How to distinguish a job well done: key requirements for effective professional performance
The film 'The Last Shift' shows how silent and competent work makes a difference on a daily basis
4' min read
4' min read
What does it mean to work well? In other words, what does it mean to do one's job well?
The question opens up a myriad of possible answers, ranging from the more basic and didactic ones such as, for example, performing one's duties as per the role, respecting rules and people, achieving objectives and so on to the more topical and trendy ones, which also include aspirational aspects, personal mission, etc.
This would result in answers that are at best obvious, and at worst perhaps rhetorical and seemingly inconsistent with reality.
Instead, if we wanted to take a shortcut, we would simply have to think of all those situations in our daily lives in which we actually come into contact with people who are working (at the airport, at the doctor's, at the supermarket, on the phone with a call centre, at the bank, at the bar, etc.). Here, in each of the many so-called moments of truth (i.e. those in which our satisfaction as users or consumers is determined) we would be perfectly capable, intuitively and certainly from our perspective, of discerning work done well from work done less well (or even badly).
The sense of my reflection so far is very simple: often, when we talk about work and jobs, the most diverse, we really run the risk of discussing in a dangerously abstract manner skills, attitudes, ambitions, interpretations when in reality it would be sufficient and definitely very important to talk about what it means to work WELL, leaving out those situations that are statistically less frequent (both positive and negative) even if, understandably, more interesting from a media point of view such as the startupper who conquers the world from his garage and therefore gets people excited or the dishonest employee who stamps but does not work and outrages everyone else.
