How to Be a Best Employee

Wouldn't it be great if we all could work at one of the 100 Best Places to Work For ? 

Every year, the list is studied for shining examples of leadership and corporate excellence. Every year, every one of us who isn't working at one of those places wishes we were.




But what if we turned that list inside out? 

What if we examined the heralded best company practices for and reverse-engineered them to see what it takes to be a Best Employee?




Here are five inside-out practices: best company practices covered within interviews with Best Places CEOs and a FastCo article as well as Best Place criteria — flipped to be from the employee's-responsibility perspective. (Not a complete list. More in future postings)...




HOW TO BE A BEST EMPLOYEE

(even if you don't work at a 100 Best Place)





1. Happiness is the new productivity.

That's the title of a speech given by Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder of MindValley.com, whose goal is to be the Best Company to Work For On the Planet! (Still not on the 100 list, but working on it. He's also one of the 100 Disruptive Heroes interviewed for Disrupt!)

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The happier you are the more you're in the productivity zone. And the best of the best work hard at keeping their people happy!

• SAS (#2) has consistently ranked as one of the top companies for years. CEO Jim Goodnight keeps his people happy by providing lots of benefits and perks.

• Zappos (#38) CEO Tony Hsieh says "Some companies talk about work/life balance. Our focus is on work/life integration, 'cause at the end of the day, it's just 'life'."

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, how does one become happy, stay happy? While the perks and atmospheres that the Lakhiani's and Goodnight's and Hsieh's provide are wonderful... Ultimately, every CEO, every parent, every religion, every self-help guru, and every coach and mentor will tell you the same thing: True happiness is not extrinsic (dependent on things outside of yourself), it is intrinsic (dependent on you, the choices you make, your values, your beliefs, your attitudes).

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Being a Best Employee. That means regardless of whether you work at a 100 Best company or someplace you really need to leave, you own your own happiness.

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2. Create your own growth opportunities.

China Gorman, CEO of Great Place to Work, says that the 100 Best offer nearly double the hours of on-the-job training to their employees as everyone else.

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, your must immediately your personal growth opportunities!

• Go to your manager or HR and get yourself into every training module and Lunch'n'Learn you can

• Become a member of LinkedIn and Google Hangouts and your favorite university discussion groups. If there's something you want to learn, there's already several groups sharing their best practices!

• Become a member of Khan Academy. Sign up for professional development and management coaching at e-Work, AthenaOnline or SoundviewPro. Or other alternative educational experiences like the Minerva Project and Draper University of Heroes. Study your ass off — for your career and for life and fun!

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Being a Best Employee. Ultimately, you are the sole owner of your own personal growth.

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3. Do your own succession planning.

All 100 Best companies are great at succession planning — nurturing and building the talent for next-level-up opportunities.

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, you should do your own succession planning.

• If you manage others, one of your primary responsibilities is training/coaching them to be your replacement. Making oneself replaceable is the goal of everyone who wishes to advance throughout the organization

• If you want more succession planning for yourself than your organization is giving to you, go to your mentor and others you respect and trust. Ask them for guidance on "stretch" career moves — those that will require you to develop new skills and take on new and challenging projects. Doesn't matter whether you take those on within your company or as freelance/entrepreneurial efforts — just do it!

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Being a Best Employee means not waiting for The Man to plan your next developmental moves. Plan them yourself.

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4. Live your values, no matter what.

China Gorman says the top ranked companies always do a great job of integrating their corporate values into everything they do — from hiring to their strategy to rewards and recognition. You need to do the same for you.

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, your values and principles and passions need to woven into everything you do! For example...

• Anyone who receives three or more of your emails: Would they get a sense of your passions, or sense of humor, or empathy, or whatever's important to you — as a person?

• Same thing for anyone who attends a few of your meetings?

• If you have an issue with the way something is being done — do you handle it in the same manner with as much determination and concern if it was about your family or your home or your own finances?

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Being a Best Employee means there's no difference or inconsistencies between your values and passions at work and your values and passions in your life. You practice them the same in both settings.

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5. Meritocracy rules!

Ideas matter more than seniority.  

Why is it that we all love viral music or videos or Pinterest pins or commercials — (where the idea and creativity and emotional reactions matter most) — and then when we go to work, many of us religiously follow hierarchical relationships and actions? That's not the way it is at the Best 100. In those places, the strength of great ideas and the willingness to make them happen is what matters. Not who reports to whom.

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, you need to start acting like ideas matter more than seniority.

• Alec Ross, who was Hilary Clinton's innovation and tech advisor, and is on most every Top 100 list of tech influencers, and who was a Top 100 Disruptive Hero, says "Audacity matters. If you have a measure of audacity and a willingness to be aggressive with your idea, that idea has a far great chance of finding a toehold at the tables of power. You don't need to go rogue. Just be very aggressive about your beliefs and be unabashed and don't necessarily follow the minutia of protocol — that's what's necessary to ascend."

• If politics rule at your place of work, hack a workaround

— Shop your ideas with the boss's friend and get him/her to present it to the boss

— Pull together a group of people who will sponsor the idea together, with you

— Do your homework, so you can make a compelling business case

— Make the case to pilot the idea at little to no cost

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Being a Best Employee means, as Ross puts it, having a willingness to get aggressive with your ideas — and being willing to ask for forgiveness more than asking for permission.