Here’s something I used to hear about Derek Jeter: His defense wasn’t actually that great. Sure, he made lots of flashy plays on the balls he could get to, but his range — the amount of ground he could cover — wasn’t very good. There were actually fewer balls he could get to. Someone with better range would make all those plays, too, but you wouldn’t even notice them. They would look so easy as to be trivial. Meanwhile, Jeter, with his crappy range, had plenty of opportunities for plays that looked impressive, while producing effectively poorer results than average.
I’m not a baseball expert, so that could be an incorrect assessment of Mr. Jeter. But the general case rings true to me: Struggling with a problem and succeeding draws more attention than just taking care of the problem quickly and quietly. Same with causing the problem and then fixing it. Oof.
“We often reward people for solving the very problems they should have avoided in the first place.” – Shane Parrish
This is worth keeping in mind if you run a a team or a project or an organization: The work you notice isn’t necessarily the most valuable work being done. The folks whose good work you notice aren’t necessarily the ones doing the most valuable work.
In fact, pretty often, the folks you notice are the ones who care more about looking good than making sound decisions. They’ll deliver something quickly by taking shortcuts, and then draw even more positive attention by fixing the problems caused by those shortcuts.
