Know The Vitals

Smarties can sum up what’s happening where they work in half a dozen words. They know its vital signs inside out.

Traditional medics are trained to relay a patient’s vitals at any given moment. You need to be able to do the same. The terms (and numbers) that drive your business should be imprinted on your brain and always ready to go.

Learn them. Understand them. Watch how they change, progress or retreat. Be prepared to reel them off whenever necessary without hesitation should someone ask you something.

Work vitals are not the difference between life and death, but they are crucial to your work and your relationship with it.

At the bare minimum, the vitals you should know about are: your organisation’s current values, vision and strategy, the problems it tries to solve, its leaders, its revenues (and targets and financial drivers, if applicable), stock performance (if applicable), what your organisation asks of its people and any big projects it has on.

Cherish the vitals – they’ll keep your career healthy, too. 

An excerpt from Harvard-endorsed book, The Smarts: Big Little Hacks to Take You a Long Way at Work, by Saj Jetha (Penguin 2019) available on Amazon.

Saj is founder of the multi-award winning The Smarty Train, a training and talent consultancy with a mission to unlock talent everywhere. www.thesmartytrain.com