Be The Rockstar !

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So how do you become the rockstar at your workplace? The one that bosses can rely on to get things done, and at the same time, is the first to be considered for different assignments.
First off, if you do want to do the switch to the commercial side, it is important to emphasize that you really have to have interest in doing different things at your employer and not only one thing. The reason for this is that your company is not only selling to one customer (there are exceptions), but to different customers with different needs. This means that your company sales team must be creative in thinking of different ideas in order for your company’s services or product to fit with its clients’ needs. That is why salespeople talk so much, the successful one are up to date on the latest and the greatest in the market and they love to share new information with everyone.
This is a state of mind that you must adopt in order to do the switch. So while you work in being the most reliable and the expert on whatever you are doing, take the time to regularly, and I stress, regularly means constantly, be consulting blogs, magazines, books, social media and forums about your company’s industry and products, most importantly, be informed of your competitor’s news. This might take maybe 15-30 minutes a day.
Every time you cross your boss or salesman on the hall or in the elevator, take the chance to grab a quick discussion that might go like this:

You, “Hey Boss, how is it going?”
Boss, “ Good thanks, you?”
You, “Great thanks, by the way, I recently read that our company is doing x and y move, it will be great to sit with you sometime to discuss it as our competitor is doing a and b”
Boss, “Yes that is true, we did do x and y, but since when our competition is doing a and b?”
You, “Well our competitor’s tweets were mentioning something about it and I took some time to do a bit of digging, I can email you about it if you want.”
Boss, “Sure that will be great!”

You can even share some of your insights by email, I did that as well. My boss even took me out for lunch to talk about some of that stuff.

Any piece of information you share with upper management about the competition could be of utility or not, it does not matter, what matters is that by keeping a regular cadence, you have gained a spot inside boss’ brain as the go-to-go guy for any recent updates in the marketplace.

At some point, my boss allowed me to take some time off production to do more of market analysis, basically riding the social media realm and having a bit of fun in forums. I was enjoying this, I was even doing it in my personal time, and my boss knew it. At some point, he even offered me a job to join the competitive intelligence analysis team (CIA we called it). However, I was adamant about that commercial job I wanted so I declined. My boss did not mind, because I was providing the analysis anyway.

Then, there is the production work. It is imperative that any side project does not compromise your productivity in your billable/production work. I still remember the first few months at work when I was trying to play smarty pants. My boss knew very well that I was just curious and passionate about different things, but as my boss, his mandate was to direct my energy and passion toward the current project’s objectives. He asked me straight in the face:

“Yaser, do you still want that job? It does not seem you are interested in our project.”

“If you want to be considered for other projects, you have to prove you are reliable, to the point that I can trust you with different responsibilities!”

From that point, I collaborated with my amazing team lead to have a granular follow up on my performance and apply methods to become the most productive engineer in his team, and I did it!

I even held lunch-and-learns with my team on the different ways to become more efficient and about some things I read on my personal time. To my teammates, I was a machine! As for me, I didn’t think I was doing anything extraordinary, I was just utilizing my time efficiently; it is crazy how many books one can read through the one hour commute each way in the metro. If you do not take the metro or train, and must drive to work, I highly recommend buying the audible version of your favorite books, you can finish the whole thing in less than two weeks depending how long your drive is every day.

And this is how you become, the rockstar!