{"id":624,"date":"2020-05-13T15:30:28","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T15:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klasternit.com\/?p=507"},"modified":"2020-05-13T15:30:28","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T15:30:28","slug":"dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d and other phrases professionals never use"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this article title I lied, because I implied that there would be other phrases besides \u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d that I would address here. To be honest, I did the best I could. So what\u2019s the problem?<\/em><\/p>\n

When people say they will do \u201ctheir best\u201d, it really annoys me. There is a lot packed into that little phrase, none of it is any good, and people who use it know this full well. They use it as a rhetorical tool to both lower expectations and wrest control from assessing outcomes of a task from yourself, the task owner, to themselves.<\/p>\n

People will say\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t be such a hard-ass, they are simply trying to say the right thing\u201d<\/em>. My retort is that no, words have meanings and people know full well what this phrase means and they use it purposefully; the intent and use of this word is at best useless and at worst goal-misaligned and counterproductive. By using it, you convey to someone that you can\u2019t really be relied on to accomplish tasks, nor are you even committed fully to that goal. This separates you from more mature professionals who never use this phrase (these are the same people you want to talk \u201cas if\u201d you were one of them, even if you haven\u2019t quite made it yet)<\/p>\n

Unknown<\/h3>\n

When you say\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ll do my best\u201d<\/em>\u00a0there is one, huge uncertainty there. What is your best? What if your best isn\u2019t good enough? What if your best isn\u2019t good at all? So if you need the report done by the end of the week or your team will all lose their jobs, would you rather have someone commit to getting it done or \u201cdo their best\u201d. But by tacitly accepting the benchmark of \u201ctheir best\u201d you implicitly agree that even if the report doesn\u2019t get produced and everyone loses their job, it is fine because the person did their best.<\/p>\n

Judging ourselves<\/h3>\n

Another problem I have is that when people say they will work to their best, they are implicitly empowering themselves to set the benchmark for performance or in other words, internalizing it. We are never the personal arbiters of our own success, no matter how much we may strive to acquire that level of control over our personal brand. In reality, our success, or failure, will always be a grade given to us by others based on our accomplishments. Said in another way, success is externalized. Factors, people, arbiters other than yourself will determine your level of success.<\/p>\n

In a work type situation, your success will be determined by your results, production, feedback, etc and ultimately aggregated and delivered to you by your superior. Whether you did your best, or worst, or anything in between is entirely immaterial. Trying to implicitly set a different standard, than direct feedback from your superior, is a classic example of goal misalignment. You need to embrace the fact that regardless of your effort, personal standards e.g. your best or any other concepts, that your success will be determined by someone else.<\/p>\n

Lowering expectations<\/h3>\n

The biggest reason people use this is to lower expectations. So that ultimately, if the task is a failure, they can say\u00a0\u201cOh well, I did my best\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and by that lowered benchmark claim to salvage some sense of success from the loss. By validating that across the company, everyone could be promoted just because, by their own internal benchmarks, which is that they tried their best. Production could slow, revenue could decline, profit could disappear and share prices can collapse, but as long as everyone is doing their best, collectively we can all rest easy. That isn\u2019t how business works.<\/p>\n

Ultimately businesses succeed as a whole, based on the collective micro-successes of all individual stakeholders. Success, not some ethereal concept related to effort, must be expected and achieved. There is no other substitute.<\/p>\n

Leadership disconnect<\/h3>\n

Leaders can\u2019t go to shareholders or investors and say\u00a0\u201cI will do my best\u201d<\/em>. They would get laughed out of the room, immediately after being fired. That same sense of expectations, at the top, needs to be implemented at every level in the organization, all the way down to the lowest ranking employee. When employees are simply required to do their best, but an organization as a whole must be required to succeed, there is a fundamental disconnect. Both dualities can\u2019t exist. To become goal-aligned, everyone in an organization must commit to the concept, at least, of meeting expectations and achieving results, even if, in reality, the expectations aren\u2019t always met<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article is part of the\u00a0\u201cLoser-words\u201d<\/a>\u00a0series<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article title I lied, because I implied that there would be other phrases besides \u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d that I would address here. To be honest, I did the best I could. So what\u2019s the problem? When people say they will do \u201ctheir best\u201d, it really annoys me. There is a lot packed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d and other phrases professionals never use - Centar NIT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d and other phrases professionals never use - Centar NIT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In this article title I lied, because I implied that there would be other phrases besides \u201cI\u2019ll try my best\u201d that I would address here. 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There is a lot packed […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Centar NIT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-05-13T15:30:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/0064-scaled-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1067\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Player\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Centar NIT\",\"description\":\"Biznis Inkubator\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/0064-scaled-1.jpg\",\"width\":1600,\"height\":1067},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/\",\"name\":\"\\u201cI\\u2019ll try my best\\u201d and other phrases professionals never use - Centar NIT\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-05-13T15:30:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-05-13T15:30:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/f8e1a3a563da5ad8d1603b9411ddfe37\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/dacu-sve-od-sebe-i-druge-fraze-koje-profesionalci-nikad-ne-koriste\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/f8e1a3a563da5ad8d1603b9411ddfe37\",\"name\":\"Player\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2432a6e4f305129918b0415f9c74b39a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Player\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}