Picture a Monday where you did not plan to have a conversation about yourself. A reorg lands you under a new manager. Or a layoff puts you in front of a recruiter. Or a new team means a first call with someone who has never seen your work.
The opening question is the same each time: what do you do?
Most people who are good at their jobs answer with a title and then a list. The list is accurate. It is also the version of you that is easiest to forget, because a list gives the listener nothing to repeat.
Here is the belief to look at. It says that your work will be understood if it is good enough. For a while that holds. Then the people deciding sit further from the work, and what reaches them is a description. The work is finished. The description is the thing still in use.
That is what compounds. Every time someone introduces you, recommends you, or defends your name, they use a description, and the next person uses theirs. If the description is a list, the list gets shortened by each person who passes it on. If it is a sentence, it travels as written.
The other half is timing. A description built before it is needed is built with your own evidence in reach and the people who saw the work still in the building. One built after the fact is built under pressure.
One thing to do this week: answer “what do you do?” out loud, in one breath, without your title. Record it. Listen to the first ten words.
Subscribe for the full essay and archive.
