Whenever I was an intern in several organizations, the people who got promoted the fastest and rose up the ranks in the best ways had the ability to own and deliver tasks end-to-end.
What does this mean?
- Often you're going to get assigned tasks by superiors. You have to hit the nail between asking the right questions in the shortest amount of time. Often people have the tendency (myself included) to just say yes and try to figure out stuff on their own and this often is the right way of doing it.
- But one thing you should always try to keep in the back of your mind is what the other person is trying to achieve holistically when giving you the task (f.e. at Forto figuring out what the highest grossing shipments per location is)
- Don't just execute on the task, but try to from the beginning understand what the macro-goal for the other person is. Empathy at scale.
- By having this in the back of your mind and asking those clarifying questions in the beginning (in the moment when the task is assigned to you), you enhance the probability of knowing/predicting what the task #2 and #3 will be and you can then "overdeliver" by already doing much more of the work and not only the task which is assigned to you —> by then presenting the results (f.e. these are the ports with the highest amounts of shipment volumes and the respective margins —> i have identified the following line items where we could charge 25% more and still be cheaper than most competitors for this tradelane —> and this would enhance our margin by 5% on this mode of transport f.e. air freight)
—> This shows that you're able to think three steps forward and also enhances your effectiveness when doing the task assigned to you because you know exactly to what level of detail task #1, #2 and #3 need to get done so you can achieve the macro-task or goal which the other person wants to achieve for the organization.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75fyGOBy38c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym0GCmRyDlA