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60 61 62<h2 id="a-personal-kpi">A personal KPI</h2> 63<p>When you make plans with a friend, you have in mind the likelihood that they flake out or show up late. You can make an educated guess if your flatmate will actually wash those dishes tonight like they said they would. There is a dimension that all of us consciously or subconsciously assess each other: Reliability.</p> 64 65<p>This is especially true at work, and might even be codified in performance assessment frameworks. Regardless of whether or not itâs written down, othersâ perception of your reliability score in my opinion has a huge effect on your career. Opportunities tend not to go to people who canât be trusted to get stuff done.</p> 66 67<p>Knowing this, what can I do about it? Treat your reliability score like a KPI. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures of success. Typically they are used to measure progress towards goals in organisations or the health of systems. Treating reliability as a quantifiable measure will give us structure and ideas about how to improve it. So first we need to define reliability:</p> 68 69\[\frac{\text{Things you get done on time}}{\text{Things you say you'll do}} = \text{reliability}\] 70 71<p>Simplistically, say youâll do 20 tasks by Friday, and do 20 tasks by Friday - 20/20 - and you get the perfect score: 100%. Get none done, 0/20 and youâre at the bottom of the scale 0%. The variables in the equation hint at how you can improve your reliability.</p> 72 73<h2 id="three-levers">Three levers</h2> 74 75<h3 id="do-more-things">Do more things</h3> 76<p>One way to game this number is to just do more. Regardless of the number of things you donât get done, every extra task you do on time improves this ratio. However âjust do more workâ is pretty awful advice, and people who do commit to this path of improving their reliability often fall into the âhero cultureâ antipattern of siloâing and burnout.</p> 77 78<h3 id="do-fewer-things">Do fewer things</h3> 79<p>âDo less workâ seems like a bit of a poisoned chalice of career advice. Itâs easy to think that your manager or coworkers will think less of you, or consider you underperforming if you suddenly just pick up less work. But think of the effect unreliability has on others. Repeated unreliability will have your stakeholders consistently checking up on you because they cannot trust your estimates. Thatâs stress and overhead for them and justified micromanagement for you. Committing to less might actually increase the overall team output as your increased reliability frees up coordination time from others. As you grow you can increase the tasks you can reliably manage over time.</p> 80 81<h3 id="control-what-is-on-time">Control what is âOn timeâ</h3> 82<p>Most deadlines and estimates are made up, or at least wildly wrong when first set without context. Proactively setting/updating the stakeholders of your tasks to expectations of when âon timeâ is, will help move the goal posts and keep you on the reliable list. The lead time you need for moving the due date is often proportional to how much you need to move it, no one wants last minute excuses why youâre 3 weeks late on a deadline due tomorrow. Constantly changing estimates is also undermining so apply this advice judiciously and ensure itâs <a href="/directionally-correct">directionally correct</a>. Taking control of when things are due gives stakeholders confidence you are on top of project management, require less babysitting and will be proactive early on when things start going wrong.</p> 83 84<h3 id="the-secret-fourth-lever">The secret fourth lever</h3> 85<p>Just get better at organising, tracking and doing your work. Easier said than done.</p> 86 87 </div><a class="u-url" href="/reliability-equation" hidden></a> 88</article> 89 90 </div> 91 </main> 92 93<footer class="site-footer h-card"><div class="related-posts wrapper"> 94 <h3>Some more writing</h3> 95 <div class="footer-col-wrapper"> 96 <div class="footer-col"> 97 <h3> 98 <a class="post-link" href="/directionally-correct"> 99 Directionally Correct 100 </a>
101 <span class="post-meta">Tacking towards good, not perfect straight away </span> 102 </h3> 103 </div> 104 <div class="footer-col"> 105 <h3> 106 <a class="post-link" href="/getting-feedback-is-a-skill"> 107 Getting Feedback is a Skill 108 </a> 109 <span class="post-meta">How to get people to give you feedback </span> 110 </h3> 111 </div></div> 112 </div><data class="u-url" href="/"></data> 113 114 <div class="wrapper"> 115 116 <h2 class="footer-heading">Jon Finerty</h2> 117 118 <div class="footer-col-wrapper"> 119 <div class="footer-col footer-col-1"> 120 <ul class="contact-list"> 121 <li class="p-name"> 122 <!--Jon Finerty--> 123 </li><li><a class="u-email" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></li></ul> 124 </div> 125 126 <div class="footer-col footer-col-2"><ul class="social-media-list"><li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanfinerty"><svg class="svg-icon"><use xlink:href="/assets/minima-social-icons.svg#linkedin"></use></svg> <span class="username">jonathanfinerty</span></a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/jonfinerty"><svg class="svg-icon"><use xlink:href="/assets/minima-social-icons.svg#github"></use></svg> <span class="username">jonfinerty</span></a></li></ul> 127</div> 128 129 <div class="footer-col footer-col-3"> 130 <p>The personal site of Jon Finerty. I write here. I work for Isometric. Find me on LinkedIn if you want my credentials, or email me if you want to reach out.</p> 131 </div> 132 </div> 133 134 </div> 135 136</footer> 137</body> 138 139</html>
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