I hired one of our first employees at Bland to be an SDR. For several months he did basically none of that, and I was working out how to let him go.
What I didn't know was that he'd been quietly working three accounts himself. He'd decided that closing those three mattered more than the outbound I kept hounding him about. Then he closed our biggest deal, and then the next one (Everyone at Bland knows exactly who I'm talking about. He knows I'm writing this. He has not asked to read it first, which is very on brand.)
He hasn't had a task assigned to him in a long time. He does more or less what he wants, and I'm fine with that. He figured out before I did that he'd rather catch the snitch than score hoops.
He found his golden snitch
I. The Rules
In Quidditch, a goal is worth ten points. Catching the snitch is worth a hundred and fifty and ends the match. Fifteen goals at once, and no time for the other team to answer. Unless you're far enough behind, you've won.
There are results like that at work. For an AE, there's a deal big enough to make the year's quota on its own. Close it and the question of whether you'll hit quota is settled. For an engineer, it might be cutting the cost of running the product enough to make the business profitable. For an FDE, getting a customer to expand from one team to the whole company.
These aren't just unusually productive weeks. They're results big enough to settle the thing you were trying to accomplish.
That's your snitch. You should know what it is.
II. It Looks Like Work
The chaser is visibly busy all match. The seeker is circling, looking, apparently doing nothing. If you didn't know the rules, you'd assume the chaser was the one earning their keep.
That's why my hire looked like a problem. Outbound is countable. You can put it in a spreadsheet and review it Monday. Three accounts he was quietly working didn't show up anywhere until they closed.
I wanted customers. I'd assigned him outbound because I thought that was how he'd help us get them. He'd found another way, and I was so busy checking whether he was doing what I'd asked that I nearly missed it.
It's easy to make this mistake from either side. As an employee, you can spend your whole week responding to requests. There's always another one, and someone is usually pleased when you finish it. You can go a long time without asking what all this work is supposed to add up to.
The snitch may never appear on your task list. Whoever writes the list may not have seen it either.
III. It Feels Unfair
Suppose you've been working hard, doing everything you're asked. A colleague seems to ignore half the assignments, spends months on something you barely understand, and then gets the praise and the freedom.
You put in more hours. Why do they get to choose their own work?
That reaction makes sense if you think the rewards are supposed to measure effort. We know what our own work cost us. We remember the weekends and the problems that ran long. We want those counted.
But a hundred and fifty points are a hundred and fifty points. They don't become worth less because someone else worked harder for ten.
If an engineer saves the company a million dollars in a month, spending six months on a feature doesn't necessarily make the feature more valuable. The effort was real. So was the million dollars.
This is easier to understand when you're the customer. If someone fixes your problem in an hour, you don't wish they'd taken a week.
It's also easier when you remember you're on the same team. You wouldn't want a teammate to pass up the snitch because you'd spent the afternoon scoring goals. You'd want them to catch it.
And once someone has found and caught it a few times, giving them freedom is a fairly practical decision. They've shown they can identify something worth doing without waiting for you to assign it. You want them to keep doing that.
IV. Finding It
In Quidditch, you know what you're looking for. At work, figuring that out can be the hardest part.
Try finishing this sentence: if I accomplish _____ in the next six months, it will be obvious I've done an exceptional job.
The answer should describe a result. “Work on infrastructure” doesn't. “Cut the cost to serve each customer in half without hurting reliability” does. Then check whether that result would matter as much as you think. Halving an expense that barely costs anything isn't a snitch.
A useful place to look is at something important that keeps failing to happen.
A customer likes the product but won't expand. They have a long list of feature requests, so you keep building features. But perhaps they need a second department using the product before they can approve a bigger contract. Finishing the first department's list won't get you there.
Learning that changes what you should do tomorrow. It may also make the work you've already done worth much more.
Talk to the people who depend on the result. Find out what is actually stopping them. Before spending six months on your explanation, see whether you can test it in a week.
And don't assume the snitch will be glamorous. It might be getting a deployment to work, fixing one persistent source of customer churn, or having a conversation you've been avoiding. What makes it the snitch is what happens when you catch it.
V. Winning
You can win on goals. An AE who makes quota through twenty small deals has made quota. Someone who does the ordinary work exceptionally well, month after month, can contribute an enormous amount.
But you have to know whether the goals you're scoring are enough.
You can be ahead for most of a Quidditch match and still lose when the other team catches the snitch. Being busy all afternoon doesn't change the final score.
The same problem shows up in a company that keeps signing customers and keeps losing them. Sales may be doing everything right. Everyone may be working hard. But if customers leave faster than you can replace them, doing more of the same won't be enough. Someone has to go after the reason they leave.
You can lose by never looking for the thing that would decide the game.
You can also lose by doing nothing else. Some people spend months “working on strategy” without getting close to an actual result. My hire was working three accounts. He had customers to convince and deals to close. Calling yourself a seeker doesn't put points on the board.
And even a catch isn't always enough. Krum catches the snitch in the World Cup final and Bulgaria still loses because they're too far behind (and yes, I said books. If you've only seen the movies reconsider your life choices).
If pursuing one customer costs you the rest of your business, closing them doesn't make it a good trade.
You should know your snitch even if you decide to keep scoring goals. You should have some idea of what would be worth dropping the next assignment for. Otherwise, it's easy to spend all your time on the work that arrives and never pursue the result that would make the biggest difference.
I nearly fired someone for making that decision better than I had.
I haven't assigned him a task in a long time. I still have plenty of things I'd like done. He's not going to do them. That's fine with me, because he's my seeker.
Blandly,
