[Tool] The Craft Impressivizer

TL; DR

I consider "Impressive Craft" (the "how" of your work) a critical contribution to being "Credible," as you may remember from other posts.

That's because even if stakeholders and others outside your team don't fully understand what you do, they will sure understand instinctively to what degree you master your craft. They might miss details. But people in organizations have a finely honed sense for impressive work overall. Nobody will respect you if they think you do crap work and merely reach good outcomes by luck and other people's efforts. It matters.

But how do you get there? And even if you feel that you are doing awesome work in some abstract sense, how might you know whether your craft is impressive even in comparison to other innovation teams doing similar work?

To check your progress toward gob-smacking impressiveness, gauge whether your work is:

• grounded in an open-eyed assessment of your team and situation
• selectively awesome
• embracing learning in an opportunistic, "as feasible, when feasible" way
• fast
• and efficient.