Differentiating yourself in the workplace is no easy task. When you are an employee and have a job to do, it’s likely that you’re usually given a mandate and a task and asked to fulfill it. Most of those tasks and mandates have a clear path to succeed and accomplish them. In fact, you’re usually one of a few people who are tasked with that plan. Therefore, the execution of that plan is expected and there’s limited upside. In fact there’s usually more downside than upside in succeeding at a routine task in business. That’s why in real estate we see so many people tout their innovation efforts or their adoption of technology - they are trying to do things differently, more efficiently and in a way that makes them stand out. With innovation, there is no expected outcome, it’s a blind path.
Just as companies are looking to differentiate themselves, individuals are trying to as well. If you work for a large company and are in a role of specialization, your chances to differentiate yourself is rather limited. Sure, you can outwork your peers or produce a cleaner spreadsheet / deliverable but to really set yourself apart, you have to find a new path - one that others have volunteered to avoid. The playbook of those efforts have not been written before and it’s a chance to write it for your company.
So when a new initiative comes up, like deploying electric vehicle charging across your real estate portfolio, it’s an opportunity to make your name.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve met a handful of trailblazers in this category. These are people who not only believe in the electric future but seize the chance to build the playbook for their company. More often than not, they are younger people who have a long career runway and see this as one exemplar way to accelerate their standing at their company and build a narrative for their firm. The same opportunity doesn’t usually exist for someone who is tasked with selecting a property management firm or which set of water-reducing toilets they should select for the value-add component of their rental units. Those tasks have well trodded paths. Building the playbook on how to deploy electric vehicle charging at scale is more certainly the unbeaten path.
When you blaze the path, you become the go-to person internally who knows how to execute. You become the person that leadership looks to when more initiatives come up and they need a strong leader to go from zero to one. You stack a few of those efforts together and before you know it, you become not only indispensable but as Cal Newport puts it “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.”