Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I remember clutching my "secret work notebook" like it contained the codes to Fort Knox. You know the one - where you write down all those precious processes and shortcuts that make you the "go-to person" at work. I thought being irreplaceable was the ultimate job security. Boy, was I wrong!

The wake-up call came during my vacation. I returned to 357 emails (yes, I counted) and a team that had been practically paralyzed because "only you know how to do this!" That's when it hit me - I hadn't made myself indispensable; I'd made myself a bottleneck.

Here's what happened next:

• My colleague Sarah needed help with a report I'd been doing for years
• My first instinct? "Well, it's complicated..." (translation: I'm scared you'll do it better)
• Then I remembered the vacation email nightmare
• Deep breath. "Let me walk you through it"

The funny thing? Teaching Sarah didn't make me less valuable - it made both of us better. She found ways to improve the process I thought was perfect. (Turns out, doing something the same way for three years doesn't make it the best way, just the familiar way!)

I had this mentor once who told me, "If you're the only one who can do your job, you're doing your job wrong." I thought he was crazy. Now I call him the Workplace Yoda.

My favorite teaching moment? When a junior team member asked about my "special" Excel formulas. Instead of giving my usual "Oh, it's just something I developed" (read: back off, these are MY formulas), I spent an afternoon showing him. A week later, he showed me three better ways to do the same thing. Talk about a humility sandwich!

Now I have a new rule: If I do something more than twice, I teach someone else how to do it. Not because I have to, but because:

• It forces me to understand it better
• Sometimes explaining why you do something makes you realize you don't know why
• Teaching others pushes you to grow (because they ask those annoying "but why?" questions)

The real plot twist? The more I taught others, the more valuable I became. Instead of being "the person who does that thing," I became "the person who helps everyone do things better."