Useful

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Useful. It’s my favorite word and a word that can change the trajectory of your career.

To be honest, useful has been a north star for me — it was the word I organized my energy around when I was working inside of companies. 

AND I have seen over and over again that if you’re inside a growing company, being useful is like finding a jet pack for your career. 

My biggest career transformation came after I had done a good job with a project in my People role at Facebook, and someone came and asked me if I wanted to work on a mobile project. I’ve talked about it more in the J-Curve vs Stairs article. It was a defining moment in my career: I could never have dreamed up that opportunity for myself, but someone saw potential in me, and that experience taught me that I was capable of more than I knew or would have guessed if I had stayed in HR/Recruiting.

That experience has repeated itself again and again in my weird, winding career. People have come and asked me to take on roles that I could never have designed or imagined for myself: being COO at Quip (I worked for Bret Taylor at Facebook), being VP Ops at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Mark knew my work from Facebook), etc. I’ve gotten those opportunities for the most part because, in the past, when we worked together, I was useful — good at making things happen no matter how big or small. 

There are many moments in your career, particularly early on, when it’s tempting to focus on things like your title or being the person that gives the big presentation, or getting the credit for the project. One of the most important lessons I have learned over and over again is that the greatest thing you can do for your career is to be the person that everyone in the room knows they can rely on to get things done. 

Be the person that makes everyone else look good. 

Be the person that everyone wants to work with again. 

Opportunity always flows to the most useful person in the room. 

In this case, I’m not talking about the kind of opportunity that gets you promoted, though that tends to come with it too. I’m talking about opportunities you could never have imagined or designed yourself — the J-Curve opportunities. 

When you’re a manager or a leader, and you need to start a new initiative or experiment, you often make a list of people you believe you could trust to start it or run it. That list is usually made up of the people you’ve seen do something great in the past — people who get things done, people who made everyone else look good, and people who were useful. Main point: once you’re on a rocketship, your goal is to always be on that list. You want the people you’ve worked with to want to work with you again. Ideally, you want to be on the top of their list.

Fundamentally, opportunity inside fast-growing and fast-moving companies tends to flow to the people who have shown over and over again that you can trust them to make things happen. I’ve seen this story repeat itself with so many friends and with so many people I’ve managed.

Basically, I’d add a line to Sheryl Sandberg / Eric Schmidt’s famous quote, “When you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat, just get on.” I couldn’t agree with that statement more, and I would add:

“Once you’re on the rocket ship, your goal is to always be the most useful person in the room.”

That is how the rocket ship takes YOU to places you could never have imagined.