Do you do “Easy” Jobs?

Kumar Rahul Tiwary; Sep 12, 2012

When Ramesh joined the new project, he was given structured KT (knowledge transfer) for all the activities he was supposed to do. Since their team was based at multiple geographies, most of the KT sessions happened through telecom and desktop screen sharing. He was also given access to some KT documents describing the jobs and activities he was taking over. When Ramesh started taking over activities, he was a worried man. He soon realized that the KT sessions were not exhaustive and he was not able to perform the activities with the help of the documents. He could complain, but he thought not to be the “noise maker”. So he chose the difficult road ahead…

He spent extra working hours and put on a lot of efforts to perform the activities with best results. He also took help from others whenever they were available. For his own reference he also noted down and prepared documents with the correct, relevant and updated processes. He was good at his work and his dedication to come out of the clutter made him sharper day by day. Within 2 months, he was doing all the work assigned to him in minimum time and with best quality.

“But that is the easiest of the lot”, at first he couldn’t believe his ears. Then he got used to it. His team had come out with their own “explanation” for his exceptionally good performance. Since he was doing his work in the least time with best quality, they had concluded, to their own amusement perhaps, that his portion of work was the “easiest”. Ramesh was given more workload but he still maintained the same performance. But the rumors never died…

Have you come across such scenarios around you? What do you think should be the best method to dispel such hypothetical assumptions or assertions by Ramesh’s team? Should Ramesh ask to swap tasks with others in order to prove that he is best at whatever he does? Or should he talk to his team and explain how rigorously he has to work and how he came up with easer ways to do the same jobs? Of course these are options in front of him, but may be not following any of these would be the best?

I think an ultimate proof of your excellence is - whatever job you do comes to be known as “easy” work by others, over the time :) (Rahul)

My explanation of my today’s tweet :) Follow me at https://twitter.com/rahulbemba

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization associated with the author. The incidents or examples mentioned in the article, or cases based on which article is based, are for illustration purpose and need not be from author’ real personal (work) experiences.