Investing in you

On being a professional professional

Recently I needed rewiring work done at my house and called in an electrician. He duly turned up. Got out of his professionally sign-written van and opened the back doors. Inside was an Aladdin's cave of screwdrivers, wire strippers, meters, mains testers and insulated twin slip joint multi-grip pliers … or some such … all racked and ready to go.

This guy was a professional. He knew what he was doing and he had the tools to prove it.

And this set me thinking about what it means to be a professional in our industry.

I consider myself to be an IT professional. I'm sure you do too. However, while that may be what it says on the side of the tin, what does that mean when you take off the lid?

Being able to do your job well should be a given, so technical competence is right there at the top. Qualifications, certifications, testimonials and experience all demonstrate, in some way, what you can do.

A professional approach. Doing more than expected. Adhering to high values and principles. Managing yourself in a way that produces the results you're being paid for. Tick all of those things.

But what else? When it comes down to it, what’s the difference between an amateur and a real professional?

Steven Pressfield, best-selling author of ‘The War of Art’, for example, puts it down to one thing … habits. As he says: "An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones."

In other words, as a professional, you should always be pushing for incremental improvement. Sports people do it all the time.

British cycling went from nowhere to success under the leadership of Sir Dave Brailsford, who had “the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

Success, therefore, boils down to an obsessive focus on the smallest of details, that together produce winning gains. But do we do that as IT professionals? Probably not. Though it’s perfectly possible to affect change in this way.

Here’s a case in point. Some time back I asked myself: "What do I need to do to be the consummate professional?"

That led me consider how I used my time at my desk when developing software. If I could find time leaks and remove them, I would be more productive and effective as an IT professional.

After some research and investigation, I found one area for improvement. The number of screens you have on your desk. How many do you need to make a difference and to become more productive? Four. How many do you need for maximum productivity? Eight.

I currently have ten - a case of sub-optimal self-indulgence, I suppose.

While sportsmen address their weaknesses through practice, do IT professionals see themselves through the same highly-focused perspective? Maybe some do, but show most IT professionals the latest new technique or methodology, and they'll chase it as if it were a pretty butterfly. Unfortunately, that leads only to shallowness, not depth of understanding.

There's another aspect that to me sits alongside the need for constant improvement. As a professional you aren't in a simple transactional relationship. You have a duty of care to your clients to do the right thing. And doing what's right - being professional - can, and often should, entail saying "No".

"No. This engagement doesn't fit with my capabilities right now."

"No. You aren't ready right now as a company to hear what I have to say."

"No. Right now, your business doesn't yet 'get' what it needs to do."

Without a willingness to say 'no', you are just a gun for hire, when your role is to be up-front, showing others where they should go.

Say ‘yes’ when you should have said ‘no’, and you are likely to see the project through the prism of disappointment.

Saying ‘no’ is a gift you give both to yourself and your would-be client. It will make you available – both physically and mentally – for the things that are really vital to your business.

In other words, a professional should 'no' their limits.