P.I.E.

Why Doing Your Job Well May Not Be Enough

Newsflash:

How well you do your job may have far less to do with your professional success than you think.

That statement bothers people.

It bothered me.

Most of us were raised believing that professional advancement followed a relatively simple formula:

Work hard.

Become exceptionally good at what you do.

Let your work speak for itself.

Get rewarded.

Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Unfortunately, organizations don’t always work that way.

Harvey Coleman explains this reality through a framework called P.I.E.—Performance, Image, and Exposure.

The concept is simple:

Performance is what you actually do.

Image is what people think about you.

Exposure is who knows who you are and what you do.

Coleman’s provocative weighting of those factors is what gets your attention:

Performance: 10%

Image: 30%

Exposure: 60%

Think about that for a moment.

According to this model, the thing most professionals spend almost all of their time worrying about—doing the actual job—represents only a fraction of the equation governing professional advancement.

Now think about what Black professionals have traditionally been taught.

Things you will probably never hear a White parent tell their children:

“Hard work is its own reward.”

“You have to work twice as hard to get half as much.”

“You can’t do what those other kids can do.”

Those messages come from love.

They’re survival instructions.

Black parents have historically understood that their children may enter institutions where mistakes aren’t judged equally and competence isn’t automatically assumed. So the natural response is to emphasize performance.

Be better.

Work harder.

Know more.

Make fewer mistakes.

Give them absolutely no reason to question whether you belong there.

There’s just one problem.

Performance alone isn’t the organizational game.

Performance

Performance is the easiest part of P.I.E. to understand.

Can you do the job?

Do you deliver?

Are you technically competent?

Can people depend on you?

Those things absolutely matter. If you cannot perform, very little else will save you for long.

But Black professionals can fall into a trap here.

Because many of us have internalized the idea that undeniable performance will eventually force an organization to recognize us.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

You can become the hardest-working person in the department and remain the hardest-working person in the department for ten years.

Performance proves that you can do the job you already have.

It does not automatically convince people that you should receive the job you want next.

That’s where the other pieces of P.I.E. enter the picture.

Image

Image is your professional reputation.

When your name comes up in a room you’re not sitting in, what do people say?

That’s your image.

Are you viewed as competent?

Reliable?

Strategic?

Difficult?

Innovative?

Negative?

Calm under pressure?

Leadership material?

Do people see you as someone who solves problems—or someone who merely identifies them?

Image doesn’t necessarily mean reality.

That’s precisely why it matters.

People make decisions based upon perception every day.

And for Black professionals, perception can become especially complicated because traditional standards of “professionalism” often reflect cultural expectations that were established long before we entered the workplace.

Communication style.

Clothing.

Hairstyles.

Confidence.

Assertiveness.

Even tone of voice.

Behaviors considered “leadership presence” in one employee can sometimes be interpreted differently in another.

You cannot control every perception people have of you.

But pretending those perceptions don’t matter isn’t a strategy.

Exposure

Then we get to the biggest piece of Coleman’s model.

Exposure.

Who knows you?

Not who knows of you.

Who actually knows what you do?

Does your supervisor know your accomplishments?

Does your supervisor’s boss?

Do leaders in other departments know you?

Have decision-makers seen you present?

Have they read something you’ve written?

Have you participated in high-visibility projects?

If someone mentioned your name during a succession-planning meeting tomorrow, how many people sitting at the table could say:

“Yes. I know them. They’re good.”

That’s exposure.

And this is where the idea that your work should “speak for itself” becomes dangerous.

Your work cannot speak.

You have to make sure the right people know that the work happened—and that you were responsible for it.

I’ve participated in management discussions involving promotions and succession planning. Typically, somebody puts a candidate’s name forward.

My first thought usually isn’t:

“Can this person perform their current job?”

I generally assume they can. Otherwise, why are we discussing them?

Instead, my mind immediately starts searching for something else.

Do I know them?

Have I interacted with them?

Have I seen them brief?

Have I read their work?

Have other respected people talked about them?

In a nutshell:

Are they visible?

If the answer is no, that’s a problem.

Not necessarily because the candidate lacks talent.

The people making the decision simply don’t have enough information.

And therein lies one of the most important lessons in this entire book:

Being excellent and being known for excellence are not the same thing.

Black professionals are frequently taught how to achieve the first.

Far fewer of us are deliberately taught how to achieve the second.

So take a hard look at your career.

If Performance is only one piece of the equation, ask yourself:

Where are you spending 90 percent of your professional energy?

Because if your entire career strategy is “do great work and hope somebody notices,” you may be playing only one-third of the game.