How does your work help the next person who touches it?
Slow down to ask the right questions.
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If you spend hours on a project only to find out you went in the wrong direction, you’ve wasted both your time and the company’s resources. To truly succeed, resist the urge to be fast; instead focus on being aligned. Real efficiency starts with understanding the “why” before worrying about the “how.”
Before you dive in, take five minutes to ask your lead about the bigger picture. Gathering this information ensures your efforts are perfectly matched with the team’s needs. Proactively communicating demonstrates your critical thinking skills and prevents frustration from “re-work”.
Understand how your work serves the next person in the chain. When you see your tasks as part of a larger ecosystem rather than just a to-do list, you make better judgment calls on your own. And it shows that you’re there to actively contribute to the company’s momentum by delivering work that actually matters.
By slowing down to ask the right questions, you build a reputation for being thorough and reliable. You show that you value quality over quick, shallow wins, which is the fastest way to earn trust and more interesting assignments.
Put these approaches into practice.
Let’s look at practical ways to avoid rushing into tasks to show speed, only to find you’ve spent hours heading in the wrong direction.
“I used to pride myself on being the first person to turn in my weekly reports. One week, I spent six hours redesigning a dashboard, only to find out the team had pivoted to a completely different metric. I realized my ‘speed’ was actually a waste of time. Now, I spend the first ten minutes of every project mapping out the goal, not the tasks.”
DON’T start working immediately on a new assignment just to show you work quickly.
DO focus on being aligned by understanding the “why” before the “how.”
“I once wrote a highly technical internal memo that ended up being forwarded to a major client. The client was confused by our internal jargon. If I had asked who the audience was, I would have written it with a ‘client-ready’ lens from the start. That one question would have saved my manager a full day of damage control.”
DON’T dive into a project without knowing who will ultimately be reading or using your work.
DO ask, “Who’s the final audience for this?” to ensure the tone and detail level match the user’s needs.
“I was asked to pull user data for our app. Instead of just exporting a massive list, I asked what problem we were solving. My lead told me they were worried about churn in the first 30 days. Because I had that context, I ignored 90% of the data and built a New User Drop-off report, which directly led to our new on-boarding strategy.”
DON’T assume you know what the data needs to show just based on the title of the assignment.
DO ask, “What’s the one specific problem this data needs to solve?” to narrow your focus to what actually matters.
“I used to send messy raw spreadsheets to our Finance lead. Once I realized she had to manually re-format them for her monthly budget meeting, I started cleaning them up for her. By seeing myself as a collaborator, I became her most trusted partner and was eventually recommended for a cross-departmental promotion.”
DON’T treat your tasks as a lonely “to-do list” that exists in a vacuum.
DO visualize how your work serves the next person in the value chain to make better independent judgment calls.
“I used to turn in 20-page decks thinking volume equaled value. My manager never read them. I started putting the most critical answer on the first page. My manager’s trust in me skyrocketed because I stopped giving him homework and started giving him answers.”
DON’T overwhelm your manager with a mountain of information hoping that the right answer is in there somewhere.
DO ask yourself: “If I could only deliver one page, what is the single most important question my manager needs that page to answer?”
Before you start your next task, can you identify exactly how it helps the next person who touches it?
Integrate these professional strategies into your workflow—whether you’re refining your own work or mentoring your team or clients.