What Is “Great Work”?

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” —Steve Jobs

When you hear “great work”, what do you think of?

We say it quite a lot:

When an employee or peer completes a task with no obvious flaws, we often say “great work”.

When our peers or parents acknowledge a new skill we’ve learned or a certificate we’ve earned, we often hear “great work”.

We also hear “great work” when we consider massive feats of achievement, such as privatised space travel or creating a trillion dollar enterprise.

So what is it, changing the world, or meeting spec?

I’d argue that it’s personal: Work that represents the best of your thinking, and the thinking of those around you. Work that wasn’t just thrown together, but stretched you; even if it was a routine activity, you made it better and it made you better.

That makes “great work” an opportunity for everybody and anybody who chooses to engage in the act of creating from greatness. A deliberate decision made with every brush stroke, phone call or line of code.

Are you producing “great work”, or is meeting spec (or dismissing it as an opportunity for only a chosen few) okay with you?