t care enough to make it perfect.
You’ve been in this situation. Sure, maybe you weren’t replacing the molding on your exterior door - but you probably have been in some situation where you needed to decide if something was “good enough” to submit, roll into production, launch, or send for review. We’ve all submitted - or certainly been tempted to submit or call complete – something that we think is less than our very “best” effort. Maybe the angles are a bit off or maybe the documentation isn’t quite clear enough for someone who’s never seen the code before. Maybe you did what was asked of you, but you know that you could do better than the effort you put forth. It’s a very natural thing to experience for anyone working in IT or any field at all. I’ve seen documents that came out of legal review that weren’t as crisp as I was expecting or included glaring errors – either a paralegal or the attorney didn’t proofread the document as closely as they should have.
Why does this happen? Well, it’s a few reasons, and I won’t discount the obvious seductive pull of laziness. I’m guilty of just not wanting to jog another mile, run through another draft, or review the design specification yet again. But I think more often than not, this is a symptom of what I’ll call “aircraft carrier construction worker syndrome.” I’m still working on the name, but work with me here.
“So many people are working on this that they’ll never know who did what.” -Everyone who works on constructing this, probably.
We often fall into the same trap that construction workers fall into when building a Naval aircraft carrier. There are so many people involved in the project and your contributions are such a small part, that it’s tempting to do “just the minimum to get by” because that’s what everyone else is doing, too. There are tens of thousands of people working on the exact same system or subsystem that you’re working on. If you’re a plumber on an aircraft carrier, there’s no chance you’ve even heard of every other plumber on the job – let alone have met them. And work you start is just as likely to be finished by someone you never knew existed than it is to be finished by your best work friend.
As a result, who is going to know that you’re the one who didn’t fill the project comments in where you were supposed to or didn’t triple check the implementation against the reference design? Honestly? Probably no one. In a large, complex IT shop it’s unlikely that anyone will ever know that you dropped the ball. There are just too many cogs in too many machines to know precisely who did what to whom and when. And so because of that anonymity, we’re just not as interested in doing our best work.
But what if every piece of work you did had your signature on it? What if each of your contributions, documents, or code was a part of your professional portfolio or resume? Wouldn’t you want it to be reflective of the kind of work you can do? Wouldn’t you want your work to be excellent so that when people see it and see your name on it, it improves your brand reputation? I’ve said before that each interaction we have as a professional has the opportunity to impact our reputation. Those interactions are going to improve, deteriorate, or leave unchanged what people think about you -and your work product is no different.
Each time I interact with something you’ve built, if I know it’s something you did then I’m going to adjust my perception of you as a professional accordingly. You’re inevitably going to do the same thing to me. My wife does this routinely with the people who make coffee at the local donut coffee shop. She knows a majority of the people who work there, and can tell you after multiple orders who is good at prepping her coffee and who isn’t. You have made the same assessments, haven’t you? Don’t you know who does great work both in your office and at companies you’re a customer of? Do you have a favorite server at your favorite restaurant? These are both examples of you differentiating between people who have an exemplary work product and those who do not.
Here’s my point: you should act as if every single piece of work you do is going to be signed by you whether it is or not. Why? Well, because I think you’ll do better work if you do. If everyone knows that it was you who built something, my assumption is that you’d want them to think highly of that work and not think it’s garbage. What a person thinks of your work will adjust their opinion of your capability or professionalism. I’m not advocating for this, but imagine if every coffee you got at the Starbucks drive-thru had a sticker on it that said who made it and a QR code to a link to where you can rate the coffee? Don’t you think the barista would be more alert to make sure they got it right if the customer knew who did it? And what about on our Naval aircraft carrier? If the foreman or construction lead knew who soldered every joint or welded every connection – wouldn’t they be more conscientious instead of hiding in the anonymity of the gargantuan team?
Honestly, eSigning stuff is so much better than using a pen, but the sticky note is a little on the nose.
For those of us that work in IT, some systems already do this by default with audit logs or a check-out feature of a code management tool. So whether you want to admit it or not, your whole team can look up who committed that change or who set up the app that performed so poorly. Now more than ever, you cannot hide your digital footprints from your managers and colleagues.
Artists who think a painting came out poorly won’t sign it. They may rework it, or call it a loss and start over. Why? Because their brand would be tarnished if they just put out junk. What I am suggesting is that you think like an artist. If your work isn’t something you want to be known by (or for), then maybe it’s time to rethink what you’re submitting as a finished work product.
As for the entrance to my house? Well after reading this, I hope you know the answer: I took the trim down, meticulously cut and sanded the angle, and got them to join up almost perfectly – no real caulk required. On top of that, I had planned ahead and used PVC, so it wouldn’t warp or degrade like the prior wooden moulding had done. I’m proud for any of my friends to see that work and know that I put it together. It looks great and definitely very professional. If it weren’t so weird to do so, I might have even considered signing it, because – hopefully like the work you’re doing every day – it will only improve my reputation for anyone who sees it.
Questions for Reflection:
Do you have a service that you’re a customer of where you know someone who works there doesn’t do as good a job as the others?
Have you ever felt like work you completed wasn’t up to your standards? Why did you turn it in?
If everyone could see your name attached to every piece of work you do or create, would you change how you work at all?
