RULE 43

Know what you are actually doing

So what are you doing? Important but overlooked rule, this one. Go on, answer the question, what are you doing?

To answer this you need to have long- and short-term plans formulated. If you haven’t got a plan, you don’t have a map. If you don’t have a map, you’ll never find the treasure. In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, when someone questions his ability to sail his ship with only two men, Johnny Depp needs no other answer than he’s Captain Jack Sparrow. ‘Savvy?’ If you know who you are and where you are going, you are indeed a pirate and clearly so.

So, are you laying the groundwork for future promotion? Marking time until you decide what to do? Counting down the days until you retire? Collecting information so you can go to a rival and use it profitably? Waiting to be head-hunted? Learning more about the industry so you can make a sideways move? Enjoying yourself and having a ball? Doing a hatchet job for the management and making a third of the workforce redundant?^* Trying hard to be noticed by senior management? Working hard just to do a good job and stay ahead of the game? Building a social network to have fun with? Stealing ideas, resources, staff and machinery to start your own rival business? (Oh, I’ve seen this done, and a very successful job they made of it too – they knew exactly what they were doing.)

There are no right and wrong answers. Well, actually a wrong answer would be, ‘I haven’t a clue’. You have to know what it is you are actually doing. Not what you are supposed to be doing. Not what you want to be doing. Not what the company thinks you are doing. But what you are actually doing. Once you know that you can work miracles because you have secret knowledge. Perhaps everyone else also knows; perhaps no one else knows. But you know and that is the important thing.

Now have a quick look round at your team and tell me what each and every one is actually doing. Good exercise.