Show your work!
I’ve always thought that my work would show for itself - so I just did it and took feedback as it came and didn’t stress about my position or promotions or titles. It didn’t occur to me that other people were actively showing what they had done at almost every stage.
I was recently speaking to someone who told me that they had a position where they would follow up with employees a few months after being hired. The men would always respond with, “Here are the things I’ve been doing.” The women would always respond with “Things are great thanks for asking!” I am so guilty of this!
When I consulted at NationBuilder this summer, one of the Lead Product Managers, Sally, asked me if I’d like to share what I had been doing with the company before I left. I looked over at my husband who literally works off of an ongoing slide deck that he’s always sharing with his team and said - of course, I should present at the staff meeting! Then I wrote this in crayon and put it on my bulletin board.
It seems so simple once you know how to do it - and it seems ridiculous that one wouldn’t know how to do it, but there is so much pressure to be humble, especially for women. As well as so much cringe at watching others self-promote. We have to get over it, I have to get over it.
First thing’s first - you need to keep track of everything you are doing. I hardly work in email anymore and it’s hard to keep track of successes on Slack.
I created two resources to share for helping organize what you are working on and have on hand to share with others.
The trick is to always be prepared!
A Trello Board - for your daily tasks & a Project Plan to organize bigger initiatives and track what has been completed and what you are missing.
Trello - Task Management
I’ve tried many to-do lists from a physical day planner to notes on my computer. I always head back to Trello - it’s free for a personal account (we even use it to organize our household we keep to-dos, receipts and important documents). Trello has an amazing blog and email list that can keep you up to date on new features and give you scores of examples on how to organize your board. For me I like to have a simple easy-to-visualize board where I can knock out my daily to-dos and pull up a filter of what I’ve worked on for each project quickly. My example is a personal board but there are so many options to add team members and create inboxes!
Here’s what my personal one looks like these days:
I know it says the name of the column three times but I love having the color big and bold to easily move cards around.
Here’s the one I made for you! You can copy the board to your personal Trello and start customizing!
Some notes!
I added the power up to repeat cards (you get one power up with the free version) you can create a daily task checklist that repeats every morning and repeating cards for meetings where you want to have easy access to documents each time the meeting comes up.
I have the OG Trello Card Counter Chrome extension that shows me how many cards are in each column.
Each quarter I make a new column to move my ‘dones’ into - that way I can see how much I’ve contributed quarter by quarter.
I added labels but definitely add more - there’s one that’s just ‘Highlight!’ for anything special you want to be able to filter for quickly!
If you are worried things will get lost in email or Slack Trello has an ‘email to board’ setting where you can forward emails and create cards, also you can copy/paste links to Slack conversations for easy reference.
A super-simple Project Plan in Google Sheets
A project plan in an indispensable way to track step by step where you are on a project and let your manager and team know where you need help and what is happening on schedule. This one is very simple so feel free to add columns with days to complete, other contributors, etc. I like to use these to not only share what’s happening with a project but also as a place to store all important conversations and documents so that I can always go back and go through them. It’s also a great archive document to leave for the next person who works on a similar project. Go over it in every 1x1 and every meeting you have leading up to the project’s completion!
Some notes!
This is another space where I like to add color and different fonts - if I’m looking at it every day it might as well be less-boring than a regular doc!
Google Docs also has a variety of templates and their own Project Plan you can start with in sheets that has some formulas built in.
Don’t forget to share and collaborate!
Invite your team and your manager to your boards and your plans.
Establish where you will be having conversations with your team - are they expected to answer an @ mention in a Trello card, respond to a comment in Google Sheets or just have an update at each meeting?
Share wins & losses and always be ready to make changes and update your processes!
Next steps?
When your project is complete or it’s time to present your progress you can take what you’ve organized and create a presentation or a walk through since you already have everything that you need!
Any other suggestions for keeping track of your work?
