Neil Gaiman presented a theory that there are three key aspects to succeeding in whatever you do:
- Being good
- Delivering on time
- Being pleasant to work with
The interesting thing about his theory was that he thought you only need two of these three characteristics to do well.
If you’re exceptional at what you do and you deliver your work on time, people can deal with a rude or annoying personality. If you deliver on time and people enjoy interacting with you, they’ll generally accept lower quality work. And if you’re great at what you do and you’re pleasant to work with, you tend to get some leeway if you can’t always deliver on time.
In practice, this seems to be mostly true. Although, there’s only so much slack that people will ultimately accept in any of the three categories, and the relative weight of each category is heavily dependant on the personality of the person with whom you’re working.
Obviously, the ideal situation is to be exceptional in all three categories.
Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikAb-NYkseI
-Brandon