Creativity > Effort + Skill

I went to the Big E with my family, which is the Massachusetts equivalent of a state fair. There were an overwhelming number of rides, beer pavilions and stands selling disappointingly non-erotic fried foods (Where’s the moose on a stick? Fried butter?), but it had more than enough random bits to keep everyone happy. I enjoyed the pig races most, but think the best memories were made while we were listening and dancing to a geriatric band’s mediocre music. The trip was a fitting coda to a weekend that included a backyard campout with my son and a fishing trip that netted four edible-sized sunnies and one bullhead (no net needed!). The cost: a weekend without doing anything work-related…

Yes, the milk jug at the Big E is leering at my wife.

And I feel guilty about that. They say nobody on their death bed wished they had worked more, but I’m guessing ‘they’ had already worked a lot. I suppose there are many ways to succeed in life that involves being born or married into the right family, or stumbling across dumb luck. For the rest of us, the only way to get ahead is to put in effort beyond the 9-5. You have to demonstrate that you can get a lot more done (usually by working more hours) or that you can do something others can’t (usually by learning new skills, which takes time). There is a third option, too: take a time out and think/plan to do something interesting. 

The thesis of this posting is that option 3 is really the only sustainable way to keep moving forward. There’s some function such that your value to any enterprise is

  Value = f1(WorkTime) + f2(Skills) + f3(Creativity)

Which could be simplified to 

   (1)    Value = f(WorkTime + Skills) + f3(Creativity)

Right? It simply says that the time you spend on your written responsibilities + the unique skills you bring to the table + your creative output is your value to the enterprise. Here’s where it gets messy, though: I’ve rarely seen a situation where value alone translated into a promotion. It’s actually your value relative to expectations. 

   (2)    Promotability = Value - Expectations

As an example, let’s equate ‘things done’ with value. In general, Bob, who gets 5 things done a day, is no more likely to get promoted than Jed, who gets 20 things done a day, if the expectation is that Bob needs to get 5 things done and Jed has to get 20 things done. What’s likely is (a) scenario 1: Bob and Jed have different tasks, and Bob’s 5 things are more valuable than Jed’s 20 things, or (b) scenario 2: Bob and Jed have the same tasks: Bob gets canned rather than Jed gets promoted.

Now, I posit that there’s some function such that expected value is 

   (3)    Expectations = g(WorkTime + Skills)

Which simply says that Boss Hogg (Bob and Jed’s boss) forms expectations about their value that’s related to how much effort they invest and what kind of skills they have. In other words, the more you work and the more skills you have, the greater the expectations about your value. Of great importance: my proposed function doesn’t include creativity. It’s just too ephemeral. Creativity is hard to predict almost by definition. Most days, there’s nothing; so as a boss, when you see it, you think, “awesome!”

Whether you like it or not, functions f and g eventually come into equilibrium. It’s just human nature – at some point, your boss knows how much effort you put in and what your skills allow you to do, and his/her expectations rise accordingly. If f=g, then; and combining (1), (2) and (3), we get 

   (4)    Promotability = f3(Creativity)

Funny enough, even though the ‘creativity’ option to getting ahead sounds easy, I’ve found it to be damn hard to execute. It’s risky, because you’re sacrificing ‘WorkTime’ and skills development for something that may only occasionally generate rewards. You run the possibility that you won’t succeed in the short term; and if you don’t succeed in the short term, you sure as #@!% won't succeed in the long term. Most of the people I'd consider to be successful leaders had to survive periods where one boss or another was trying to can them. The trick, I guess, is to do just enough of that work time and skills stuff to get by, while you're focused on being creative.

in the short term, you sure as #@% won’t succeed in the long term. Most of the people I’d consider to be successful leaders have had to survive periods where one boss or another was trying to can them. I suppose this is the reality I must face myself. in the short term, you sure as #@% won’t succeed in the long term. Most of the people I’d consider to be successful leaders have had to survive periods where one boss or another was trying to can them. I suppose this is the reality I must face myself.