One “Small” Secret To Big Career Advantage

If I could offer you a seemingly “little” tip that could literally make a huge difference in your success over your entire career, would you take it?

If other people’s work is praised over yours, if they appear to make fewer mistakes, if they’re chosen for plumb assignments, they may not really be more talented than you. They may simply know how to use this one tip to stand out from the crowd.

It’s a fact of life that everyone makes mistakes. That’s a given. But it’s not an excuse! Basically there are two ways of dealing with this inevitable reality. You can check your own work, in which case you can probably find and correct about 99% of your errors before anyone else notices them. Or you can sit back and leave your mistakes for others to find. You will have to take the blame for them, and you will NOT go far in this life.

Any task is made up of three parts:
(1) Preparation, in which you review any instructions, plan your work, decide on methods, gather materials, etc.
(2) Do the job.
(3) Check to be sure you did it right. This should be an integral part of your work, something that comes automatically. Anyone who stops after Step 2 is doing only two thirds of the task.

Those who perform Step 3 are thought of as more talented, more thorough, more intelligent and certainly more trustworthy. They can be relied upon. Those who can’t be bothered with Step 3 are considered lacking in these qualities. Think about it: Who would YOU hire?

If you think for one moment, “I don’t have TIME to check,” you should know that, rather than saving time, omitting Step 3 wastes huge amounts of it. And worse yet, it also wastes the time of your supervisor, your clients, and everyone else involved in any project. Needless to say, none of these people appreciate that! It’s a good way to get everyone annoyed with you.

For example, I have six ads running in one particular online store, and recently I sent a list of revisions to be made to them. Only four of the six were revised correctly. This was very simple work involving adding two words to each of the titles. It would have taken only a moment or two. If the person assigned to make these changes had taken even ten seconds to glance back over the instructions after thinking the job was finished, that would have saved a whole second round of revisions. It took extra time for me, for the supervisor who had assigned the work and for the person making the revisions, who then had to review the instructions all over again and go back and do the needed work.

If you think this was such a small mistake that it would not make much difference, you should know that if this person worked for me, he or she would not even be considered for a promotion, since this person has shown a need for much supervision and is not nearly ready to supervise others.

I have assigned projects where as many as five rounds of revisions were needed, even though all the instructions were clearly stated in the first place and no changes required. A process that should have taken a day or two dragged on for weeks and swallowed up enormous amounts of everyone’s time.

Checking your own work means reviewing the original instructions to see if you missed anything, making sure no part of the job was omitted, making sure the work is up to your own standards, and looking at your finished product through the eyes of your intended audience, not just your own. In the case of written material, absolutely nothing leaves your desk until you have proofread it!

In Jay Leno’s weekly “Headlines” segment, millions of us used to laugh at the ludicrous verbiage that must have gone past a whole bunch of careless people in the process of actually getting printed and published.

But look on the bright side. You do have one ace in the hole. I have observed in many years in business that a very small percentage of people check their work, and if you are one of the few who do, you will stand out from the crowd.

For me, it is so built into my standard operating procedure that I do it automatically without having to remind myself. Any project would feel incomplete if I had not finished that last essential part. I urge you adopt that habit.

Continually practicing this over a lifetime can make the difference between remaining stuck in a dead end job and becoming a great success in all you do.

This article is from Susannah Lippman whose company, Alphasonics, has developed powerful, high tech subliminal CDs that can help you effortlessly create the super success you deserve in any field you choose. http://www.alphasonics.com

Copyright 2009, Alphasonics International