Unlocking Your Promotability: The Power of Complete Work
What your boss hasn’t told you or may not even know they need.
The military calls it “completed staff work.” It is a killer move when it comes to your own professional development, helping your boss, and generally increasing the return on investment (ROI) across your team.
If executed well, you are seen by your supervisor as a person who needs little direction, gets things done, is thorough, motivated, and the person most deserving of that next pay bump. You are someone they want to keep around. In short, you make your supervisor’s life easier, not more difficult.
It works like this:
Whenever you are assigned a task or expected to solve a problem, follow the work to its most complete form in every detail before presenting it back to your boss.
Let’s say it is something simple like being asked to plan a meeting. Don’t just stop at throwing a few names in the meeting invite and booking a conference room, and calling it a day. Get into all the other details, like preparing an agenda, ensuring the room is set up, or your online presence is ready to go. What materials does your boss need ahead of that meeting? The more you can find out about the meeting without asking your boss and follow through with facilitating their goals, the more you are differentiated as someone who knows how to plan a meeting and how to follow through on instruction. The key is without asking your boss, or else the technique can backfire.
If your task is an analysis problem, don’t stop at “Here’s the data and a few charts.” Answer the “so what?” every time. Get the answer down to one easily-consumable sentence, and then follow up with the top 2 or 3 actions to be taken based on the results. If it starts to feel like you are doing your supervisor’s work for them, you’re on the right track.
Here’s where it gets a little tricky. The more difficult the task or incomplete the instructions, the more tempting it will be to go and get clarification and seek guidance from your boss. Resist this urge. Look for other means of getting your questions answered laterally across your organization. Find prior documents, and talk to peers. You may still end up having to go back to your boss, but this should be a last resort. Remember, you want to be the “set and forget” employee.
If you constantly update your boss on every detail, it can blunt their perception of your achievements because they feel dragged through the entire process. Don’t leave your supervisor thinking it would have been easier if they had just done the project themselves. It’s not your boss’ job to understand what you’re doing. It’s your job to understand what your boss is doing so that you can better position yourself and your work to help them succeed.
In the world of completed staff work, there’s no such thing as a draft that gets escalated for review. Your boss may ask for a draft. You can call it that if that’s what they want, but you always submit your most “completed” work.
“But doesn’t this create waste?”
You will no doubt end up paying attention to detail you might not have had to or chasing down an option that would never have been considered. Ultimately though, it saves waste (cost) for your boss. And guess whose time is more expensive? That is how the ROI for your team increases, and the trickle-down benefits reach you. Your boss saves time in receiving completed and thought-through work from you, which, in turn, makes you the person that gets the work done with little to no direction and without burdensome follow-ups.
Completed work principles still allow for iteration, but unlike other methods of project management/development, you have only one customer (your boss) and often only have one shot (no iterations) before they make a decision. While a “minimum viable” product is acceptable in some situations, “maximum and perfect” need to be your goals and subsequently your personal brand in the eyes of your boss.
If you can spread this ethic of completed work to common practice, then the whole team is optimized for better performance.
“I barely have enough time as it is.”
It’s more likely your boss is better off with one or two completed projects than five or six half-baked solutions and numerous back-and-forths on trivial matters. You will eventually train them to wait a little longer for the good stuff.
This is you empowering yourself as much as it is you enabling leaders above you to make better decisions. You can look at a situation that needs to be addressed and say, “I don’t have the authority to make that decision.” You may not have the authority, but can you take the initiative to investigate the situation, come up with answers, and present them to someone who does have the authority?
Imagine a team eager to reconfigure a conference room to suit their work and meeting needs. It’s low on their director’s list but essential for the team. It’s a good idea, but the director can’t justify the time it would take to come up with a design, coordinate with facilities, and gather resources. If, however, the director was asked to attend a 20-minute meeting, where the team presented their ideas, options, budget, and plans for involving facilities, the chances of closing the deal go way up.
A key concept here is you pull the mechanics for decision-making back down to a level where the decision is likely to have the greatest impact. Individuals and teams that push decision-making up often end up with a less than satisfactory answer. Details, facts, and information about the situation are generally more prevalent at lower levels of the organization. There are some things only your boss has the authority to decide, but you should always make sure they have the best background, analysis, and recommendations. Never ask an open-ended question to your boss; doing so only leaves them and you vulnerable.
The subtext here is good followership or the principles and practices that enable leadership. Knowing the problems and challenges that face levels of the organization above you is self-empowering. Going the extra mile to complete your work in the best possible manner to support decision-making helps everyone. Master followership and leadership will follow.
Reference:
The Doctrine of Completed Staff Work by Colonel Archer J. Lerch, original publication, Army Navy Journal, January 29, 1942 | govleaders.org
