Elevating from Grunt Work to Challenging Work
For my first project at my first job after college, I was doing desk research about the hunting apparel industry. This involved googling relevant news, blogs, and articles, then summarizing the key points. At the time, this task felt like grunt work because I did desk research regularly throughout college and did not feel like I could learn much more from this task. I wanted a greater challenge. Lucky, a senior team member pulled me aside and explained the level of research required and how my work would be impactful to the project. I then made a stronger push to genuinely learn both about the hunting industry and improving my own research methods. By continuously refining my research methods, I was able to learn from the research itself and execute more efficiently, thereby freeing up my bandwidth to take on more challenging roles.
Grunt Work
We all will likely have to do grunt work in some form or another during our careers. This article aims to help one elevate from grunt work to more challenging work. Grunt work is any work that we feel overqualified to do. So for each individual, there may be a different meaning. For a fresh college grad, it could involve data entry, making phone calls, or desk research. For an experienced engineer, it could be finding bugs in someone else’s code. For an executive, it could involve getting editing PowerPoint slides. Conversely, challenging work is any work that mentally stimulates us.
We can elevate from grunt work to challenging work by connecting the grunt work to its significance or understanding how it fits into the overall objectives. After making the connection, individuals need to actively find learnings from grunt work, regardless of the perceived simplicity. Lastly, we need to optimize the execution of grunt work, such that it can be completed correctly ahead of schedule.
Connect Significance
We need to find how our perceived grunt work fits into the grand scheme of the business in order to help fuel our motivation, produce a better final deliverable, and to better up-sell our capabilities for future work. Motivation often follows goals. If we are not aware of the end goal, it will be hard to feel motivated to do the grunt work. If we are not aware of the connection between the overall objective and our grunt work, we need to ask our manager or senior team members until this connection becomes clear. For the hunting apparel project, my desk research initially led to dead ends and I began to lose the desire to continue reviewing articles and press releases. Luckily after the senior team member connected the significance of my work to the project, I found a second wind, which tied ideas together to both fuel my motivation and deliver a better final report.
Through connecting significance, we will have produced a better final product. Understanding how our work ties to the overall objective will also help us up-sell our capabilities, which will lead to more challenging work. Take a look at these two resume lines:
- “Performed data entry efficiently”
- “Aggregated data that resulted in shifting business focus from X to Y”
Both bullets point towards an individual performing data entry, however, the latter demonstrates an understanding of the connection between grunt work and its significance. If we are able to understand the impact of our labors, we can then utilize these to up-sell our capabilities. Up-selling appropriately can lead to more challenging work either within the same employer or a different one.
Seek Improvement
Connecting significance will help us deliver a better product at the macro level. From a skills perspective, if we believe the work is beneath us, we may also believe that we cannot learn from it. And if we do not learn from our current work, we will not elevate our future work. Therefore, to obtain more challenging work later, we need to seek improvement now to learn from all tasks presented to us. While I was doing desk research on hunting apparel, I thought about the skills I could build within the realm of conducting research. I focused on improving my ability to synthesize and group ideas. After I polished this skill, I soon managed other people to do desk research for my review. But, if I chose to simply go through the motions of desk research and not actively seek improvement, I would likely impede my personal growth.
Similarly, we can seek improvement from any type of grunt work. For data entry, one can learn more Excel shortcuts, algorithm writing, or data analysis. For repetitive outbound (e.g., sales) phone calls, one can learn what pitch styles are more effective, how to read someone’s hesitation, or how to get connected with the ultimate decision maker more quickly. An engineer reviewing another engineer’s code, can learn different and potentially more efficient approaches to solve the same problem. An executive editing slides can learn how to develop more concise and powerful messages.
Optimize Execution
We can now use the knowledge we gained by seeking improvement to optimize the execution of the grunt work. Our objective is to reduce the amount of time required to complete the task. Once we have completed our tasks ahead of schedule, we should have additional bandwidth. Assuming our final product is of suitable quality, we can then have a discussion with our manager to mention our tasks are completed and can help in additional areas. The additional work will help further accelerate our learning. If our manager cannot provide additional tasks that are meaningful, we can utilize the extra bandwidth to improve our expertise, either deeper in our existing work or new territories. Becoming an expert in a given area will elevate our capabilities such that we are given more challenging work in the future.
For my hunting apparel project, I learned how to group together ideas and themes. The grouped structure made it clear what information was needed to build a complete argument. Since I knew exactly what was needed to build my argument, I was able to save time in my desk research. After finishing ahead of schedule, I offered to help with additional tasks and was given the opportunity to build revenue projections, which was a significant step up in responsibility.
If the individual responsible for data entry learned how to write algorithms, she/he can think about writing a script to automate the data entry process. If successful, this would save all data entry staff time and provide them the opportunity to elevate their work. If the individual conducting sales calls developed a pitch that results in a higher conversion rate compared to peers, she/he can start to lead by training others. If a software engineer is able to review code efficiently, she/he will free up bandwidth for more projects. If the executive improves her or his communication skills, other team members will grasp ideas more readily, saving time for everyone.
Challenging Work
Connecting significance will lead to greater motivation, better outputs, and ability to up sell ourselves. Seeking improvement will refine our skill set. Optimizing execution will free up bandwidth, which will then lead to receiving additional projects.
If we choose to seek connect significance, seek improvements, and optimize execution, our “grunt” work will be elevated. Once we choose to actively learn and improve from our work, regardless of the initially perceived level, our work will become challenging. No work is beneath us if we always seek to learn from all tasks. We could we doing basic research, data entry, code review, slide editing, or a perceived menial task, but if we approach it with the desire to improve, the task will be elevated to challenging work. Furthermore, after we execute efficiently, we should continue to receive additional new tasks that are increasingly more challenging. these may be higher level thought exercises or managing others through what we formerly perceived to be grunt work.
Are there nuances that I missed? If you have any comments or questions, feel free to respond below or connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow me on medium.com/@dhuynh2979 for future articles on leadership and management.
