Manage your input to improve your output

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Today, I’m writing about the most important professional development activity no one talks about.

We’re rightfully focused on the upshots, results, and outcomes because, as writer Ted Giola shares, “Your boss will evaluate you on your output.”

He continues:

I agree with Ted. Here’s why.

How we respond in any situation (in a meeting, in an exam room, in conversation, in solving a problem, …) is constrained only by whatever we think are possible responses.

Let’s call those possible responses ideas. So what we're talking about when we talk about input are ideas … and our jobs require ideas, specifically for the purposes of applying ideas to solve problems. And the ideas we're familiar with? Well, they’re a function of what we’ve been exposed to: that’s input.

What makes input essential is that input eventually becomes output, the stuff we get evaluated on, through a mystical combination of learning, thinking, and applying.

“If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write,” writes Stephen King in his book On Writing. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” he adds, “There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

While we aren’t writing novels, our work follows the same no-shortcut approach King uses for his. When we're exposed to new ideas through input, which can be happening all the time when we’re open to it, we're collecting new stimuli for approaching the problems we're working on.

And new stimuli are especially important in our complex operating environment marked by constantly changing ... everything—new regulations, new competitors, new employees, new services, new initiatives, new cultural movements, new, new, new … all this novelty creates: brand spanking new problems.

When every problem is a brand spanking new problem, that's not to say every problem is a problem we've never seen before, it means the problem has never been solved in a particular context. It’s also not to say the way we do things now isn't going to work, or that everything we've ever known gets tossed out the window, or the training that we attended three weeks ago is useless; it is to say that in complexity every situation is context-specific and making progress is always a function of context and … your ideas.

That’s a lengthy paragraph explaining the constant novelty all around us makes attending to our input system an extremely important work responsibility, right up there with showing up every day to do the job. When the work is changing, when our profession is changing, when the operating environment is changing, heck, when the world is changing and as knowledge continues to progress, we can ill-afford idea complacency.

So input is the steady stream, some might even call it a system, of: books, podcasts, movies, research articles, television shows, magazines, blog posts, LinkedIn updates, presentations, news articles, events, conversations, webinars, experiences, museum exhibits, newsletters, trainings, internet searches … input is anything and everything else that might relate here, both healthcare focused and not … and it’s also worth explicitly stating that input comes to all of us through the actual experience of working—from the meetings, emails, projects, collaborations, initiatives, and the rest.

Input exposes us to the ideas we need that help us formulate novel approaches to the new problems we’re working on. That makes input vital because—and choose any metaphor that makes sense to you—it holds the potential to add ingredients to your pantry, colors to your palette, tools to your toolbox …

On top of that, input helps us change what we believe, how we think, and what we do—hopefully toward wisdom—which is especially important as we work toward designing Worthy Work. To get a little meta here, input is the reason I discovered the workplace experience in our organizations doesn’t have to have a 1:1 correlation with job suck, and it is input providing the continuing emergence of a solution.

All that to say: input is critical to adaptation, responsiveness, and change.

We know the importance of staying up to date and in the know when it comes to what’s happening in our industry, professions, and specialties. This flow of information contributes to continuous learning and professional development. Yet, in the hustle of daily work life, we often overlook an important truth: the quality of our professional output is linked to the quality of our input.

All of this makes input, the things the boss doesn't see, vital to our output, the things the boss uses to judge our performance. “Problems of output are often problems of input,” writes author Austin Kleon, “If your output isn't where you want it to be, try working on your input.”

So if that’s the case, or suspect it might become the case, now’s a good time to refresh or improve your input stream. As life outside of work gets busier, as our careers progress, as we become subject-matter experts, as we pay less attention to professional groups, as we head to the social feeds for the dopamine hits … our input systems tend to both calcify and decompose.

Yes, the output we contribute to is important. But calcifying and decomposing input can only mean: calcifying and decomposing output. So do yourself a big professional development favor: pay attention to your input, because it’s the source of your output.

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

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Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on we’re working through.