I started a thread this month inside our Glue Club slack about work regrets. As always, the Glue Club crew really showed up with self-awareness, personal reflection, and vulnerability. It has made me think a bit about regret and some of the things that I wish I could tell myself at the beginning of my career. I’m grateful for all these experiences because they’ve gotten me to where I am, so for me regret is simply defined as “knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t do that again...” I’ve talked to the Glue Club about a bunch of my “regrets”, but one I wanted to share broadly: Being inside bigger organizations can lead you to “optimize an anthill.”
> Does this performance feedback actually reflect who I am and what I care about?
This is so hard for me to navigate, and I need to work on separating feedback on my work from feedback on my self. Thanks for this examination, it’s really helpful.
Your advice about (not) optimising an anthill is so relevant and valuable.
What do you wish you had done differently in the times you were in this situation? Or put differently, what’s the alternative to optimising the anthill? Do you wish you had put blinders on the organisational dynamics and focused on the work you believed was highest impact/most interesting? Would taking the time to reflect have led you to make a bigger change (new role, new company) sooner? I recognise this is unique to every person and situation but interested to hear your reflections on this common “big company” situation.
As always, really appreciate the insights you share!
I wish I had focused on doing great work and not on positioning myself, eg., make the presentation but let others deliver it. I also wish I had not taken an signals about my performance, etc., so personally versus seeing them as the values of the org being expressed (not about me...)
I love how you put this: signals about performance are fundamentally an expression of the values of your org. Which is, of course, why it's so important to be at an org that values the same things you do (or to disentangle your own value system from your org's, but I've never been very good at that lol).
> Does this performance feedback actually reflect who I am and what I care about?
This is so hard for me to navigate, and I need to work on separating feedback on my work from feedback on my self. Thanks for this examination, it’s really helpful.
Your advice about (not) optimising an anthill is so relevant and valuable.
What do you wish you had done differently in the times you were in this situation? Or put differently, what’s the alternative to optimising the anthill? Do you wish you had put blinders on the organisational dynamics and focused on the work you believed was highest impact/most interesting? Would taking the time to reflect have led you to make a bigger change (new role, new company) sooner? I recognise this is unique to every person and situation but interested to hear your reflections on this common “big company” situation.
As always, really appreciate the insights you share!
I wish I had focused on doing great work and not on positioning myself, eg., make the presentation but let others deliver it. I also wish I had not taken an signals about my performance, etc., so personally versus seeing them as the values of the org being expressed (not about me...)
I love how you put this: signals about performance are fundamentally an expression of the values of your org. Which is, of course, why it's so important to be at an org that values the same things you do (or to disentangle your own value system from your org's, but I've never been very good at that lol).