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Working on the right things

 … is critical. In fact, a lot of people believe that it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how hard you work. But what matters is whether you work on the right things.

I just got back from interviewing a student for Education Matters. At the end, she mentioned how smart the people are in her class and also how competitive they are. She was shocked at how tough things can seem sometimes as a student.

But this doesn’t come as a total surprise. Especially at the Medill School of Journalism, where there are fewer jobs than ever. Where the industry in some ways is changing, maybe collapsing. And where jobs are hard to come by.

The same thing holds true at Kellogg and you see it pretty clearly in the recruiting process. Where you apply to a job alongside everyone who has similar backgrounds, who took all the same classes, and who worked as consultants before Kellogg. How can you distinguish yourself that way?

The same thing happens in law school, where everyone is forced to take the same classes, where everyone wants the exact same job after graduation (big law firm) and where many students are light on work experience.

So I propose the idea that it’s not always important to be better, smarter or faster. And sometimes it’s not even important to have more creativity. Instead, I think, it’s because they understand what work actually matters.

The problem is … what matters isn’t obvious. In fact its nearly impossible to tell.  It changes by person, by vendor, and sometimes every day of the week. Sometimes what matters is working on the right task. Other times working the right person. And sometimes it’s simply good timing.

The most successful ones are those that somehow find it, capture it, and then proceed to ignore everything else that gets in the way.

But this is easier said then done. Especially in business school when most students want to get involved in everything, and in work, where you want to learn everything about your job.  But many of those things are not nearly as important as you think.

2 Comments to Working on the right things

Jessica Giraldo
May 20, 2012

I agree with you that “it’s not always important to be better, smarter or faster.” I subscribe to the belief that perseverance matters more than talent. I’m reading Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, right now and he makes a statement (called the Stockdale Paradox) which says that good-to-great companies find a balance between: retaining faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND at the same time, confronting the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. I feel this is relevant to working on the right things, because despite the reality of looking the same as everyone else, competing for the same jobs, you must retain the faith in yourself, that you’ll make it no matter what.

Jeremy C Wilson
May 20, 2012

@Jessica Giraldo Great insight! I am a big believer in what you call “faith that you will prevail in the end”. Thanks for sharing this.

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