In business, a company will hire people to perform a variety of tasks. These tasks are necessary to reach the goal of the whole – “the big picture.” When asked what the individual does, they often focus on the task or job title. When asked, “What do you do?” the individual will say, “I am a DBA” or “I am a product manager for coupon products.” The individual does not see themselves delivering the end product; for example, “moving freight from sender to receiver,” “getting the largest possible tax refund for our clients,” or sometimes even “connecting buyers and sellers.”
I can hear it now, “he is a DBA,” or better still, “I am just a DBA.”
Well, let’s say you work for an advertising company. You work on the database that stores the ads and sends them to Internet search sites. The search sites don’t read your database in real-time; rather, the ads are extracted by another team and sent to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. If the database is down, the ads don’t get sent; the buyers and sellers are not connected. Sounds pretty important to me. You are not just a DBA; you connect buyers and sellers!
Do you have a direct line of sight to how you fit into your “big picture?” Don’t minimize your value, be proud of it. Personalize your big picture but start saying, “I connect buyers and sellers by managing the databases used to put ads of advertisers (sellers) online for the consumers (buyers) to find them.” Take yourself out of the equation, “Without what I do, the buyers would not see the sellers’ ad and thus never get connected.” Like I said before, sounds pretty important to me!
Do it now; personalize your “big picture.”
Until next time!
Dr. Dave