Meeting Prevents Exceeding

Originally published March 2017

You can't meet expectations and exceed expectations at the same time

--my tweet

I wrote this over the weekend, thought, “Yeah, that’s exactly right,” then thought, “But what the hell does it mean?” Upon consideration, here’s what it means. To me. So far.

One strategy for playing the performance review game is to lay down some solid wins early in the review period. With those in place, you can afford to take some chances. If you’re worried about your rating, this is a reasonable way to reduce your anxiety. It retards your growth as an engineer, however.

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Being a “senior engineer” requires growth in many areas, and two important ones are risk management and initiative. You have to get good at thinking your own thoughts and then acting on them prudently. (What you consider prudent and what others consider prudent can be wildly different, which is why you first need to learn to think your own thoughts.)

The only way to learn prudent initiative is practice. You will fail. You will realize, “Hey, that roadblock I found after six months I really could have found after one month. Or week. Or day.” You will realize, “I should have finished that one thought before I started another.” Or, “I should have dropped this idea to start on that idea.”

Here’s where meeting expectations clashes with exceeding expectations. If you are working to meet someone else’s expectations, you don’t have time to exercise your own. It’s only when you draw your own map that you can arrive somewhere others don’t expect.

Meeting someone else’s expectations only results in the expectations going up next time. Trying to meet your own expectations, even if it is a futile exercise, gives you the chance to arrive somewhere that’s unexpected by others. The more you set your own expectations, the better you get at drawing your map and spotting the landmarks along the way.