Excellent, Good and Terrible

During a recent meeting with a member of my team the topic of how to decide what work was valuable came up. After a few moments thought I decided on a new motto for the week: "Concentrate on excellent, do good and outsource terrible". It didn't really answer the original question but it did open up a great dialogue about what work the individual should concentrate on to provide the best value to themselves and the company as a whole.

The principle of Excellent, Good and Terrible (EGT) highlights a way to make best use of your talents.

1. What you do with excellent results should be expanded
2. Whatever is already good but cannot be made excellent should continue
3. If there is a terrible that can not be made good something needs to change

Outsourcing terrible is not always an easy thing to do. Bringing the idea of your "terribleness" to your manager's attention may seem like a dance with disaster but if done properly it could result in a significantly enjoyable change to your workload. It's part of your manager's role to have a basic idea of each team member's strengths and weaknesses so it's likely they already know but by highlighting your desire for change they may actually do something about it. It may just happen that one of your colleagues is in the same position but with the opposite EGT.

Here is an excercise to identify your EGT:

• Take a blank piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet.
• Separate it into three vertical columns (E, G and T).
• Start with Excellent and write all of the things that you as a person routinely exceed expectations in (this includes non work related activities).
• Now do the same for what you consider good.
• For terrible only list the things that you find particularly horrific.

This is now your EGT list. Work towards moving everything to the left so when all you are seen to do is good or excellent your next pay rise review can only be positive.