"Even at my age at work, I haven't achieved perfection" - Jiro Ono, Jiro Dream of Sushi, age 85
I. Sushi
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a 2011 documentary that chronicles the life of Jiro Ono, considered one of the best sushi chefs in Japan. Jiro's rise to prestige in his craft came from an incredible sense of dedication, an obsession, with his craft:
"Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success, and is the key to being regarded honorably."
We see this a lot with people in creative spaces. The work we admire on stage, in restaurants, and on walls of museums, is usually built by someone with relentless focus on developing top level proficiency in whatever their medium is. This type of technical mastery requires an extreme level of focus and dedication. For Jiro, his skill is sushi, and he's been summarily rewarded with numerous accolades and prestige.
I've not had the chance to eat at his restaurant, but I have eaten at omakase restaurants where his students or students of his students set the menu. There is such strong attention to every detail to ensure it is both precise and high quality. No corner is cut in delivering a delicious meal.
But I'm sure you know where I am going with this.
Why is corporate not like this? Why do so-called professionals in their knowledge jobs deliver work that can feel sub-par?
II. Falling into careers
In corporate, it's a lot harder to find people who are true experts at their craft. Corporate environments are seldom arranged to foster creativity or excellence, but rather foster delivery of items that can be used to generate revenue or cut costs. Speed rules over quality. McDonald's is going to get you a burger faster and cheaper than most places, but it will hardly approach the quality of a proper homemade burger.
When I interview people, I always kick off a conversation with the agenda to set the expectations of the types of questions I will ask, why I ask them, and ensure the candidate there's time for questions.
Once we lay this out, I ask a common question "Tell me about yourself"
So many people bungle this.
People unprepared with a concise and relevant story will regurgitate their entire lives, every step on their resume, and eat up all of the air time providing me with data points that don't help me evaluate if they're actually good for the job. The main data point I get is that they aren't a good communicator or understand what their audience is looking for.
One thing that stands out, especially in certain corporate, non-technical professions, that I hear over and over again, is people who "fell" into a career.
"Yeah I started my career as X, but then sort of fell into Y and have been doing it for fifteen years"
This kind of thing blows my mind. "Falling" into anything is not perceived as positive. People fall for traps, scams, and into holes. Falling into a successful career or falling into competency simply doesn't happen.
This isn't true for everyone. Some people are really good and intentional about their lives and careers instead of floating like jellyfish through the ocean currents. Even in disciplines that aren't seen as having a ton of technical rigor that makes the barrier to entry higher. I've met countless folks who develop a deep level of expertise in their professional niche.
For Ono, being a sushi chef is a lifelong work, requiring relentless focus. You may even say it's a calling. I don't think anyone not willing to put in the effort will be able to be a chef no more than I was a chef assembling sandwiches based on instructions at Panera Bread. Certain fields require intense focus to even get in, while others will take just about anyone.
The fields that require this level of rigor just to get in usually require a much greater deal of sacrifice and preparation. Medical school is a long slog and requires a lot of planning to get the right education and grades leading into it. Being able to practice law requires a JD, and so forth. These types of profession inherently drives towards building proficiency before you're even allowed to practice it. Jiro won't let people touch fish until they master preparing the rice. But I can go call myself a salesperson, a recruiter, a marketer, etc. without any specific credential to demonstrate I have some baseline competency.
III. Your work as your craft
"There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top… but no one knows where the top is."
What I then notice about these types who sort of "fall into" what they're doing, is that they usually aren't interested in getting better or doing the best work possible.
There's a general lack of craftsmanship in companies. I don't expect everyone to be like Jiro Ono.
I recognize too that the opportunity to hone your craft can come at a price. We all have bills to pay, and some of us need to get a paycheck to stay afloat each week. There's a reason things like safety and shelter are below self-actualization on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Sometimes we aren't in a position where this is possible.
In addition, people who are in non-technical disciplines are often asked to flex into other areas of the business as needed versus going deeper in their own space. This can make it difficult to develop deep levels of proficiency in any one space because the business requires this person to "wear many hats", as I often hear in interviews.
I used to toy with the idea of being a musician. I love guitar and like writing, but I knew I would have to go a long time without making any money while also needing to support myself. Did I love my craft enough to struggle an eke out the most meager existence possible while I waited for a payday? Did I think I was even good enough? No and no, and that's why I studied business and went to the tech industry instead.
It's easy to look at work as "just work" and take what corporate is willing to give you. But I find this dissatisfying. We spend a lot of time at work, and so I now ask myself: "How do I get good at this?" if not just to make doing my job easier, but also feeling a sense of satisfaction from a job well done.
This was a major mindset shift for me: What if I thought of my job not as a job, but as a craft? I'm not just getting things done, I'm building expertise.
This small shift has helped me tremendously and made me a better person to work with, delivering higher quality work while enjoying it more. Intentional focus on improvement will yield results if applied properly.
IV. So what can I do?
You may be saying "Yeah that sounds good, but how do I actually do this?" There's a few things that come to mind.
1) Read a lot
There are so many books on different fields that go deeper on topics I didn't know much about. For me, I find a lot of value in reading stories of corporate failure to learn more about what went wrong and how to avoid this. Getting the big picture from these kinds of stories help me see how my work fits into the broader organization. Even if you aren't super experienced in your field or don't have as much depth as you'd like, being able to articulate how it fits more broadly into the organization and how it helps the person you're talking to goes a long way.
In addition, I like reading about different disciplines and how they operate. I've read numerous books over the years on interviewing and recruiting, learning and development, organization design, and analytics. These all help me build perspective and learn what good looks like and how I can work towards that. Lately, I've been wanting to better understand data and engineering jobs so I can be a better partner to these groups when I work with them. Reading about their field and "learning the language" of data and engineering (even data engineering!) helps me do my job better, because I not only have functional expertise, but know my partners' needs and work better.
Lastly, I enjoy history and philosophy. While not as directly applicable, I find lessons in how the world works and how to think and conduct oneself to be valuable. Good philosophical reading has helped me get through the low points, and history helps contextualize that my current situation could always be worse. I find history also tends to provide transferrable lessons on leadership that aren't always easily sourced from books on business.
But really, reading on its own is just part of the equation. It's about understanding what you've read and applying it. Whether that's to excelling at your function or better understanding other peoples' problems so you can convince them you have the right solution.
Great expertise is one thing, but knowing how to communicate it will yield even greater rewards. I can be the best at what I do, but I still need to be able to articulate that in an interview and to my peers to get buy-in.
2) Talk to people
I know "networking" can sound sort of slimy, like you're only engaging with people in hopes they'll like you enough to pay you, but there is so much value in finding like-minded practitioners of your space. I don't think networking is a dirty word, and neither should you.
You'll learn from each other, bounce ideas around, and ideally make friends. I can't stress enough how important this is, and how so many of my "professional" contacts only pop up when they need a job. I'm always happy to help, but there's more to networking than simply "getting the job", it's also a source for you to get advice and find comradery.
A concept I like is having the "board of directors" for your career. I have a handful of mentors, former bosses, and friends, who I chat with regularly and get feedback from. When it comes time for bigger decisions and moves, their advice is invaluable. But I doubt any of them would be willing to help me if I only went to them when I need something.
So finding people who you enjoy spending time with and have enough knowledge of your field to challenge your perspective, as well as commiserate with, is invaluable for a healthy career. Talent is able to identify talent, and the best people only want to associate with the best.
3) Incrementality
A lot of corporate workers in non-technical disciplines usually own some part of the business machinery, whether that's a marketing channel, a sales territory, internal IT, or a process. You may see that you want to blow these up and do it better. But big changes are uncertain, can be scary, and certainly can seem costly to a leader.
The better approach is to map out the ideal state and the steps to get there. What is the incremental improvement you can make. Small changes are more tolerable, and if it helps either generate more money or cut cost, no one will argue except people who depend on the inefficiency to keep their job.
Regardless, this exercise of thinking from the end state and working back, step by step, to small improvements, will make it easier to execute and more palatable to those around you. For larger changes, showing you know the steps to get there and have a plan will instill confidence in leaders that you're the right person for the job.
4) Measurement
I like to ask interviewees about how they evaluate what they did was the right thing. A lot of people can't answer this. Some people will say that a stakeholder was happy with the change as their success measure. The best usually have a set of specific criteria they evaluate against to inform future changes.
Measuring what we do is important. Especially if you're in a traditional cost center or the value you provide isn't easily attributed to revenue or savings, you need some sort of measure.
Even if you can't take full credit for every good thing that happens, you need at least some directional tie in. For example, if you are working on a training program, look at the time to ramp, future performance evaluations, or turnover to see: is this helping us in some way?
Part of treating work as a craft is understanding its impact and finding some way to assess if it is quality. In addition, knowing how your work performs should help inform you where to focus next. If you can articulate this and show how your work contributes to saving costs or increasing revenue, you'll be better able to position yourself with people who make hiring decisions, while also better understanding how your role fits into the bigger picture beyond solving the problems you're asked to solve.
For Jiro Ono, he had a documentary about him made and reservations booked years in advance. I'd say that's a good success metric.
In short, there's really no better way to build expertise than to take your work seriously. Dedicate time to self-study, build a group of peers to help further develop your skills, read a lot, and learn how your work contributes to the big picture. Having baseline functional expertise is fine for getting started, but as you advance in your career, you'll need to continue developing breadth and depth to be essential.
"The techniques we use are no big secret. It’s just about making an effort and repeating the same thing every day. There are some who are born with a natural gift. Some have a sensitive palate and sense of smell. That’s what you call “natural talent.” In this line of business if you take it seriously, you’ll become skilled. But if you want to make a mark in the world, you have to have talent. The rest is how hard you work."