How to Raise The Bar

At Amazon there are a number of internal communities. Like any other large company, you’ll find similar setups here at Amazon as well. However, one thing that I have found unique is the concept of a Bar Raiser at Amazon and the associated communities. For example, there is such a community for hiring, writing and so on. The bar raiser community is a group of passionate, strong, seasoned, and well-calibrated Amazonians who will insist on the highest standards.

While I am not a bar raiser yet at work, I am certainly passionate about becoming one in the future and that story is for another day.

I recently embarked on a new project at home and that’s to complete a series of wall paintings. This series of projects has not only taught me a new skill but improved focus, precision, and patience. It really taught me how to raise the bar on my own work. As a shameless plug, I am sharing the pictures of the project that were completed so it resonates with the story I am telling.

To bar-raise your own work, you need to do the following.

• A constant reminder to always start with the customer - The concept of working backwards is a well-known standard to deliver an outcome that’s bar raising. It’s such a critical step to be able to deliver on bar raising outcomes. On the painting projects, I realized how important it was to start with my customer and align with them for all other reasons that come next.
• Step back and understand the requirements clearly - Missing out on the requirements is another reason for not delivering what your customer wants. And as such we fail to raise the bar because we missed out on what the customer wanted us to. I missed out on a couple of such minute requirements that led to rework.
• Always break it down - While working on the painting project, I realized it’s best to break down a large effort into a set of granular tasks. I realized that the more time I took to understand the customer's question, the better the outcomes were.
• Experiment and don’t settle for the mediocre - Painting re-emphasized and reinforced my belief in experimentation. Experimentation is such an important aspect of any project without which you cannot raise the bar. Experimentation leads you to fail and then drives you to succeed, slowly but surely. I conducted several experiments along the way with the painting projects and in this process had so much fun with the failures.
• Get feedback, early, often, and iterate - When I started on the first painting project, I did it one shot only to realize I missed out on some fine details of what the customer wanted. As I took on the subsequent projects, I realized I need to have a tight-knit feedback loop.
• Organize small sprints and package a break in between to re-engage better - The human brain’s attention span is limited. I realized working on the long projects that my outcomes were much better when I organized my work in smaller sprints with adequate breaks in between. The breaks helped me reorganize my thoughts and drove better engagement all of which leads to bar-raising work.

Do you have any other tips for raising the bar of your own work? If so, please drop me a comment!?