Finding Your Highest Point of Contribution

One of the biggest necessities in product development is zooming out on the big picture and getting stuck in the details. To do all of these things, both of these things must be done together, separately, and in proper proportion.

🖼️ The ‘big picture’ means creating a strategy that envisions where you want to go and the high-level of how to get there; creating a vision and story that brings people along for the journey and envisions value. The big picture is about busting through the mountains in your way and thinking about a situation from a bird's-eye perspective.

Alternatively, a strategy without insight into the details can land you in a place where there is talk without action or innovation is divorced from reality 😵‍💫. In building from the ground up, you’ll learn a lot along the way which may revolutionise your perspectives. You must constantly ground that against adapting your perspective and not being easily swayed from your goals.

Being willing to get stuck into the details means reflecting on reality and the real-world challenges facing how you get there.

🔎 Zooming in means asking questions about what a user really needs, not just how they might receive your idea. It means digging into what good looks like at stages within your process as well as that big-picture view.

The extra layer of challenge? Capacity.

Time capacity is one of the biggest constraints, as is skills capacity, but there’s also our mental and emotional capacity.

I want to challenge you to consider this concept:

❓What is my highest point of contribution?

Unpacking the concept

What does it mean to identify your highest point of contribution?

1️⃣ First, this means honestly assessing your skill level and strengths. Consider what technical or transferable skills you bring with you from other contexts.

The majority of people these days do not start and end their careers in the same role or progression path. As people and industries evolve, you might find your possibilities and career paths vary. While this reflection exercise should not be the same as rewriting your CV, consider the traits you would highlight from your past roles that you think have best served you.

Another element of this is considering the skills you would highlight because you enjoyed them and would like to continue using or building on those skills versus the skills that you would like to downplay and use less of in future (even if you are skilled at them).

2️⃣ Next, consider your ways of working. I found the exercise of creating a personal ‘user manual’ of the ways I worked a valuable tool for self-reflection as much as for communication of my preferences.

I have known some consultants to provide these user manuals to new clients that they're going to be working with extensively alongside their contractual expectations. My user manual covered:

• Communication preferences including meeting preferences or structured ways of sending email/Slack/Teams requests and favourite emojis or GIFs to show some personality

• Feedback preferences- the ways I typically give and like to receive feedback or critique

• Work cadence and an overview of my ideal environment or the places/times I work best

• An overview of key values that are important to me or ways to get me on board with a new idea

• Areas I struggle with and how I cope or am working on these

• Areas I thrive

Now, take a look at these two reflection areas like a Venn diagram. Look for the places where you're underlying skills and expertise best overlap with the ways you like to work. These are the areas where your impact and efficiency will soar.

That overlap in the middle is where your highest point of contribution is going to start to emerge.

3️⃣ The final step in defining your highest point of contribution is to understand the level at which you are now and where your goals or aspirations are leading you.

For example, maybe you want to lead people or be a manager. You have a passion for the interpersonal dynamics of a team and get your energy from supporting others, 1:1 meetings, and bringing people together.

The final lens to determine your highest point of contribution is understanding when you are or are not best placed to be doing something. Maybe you love those things but get easily overwhelmed by your own day-to-day tasks or spend too much of your time travelling to make 1:1 meetings a priority. Maybe you want to lead people but have never done it before and feel you might need to start small or seek support as you attempt this new role formally.

Bringing together these three areas is where you can identify your highest point of contribution. This should be the guiding force to where you spend your time or energy. You might use this to help you clarify your role, prioritise what you say yes to, or identify where you fit into a new product dynamic.

Changing the picture

Can you juggle all the balls and spin all the plates? I’m sure you can. Can you do all of these things well, all the time, AND still enjoy it? Probably not.

Identifying our highest point of contribution means understanding where we can bring our best personal strengths and styles to the process, and where we are best placed to make an impact.

Even if I can do a task, if it takes me away from something else where I could have a bigger impact it’s probably not the right place to be spending my time. Understandably, there are inefficiencies in every system. Sometimes you need to have that meeting, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s at a very efficient time in your calendar.

Sometimes you need to do some admin work, even if someone else does it faster. But your highest point of contribution should be where you spend the majority of your time or energy and should help you prioritise what you say yes to, what you delegate, and what gets dropped altogether because it isn’t serving you or anyone else.

Now, look back to our challenge of zooming in and out.

❓ At what level of granularity or ‘zoom’ is your highest impact?

Do you gravitate to the big picture ideas or the operational details? Do you find yourself spending much more time in one aspect or the other out of necessity or preference?

As a solopreneur or consultant, you may not have as many opportunities to ‘opt out’ of being in all of the layers at points in time. This doesn’t mean that you can’t utilise this mindset. Some ways you might adopt this thinking:

• Join a community like the Candid Community, using your diverse connections to help you learn and grow. This might include finding a mentor or peer synergy.

• Prioritise your highest point of contribution and bring on fixed-term consultants to help you. It may not feel like you can afford to hire someone else but consider if there are long-term gains in paying someone to help you with something that isn’t a high value of contribution and replacing that time with something more valuable. Accelerating your impact might mean that there are gains. This might mean hiring an accountant to help submit your taxes or using a graphic designer to help develop your logo.

• Time block and consider how to adapt your schedule to give you optimum levels of focus time on these areas of highest contribution, saving other aspects for Fridays or afternoons (or whatever your lower energy timetable looks like).

• Saying ‘no’. Sometimes you have to say no to something in order to say yes to something else.

Spending the majority of time bringing your highest point of contribution means you’ll find your days are more enjoyable, productive, and impactful.

Share your highest point of contribution reflections with us or find ways to get involved and navigate away from divided attention and lowered-impact efforts.