Recently I reflected on my professional career on things that I have done differently earlier on in my career versus now.
One thing that stood out is, that I practice the +1 mindset now.
The +1 mindset considers not just my views, but also the others that I interact with.
Early on in my career, I tend to question many decisions made by senior management, because I thought some of those decisions do not make sense.
Disgruntled, I felt. Why can they miss something so obvious, I thought.
”Why you wouldn’t use my ML model when it is shown to perform better than your Excel model?”
”Why can’t we do things the proper way, that may cost a lot but is more scalable over the long term?”
”Why do I have to do this support task? We should hire someone else to do it.”
As I progressed in my career and see the same issues popping up everywhere I go, I realized it may be due to my way of thinking and perhaps a lack of understanding of certain issues. I started to put myself in the shoes of my stakeholders, i.e. bosses, clients and cross-functional teams.
Then things start to get clearer.
”My ML model is performing well on these technical metrics, but they do not translate into actual metrics cared about by the business.”
”Business values need to be proven first to justify high costs, especially when we do not know if the tool will really be useful.”
”End-to-end ownership of a tool including post-deployment support gives a better understanding of the tool I developed. As the tool scales, maybe I can justify getting a support person to handle it.”
Soft skill – +1 mindset
