Situational Awareness at Work — Four Habits That Will Change How You See Your Career

Hi there. Welcome to "The World of Work." Have you ever been on a walk or out driving and you see somebody walking their dog and their head is totally on their phone? And not just for a second, but for a whole section of their walk. You're watching in amazement that they're walking in the right places.

I've seen people in my neighborhood riding motorcycles, scooters, bikes. I've seen children, 12-year-olds, on those scooters that they have, without a helmet, zipping along with a phone in front of their face on the sidewalk. It's not safe. I get it — I've done the same thing. I get the impulse. My dog's sitting right down there. I've been on walks with her, and I'm thinking, "Oh, man, did I send that message?" Or, "Have I got that message yet?" Or whatever. And I'm checking my phone as I'm walking my dog, and somebody's probably driving by going, "That guy's not situationally aware." Well, yeah, you're right.

Situational awareness is important to the military because it saves lives. They are, in some contexts and places, being hunted. They are in danger, and they are not gonna receive a loud announcement with plenty of time for them to react when something dangerous happens to them. They have to notice and feel and see before. Even a few seconds before can make the difference between life and death.

So it's less extreme, but it's true in your career. Situational awareness in your work, in your career, makes a difference. So I'm gonna give you four habits that I think you'll thank me for later.

Number one is paying attention to the economy. Know where the economy is and have a sense of where it's headed. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to be an economist. You don't have to sit and build spreadsheets of data and analyze all the trends and all that kind of stuff. Just listen to the news sources that you trust. Admittedly, there are fewer of those these days than there have been. I trust reporting from some places, and I read them, and I watch them, and I have a sense of where the economy's going. Look for things like what the government's reacting to, what the government's nervous about, what investors are nervous about and running away from. Those can be indications. But mostly look for news of layoffs or huge investments, new plants being built — that gives you some directional sense of where things are headed in the economy in your country.

Second: in a downturn, think about how your company, how your industry is going to react. So pay attention to what's happening in your industry and in your company. Every industry has a different response to a general economic downturn. Retail stores get nervous, and they worry about having too much inventory. We've seen what gas producers do when they're worried about a downturn, when they're worried about a supply shock — prices go up. So if you're in a job or you're even doing gig work, when you were watching the Iran crisis and war evolve and develop, one of the things that should have been in your head was gas, fuel. What's this gonna do to my prices? Because if gas prices spike and you're an Uber driver, that's gonna cut into your margin significantly. So know what you're doing and know how economic swings up and down affect you, affect your industry.

The third habit is more personal. It's more direct within your company and your organization. The other two are pretty broad. This one's very specific to you: learn how you are perceived in your organization. Some organizations try to do this formally. You've probably heard of 360-degree reviews, where they do a series of interviews with people that are associated with you. I've had those done before. They're very helpful, I think — they give a perception on strengths and weaknesses and how well you communicate and all those types of things, and some of that's not pleasant to read or hear, but it's how somebody sees you, and you can do something about things you know.

So ask your boss: How am I doing? And give me an honest answer. I know it's not review time, but I wanna know how I'm perceived by you. I wanna know how I'm perceived by my team, and I would appreciate an honest answer. That's rare. I've been managing people for many years, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times somebody came in and asked me those questions and asked for an honest answer. They get some of that in a performance review, but performance reviews are so structured, it's a little hard to hear the candor that comes from your boss in those situations, 'cause you're braced for what's the economic impact gonna be of this. But if you go ask for it — how am I doing? how am I being perceived? — and you get an honest answer, maybe the honest answer is, "Really well. You're really valuable to us. We wish you would do this a little more often." That's extremely valuable for you. It's great to know. And check in with other places, other departments you connect with, and get a sense of how you're perceived and what they think of you.

I practice this myself. One time when I was exploring these questions, I learned that a group of developers really, really didn't like me, and they thought I was the reason for all the pressure they were feeling for the last six months on all of their initiatives, some of which were from my team. But I wasn't putting that kind of pressure on them. I think maybe their product manager or their boss deflected to that jerk up there that's pressing on, "You better do this or I'm gonna get creamed," or whatever. For whatever reason — and that doesn't matter as much as the fact that they just had some tension, some anger, some frustration with me personally. They didn't like me because I was the reason they were getting so much pressure.

Well, I could do something about that. So I started taking them pizza. I started taking them sodas and sitting down with them when they finished a sprint or when they finished a release of something that was really useful to my organization. I spent time with the group and said a simple thank you — this is what this kind of work has done to help my team. Here's a couple of examples of why it's been a big deal for us. So thank you. And if I've made you feel like we're sitting up there yelling and wishing you would work harder, and every time you're at lunch we're thinking, "Ah, there's another week for my project to be released because this guy has to eat" — so I was joking with them about it.

And between the food and the listening to what their work is like and explaining how important the initiatives were to me, the relationship changed. And I took away some things: we probably aren't being very effective at communicating how this affects the business when we send up requests for projects to be moved into their queue. So there was a lot of things to learn, and I needed to learn some things and make some changes. So some of it's perception, and some of it's — I'm responsible for part of how I'm perceived, and I have to do something about it, and I try to do something about it. So that's a great habit. Be situationally aware of how you're perceived in your organization, and then you can act on the things that you know.

The fourth element is: lift your head and pay attention to how the rest of your organization is doing. What departments seem to be thriving, what departments seem to be hustling and moving and getting lots of attention from the executives, and which ones seem to be slowly dying and being starved of resources. That tells you a lot about where the company's headed or what it's missing.

But overall, all of these things are ways for you — like the military trains on — for you to see opportunities and for you to see danger. So practice these things. You'll thank me later. Hit like and subscribe. We'll see you on the next video.