Last month, I received something from my manager that I hadn’t received from him—a slight telling-off regarding a piece of work I did.

Long story short, I had to do some Excel analysis and create a competitor analysis deck off the back of that. I was struggling with some data analysis when it came to extrapolating some outputs and basically asked way too many questions to the point he just did it.

Now usually you’re told always to ask questions if you’re unsure about anything and need help, especially when starting out your career

That would make sense right?

But the actual truth is that while that may be true when you first start out your career, the ones who actually progress the quickest and fastest are those who go from asking questions to proactively figuring out the answer and solutions themselves.

I call this the ‘FIO Gene’ - Figure it Out Gene

My manager had previously progressed to Partner at McKinsey and one of the things he said helped him rise and always drums into me is learning how to proactively figure out solutions to problems. This is so important because it makes your senior colleagues’ lives easier and also gives you the reputation of a problem-solver - something companies love in employees.

In this case, I didn’t make his life easier and he had to spend 30 minutes of his precious time helping me with a task that he could have used on his own work.

With how pressed for time your senior colleagues and managers are with their multiple priorities, having the ‘FIO Gene’ will make you stand out from your colleagues by being a reliable individual and someone they know can work independently - 2 competencies that will turbocharge your career growth to senior positions.

So the key takeaway from this message? Always ask yourself ‘How can I sort this out myself?’ before ‘Let me ask for help?’

And no I’m not saying you should stop asking questions or for help, but develop of mindset for independent problem-solving