If you are not already making $200,000 compensation in your job, there are five steps to getting you there.
Summary:
(1) Do everything you say you are going to do.
(2) Manage your boss and colleagues — don’t make them spend time managing you.
(3) Proactively help the organization.
(4) Be positive (don’t complain). Be a “yes, and” person.
(5) Report to someone making over $200k.
Even if your goal is not money, following these steps (save the fifth one) will help you achieve success in any organization you are in (including teaching in a school, being a soldier in the military, being a firefighter, working at a non-profit, and more).
100% of 10Xers do the first four things. Or maybe it is 98%. And these are things ANYONE can do — you do not need to have some sort of superhuman skill to achieve the first four things. If you do these things well, you will likely be a 10Xer to your organization.
(1) Do everything you say you are going to do.
One of the rarest things to do in the work world (and this is also true in the social world) is simply to do what you say will do. Be dependable. When you say you will do something, you do it. You meet expectations. Almost nobody does this. Just doing this one step puts you in the top 10% of employees.
Of course, that does not mean that you will never miss deadlines. That does not mean that you will never fail. But when you do miss a deadline, it means that you are on top of it and let the other stakeholders know ahead of time (well before the deadline). “I told you the report would be done on Tuesday. I underestimated the research involved. It will instead be done by Thursday (two days later). Let me know if this is not ok or you want to dive in more.”
(2) Manage your boss and colleagues — don’t make them spend time managing you.
If your boss or your colleagues are managing you, that is a bad sign. You need to manage them. You need to be asking them for help in achieving your goal. “Sue, please send this pre-written email to Customer Y to help my BD deal get unblocked.”
You also need to be telling your boss the things you should do. That means you should be setting the one-on-one agenda with your boss and also coming up with the ideas of things you can do to help the organization. Don’t put the burden on your boss to come up with things for you to do. You should instead have weekly, monthly, quarterly, (and sometimes yearly) project plan that you can go over with your boss and get her advice, input, and mentorship on it.
In fact, don’t think of your boss as a boss that gives you direction. Think of her as a mentor who can help guide you.
(3) Proactively help the organization.
The best employees take action. They are extremely action-oriented. If you see a problem, fix it. If you see an opportunity, go grab it. If it involves getting resources, understand the organization’s trade-offs. Do not wait to be assigned something. Do not wait to get the core priority from the big boss. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Determine what needs to be done to help the organization and set things in motion to achieve the goals. And this need not be the defining thing that propels an organization forward. It can be a really small thing (like ordering extra toilet paper for the bathrooms). Look to solve problems.
(4) Be positive (don’t complain). Be a “yes, and” person.
Most smart people are “no, but” people. They quickly identify problems. They are really good at finding flaws in other people’s arguments. They see the bugs in the code. They see all the inherent inconsistencies in the marketing plan. They see the product limitations.
The things the “no, but” people identify are really important. There are important flaws in every organization. But too many Cassandras are not helpful in organizations. You need to take what you have and make it better.
Better to be a “yes, and” person. Instead of shooting down other people’s ideas, build on the ideas. Give them positive feedback. Take what you like about an idea and build on it. If someone has an idea for the organization, it means they are putting themselves out there. Especially if the person is proactive (see #3 above). No need to stomp on that idea. No need to quash enthusiasm.
Instead, be “yes, and.” (note: “yes, and” comes from improv comedy where the rule is to always agree, and add something to the discussion). Take the facets of an action and continue to build on it. Be enthusiastic.
Negative-Nates are Debbie-Downers. Negativity is an infectious disease — it will infect many others in the organization. One needs an extra dose of positivity to combat against those that are negative. And this is particularly important if you are in a high-performance organization that recruits a lot of high-IQ people. Because high-IQ people are really good at seeing the problems (and they loudly complain about them).
(5) Report to someone making over $200k.
And if your goal is not just to impact the organization, but also to have high compensation, reporting to someone making over $X is very important if you want to make over $X. Of course, that does not mean you need to report to a super-well-paid person today. If you do the first four things, you will immediately be in the top 0.3% of desired employees in the world.
Note: this post originally appeared on Quora.
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