There are two ways to create value in your career.
Refine a system or break a system.
At the start of your career, your value comes from learning a system and improving it.
You follow a process, get good at it and get promoted to make others keep doing it.
Everyone starts here.
But over time, some people shift.
They stop being valued for fitting into a system and start being valued for breaking it.
Sometimes, that shift builds on the first method.
You may need to understand a system so deeply that you know exactly how to improve it.
Other times, what’s needed isn’t a better version of the old but an entirely new system altogether.
You can enjoy a very long career by fitting into a system and making gradual improvements.
But if you’re the type of person that wants to go beyond this, then you must keep asking yourself this question:
How am I learning to break things effectively?