When I graduated college to begin my career in product management, I remember wondering what my role would be within the company I was joining. This curiosity had less to do with the responsibilities of a product manager than understanding how I would be judged and evaluated as an employee.
How will I be evaluated?
What are they really paying me to accomplish?
How will I know I’m doing a good job?
Up to that point in my life, success was measured by three letters—GPA. If I wanted to know where I stood, all I had to do was look at my transcript. For better or worse, achievement in high school and college was black and white. Either you had the grades or you didn’t.
This made it easy to optimize behavior and performance for a specific result. I knew good grades were the measuring stick, so I figured out how to maximize my ability to obtain the best grades I possibly could. It was a straightforward formula, and I tweaked the variables until I found an answer that worked.
Unfortunately, as I quickly discovered after graduation, the way academia measures success does not match the real world. Not even close.
As a product manager, you can do everything “by the book” and still have a project fail in the marketplace. Success is not guaranteed just because you wrote a flawless spec document or the perfect user story. If you’re not adding value to the end user, you haven’t done your job.
Let me repeat that.
If you’re not adding value, you haven’t done your job.
This is the single most important truth I’ve learned since entering the workforce. It applies to more than just product management, and can be used as a guiding principle to improve any area of your life. In fact, I’ve come to realize that a “value-add” mindset is required to advance in your career, build healthy relationships, and find personal fulfillment.
Your ability to add value is the true measure of success in any endeavor. All other criteria is secondary, if not irrelevant, as a measure of how well you’re performing in a certain situation. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing; if you continually add tremendous value to someone or something in your current situation, success will undoubtedly find you.
There’s always room for someone who makes things better. People want to be around and support those who add value.
What does it mean to add value? To me, it means making an impact on someone or something that leaves it better off than it was before. Whether you’re helping a customer do something better, cheaper, or faster at work, or spending time with your family at the dinner table, you’re adding value when others receive some benefit that makes their situation better.
This is a concept that can be applied to any situation in your work and life. The next time you find yourself stuck trying to figure out what to do next, ask yourself, How can I add a ridiculous amount of value in this situation?
Maybe you can help source a new sales lead for your business, even though you’re not in sales. Or make a colleague’s life easier by sending them meeting notes. Or do your roommates dirty dishes.
Whatever it is, think about what truly matters in a given situation, and find a way to alleviate a pain or make something even better than it was before.
Add value, and good things will happen.