DEV Community: Rnjai Lamba

Dependency Autopilot.

Rnjai Lamba — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:36:54 +0000

There’s a point of tension in our professional lives that’s often under-discussed, if not overlooked entirely. What professionals learn from their mentors, thought leaders, and bosses often pulls them in two different directions.

On the one hand, they hear about the values of being a team player — without the commitment of every employee, the founder’s vision would never get off the ground. On the other hand, they hear about the unrivaled power of being an independent thinker — without innovators who think outside the box and leverage their own unique qualities to create something new, how would businesses ever break through the status quo?

Here’s the catch: both of these philosophies are true for professionals at every rung of the ladder. This leaves us with an important question. How do we maintain our autonomy and unique qualities when our professional lives require working toward other people’s visions? Is there, so to speak, a contrarian-consensus balance much like there’s a work-life balance?

Are You Stuck on Dependency Autopilot?

An organized business is like a well-oiled machine, with each piece dependent on the next. Founders concede parts of their vision to investors and clients. Leaders create strategies to accomplish that vision. Employees make those strategies a reality. When everyone is personally dedicated to each other’s needs, this chain of dependency becomes an engine to effectuate great ideas and, consequently, great returns.

But that doesn’t always happen. As valuable as the “team player” mentality is, I’ve always worried that it implies individuals are making a personal sacrifice to keep the game going, that they’re a “cog in a machine.” This sets an unproductive tone for working, giving professionals little reason to do more than the bare minimum. They’ll fulfill their obligations but not enough to make a real impact or feel creatively enriched.

This is dependency autopilot. It’s business as usual, doing what’s expected on time and on budget, but never feeling as though you have skin in the game. If you go on like this for too long, the result is a sense of tedium and professional stagnation.

Local Innovation Unlocks Internal Motivation

The solution to dependency autopilot comes from a marriage of both philosophies: the team player who fulfills their part in the chain of dependency, and the individual innovator whose creativity and inspiration revolutionizes how their tasks are done. These philosophies aren’t mutually exclusive, and they’re at their most powerful when they coexist in each individual.

The first step to escaping dependency autopilot is to find the internal motivation necessary to overachieve. This comes from the recognition that everyone at every rung of the business ladder is carrying a burden that makes the entire enterprise possible. You have skin in the game, the business depends on you, and you have the agency to climb to the next rung. This is relevant for founders, leaders, and employees.

Once you recognize the two roles you must play, you infuse your work with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, of dependence and independence. Maybe an entry-level employee won’t revolutionize their business’ overall strategy, but they can ask what obligations are local to them and break through the status quo for all who follow behind them. By becoming a “local innovator,” everyone retains the inspiration that comes from being independent while still fulfilling their typical obligations — only this time, with a deeper personal stake in the results.

Founders and leaders are just as susceptible to dependency autopilot, despite their aura of control. For founders, that means preserving or independently evolving your vision even when concessions must be made to investors, clients, or your team. On the other hand, founders must also manifest “founding moments” that change the course of the company.

For leaders, that means feeling personally accountable for translating the founder’s vision into actionable, representative strategies. Yet leaders must also leave room to inject their own ideas and personalities into their work so sparks can fly when their founder’s ideas collide with theirs.

To put it another way, all of our mentors were right, even if they were pulling us in different directions — something powerful happens when the team player and innovator combine. Becoming an invaluable member of any business, even your own, requires this dual mindset. By taking independent accountability for the slice of the business we’re responsible for, we infuse our activities with meaning. Next time you find yourself on autopilot, ask yourself, “What’s my contrarian-consensus balance?”

Inspiring Yourself — and Your Team.

Rnjai Lamba — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:36:42 +0000

I’m always surprised at just how much time I can waste on Twitter and Hacker News. You know the story — It starts harmlessly enough as a quick scroll between tasks at work. Next thing you know, you’re in a marathon of reading, bookmarking, re-tweeting, and upvoting/ liking. Think about that. Social media has expertly cracked our mental stimulation code, leveraging instant gratification to keep us glued to the screen. It’s so effective that when we close the app and return to the real world, we immediately feel its absence.

What if work felt that effortless and gratifying? Rather than being interrupted by the next craving of social media dopamine, can professionals nourish a pool of internal inspiration that propels them toward their goals rather than down their feeds? Perhaps at the height of the attention economy, that’s easier said than done. Let’s take a closer look.

External Stimulation vs. Internal Inspiration

There’s a difference between a cup of coffee and ambition, and it isn’t trivial. Both might make it easier to power through our days, but coffee is external, reliably does what you expect it to after centuries of experimentation by humans and wears off quickly, while ambition is internal, tougher to craft and lasting. Building your career on ambition seems far more likely to lead to enrichment and success than relying mostly on coffee to work through the tedium.

This is the difference between external stimulation and internal inspiration. When the coffee wears off, ambition is the impetus to push through, get it done, and exceed all expectations. It’s how you grow professionally and personally, even when it requires patience, sacrifice, and stretches of work that feel below your potential.

Think about how you feel when you’re inspired. Work is more enriching, productivity is effortless, and innovation feels possible. But when you aren’t inspired, it all goes down the drain. Everything becomes tedious, simple tasks become uphill battles, and you just want to return to sources of instant gratification such as social media.

If you think about the next ten years of your life, which of these options would yield the best results? Inspiration, of course. It’s squarely at the center of professional life, which means it should be a chief concern of every employee and employer. This begs the question — how much control do individuals and leaders have over inspiring themselves and those around them?

Personal Inspiration

It seems safe to say that if we organize our lives around meaningful relationships, enriching hobbies, and a rewarding profession, then we’ll be more inspired than otherwise. But this is hardly as well formed or actionable as opening up an app to get an immediate hit of external stimulation. If you find yourself in an unmotivated, fatigued, or cynical frame of mind, try to reconnect yourself with a sense of inspiration.

For some people, finding a well-defined goal might work best. Whenever you feel your spirits waning, just remember what it’s all for — to rise through the ranks, to get a deeper understanding of your field. For others, sustained inspiration may come from more ambiguous goals — to create something that doesn’t exist, to improve lives, to revolutionize a business, to shake the status quo around you.

Whichever method speaks to you, finding a way to remind yourself what you’re working toward becomes key to sustaining inspiration. That’s where it might help to get creative. I’ve often wondered — What if there was a fast-paced, digestible place for hits of inspiration rather than hits of external dopamine? Maybe we can’t stay inspired all day, but we can increase how many spikes of inspiration we experience. Can we fight fire with fire by creating our own “inspiration feeds?”

It could be worth an experiment. I’ve found that foundational measurable skills that span many of your goals can act as stepping stones or inspiration feeds. For example, to a fresh computer science student in college, typing fast is one of the simplest but highest ROI activities to ramp up on. Getting good at typing feeds into other goals such as crafting large scale projects such as compilers tirelessly or excelling at programming competitions.

Team Inspiration

Since my career involves managing and hiring teams, I’ve had to think a lot about the role inspiration plays in group settings. The first thing that becomes clear is just how palpable an individual’s inspiration can be on those around them. Whether it’s coming from leadership, employees, or an interview candidate, that positive presence can go a long way.

That’s why, as I’m sorting through candidates, finding someone with a strong internal drive for the project at hand is an excellent sign. Not only does it show their commitment to the work, but it can be infectious and encourage inspiration in the rest of the team. To that end, finding the types of people who will thrive in your company’s culture is key.

It’s also important to ask your existing team what parts of their job are the most inspiring. What parts are the least? What could change to remove tedium and increase enrichment? How can we shake up the status quo? If a leader knows the unique paths to inspiration that each team member — including their own — and runs projects accordingly, I’d consider them a success.