Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / The Smart Way to Handle "Can You Take This On?"
Transcript
- Malcolm: I I know people have heard this advice before when you're super young in your career. You wanna talk to old people, they're gonna be like, anytime someone offers you some extra work, say yes, say yes, take it on, take it on, take it on. And that is good and all, but you do have to I hope people understand that like it's it's a lot easier than it sounds, right? Because you're gonna say yes to all these things. You're gonna get looped into all these additional meetings, all these extra blocks in your calendar. Now you have so many more things that you're juggling, trying to deliver on, trying to provide status updates on and coordinate across a ton of different teams and a ton of different like, you know, stakeholders. It bec it it makes your day to day a lot more complex and it adds a lot more nuance that you have to consider that you weren't thinking about before. Thomas: Gotta manage expectations. Like like yeah, it's not saying no every time, it's just saying like I can, but I'll have to re prioritize. Malcolm: You do have to manage expeditions and I think mm-hmm. Exactly. And it's it's knowing like what like like how much bandwidth you have as an individual contributor and knowing how to like rebalance, like you said, like rebalance those priorities to make sure that you're still delivering on the things you said you were delivering on at the beginning of the year. Because one thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to get into these, you know, you don't want to get into these companies, into these areas and say, Hey, align with your manager on these expectations for let's say the fiscal year for the fiscal quarter or whatever. And let's say you're doing that. Then someone comes along with, hey. I need your help. You're a smart young person. You're a smart young young man, young lady. I need your help with this. Hey, I got you. You know what? Boom, boom, boom. You deliver you're delivering that. You're doing good work. Someone else grabs you. Hey, I need your help with this. Hey, I need your help with this. You're saying yes and yes and yes to everybody. You become so, you know, you become so busy with all these additional projects that you signed up on. You forgot what you what you aligned with your manager on with in the in the first place. And at the end the day, what you get, you know, this may not be the same at every company, but I know it at at at our company, right? You are evaluated based on what you've said and writ wrote wrote like put down in writing at the beginning of the year or at the beginning of the season of evaluation periods that you said you were going to deliver on. That's what's evaluated. It's not the new things that you picked up because nobody tells you to do that, right? Like, yeah, we get it, you're a go-getter. And so and sometimes you may actually have a really good manager who's super flexible and understands like your your situation and circumstance, and like, hey, you know what? I am going to reward you for taking on these new things. But it's a difference between taking on new projects and and new things. And completely neglecting your original priorities. That is where it becomes a problem, right? So it's like if you have the bandwidth and you have the flexibility and and the the coordination to be able to balance your original priorities plus these new things, hey, go after it. If anything, you're probably going to fast track your next promotion. You're probably going to fast track the next level that you go to, right? But when you start losing track of those things, that's when it becomes a problem. That's when it affects your performance. And that's when it makes you look bad for taking on new things. So it's not saying don't be a go getter. It's not saying don't be hungry. It's not saying don't take that next step. It's saying be smart, be intentional about how you take on new assignments, how you prioritize, and how well like it also depends on your your you and your bosses, your manager of relationship. How well is that going to bow with your boss? What are they going to think about it? Are they going to be on board with it? Like, you know, these are things that that I think that you have to consider that aren't, you know, always thoroughly explained because it's easier to say, say yes to everything than actually give the explanation I just gave for the last three minutes. Right. So that's just another one of those I think things that are just like kinda hidden behind doors in spaces like big tech or, you know, anywhere else.