Being a creative marketing professional who actually gets to create is harder than you think, especially when it comes to moving your career forward. Not all of us want to be managers or executives, but we all want to thrive in our chosen field. Throughout this series, “Career Advancement Lessons from Star Trek: Lower Decks,” I want to help writers, designers, developers, and other practitioners learn how to speak up for themselves and their craft. Our goal? To do remarkable work worthy of respect and recognition in the workplace.

The Character:

“Where do you want me to see myself in five years?” (“Hear All, Trust Nothing” –Lower Decks Season 3, Episode 6)

Welcome to our little go-getter. Ensign Brad Boimler is your classic over-eager, try-hard brown-noser. He wants to be the captain of his own ship one day, so he desperately tries to curry the favor and attention of senior leadership. As a student of Starfleet history, he knows that achieving big things and standing out is the standard way to advance his career.

However, he’s also totally naïve and optimistic about how things work. The opposite of an opportunist, he happily signs up for as many jobs as possible, no matter their big-picture import or long-term value. To Boimler, doing 110% for every task is the way to stand out, because simply doing the right thing and following procedures is the best way to gain the approval of his commanding officers.

To be clear, most creatives aren’t openly like this guy. We don’t want to be in charge one day. We tend to either keep our head down and just do what we’re assigned, or we push back against the suits who give feedback like “Make it pop!” However, we are like Boimler because we think doing a good job will be enough to get the attention our work deserves. Alas, that is rarely the case.

The Challenge:

Like any good rule follower, Boimler does a good job, but he also lives in fear of doing the wrong thing. His whole life has been about rules, regulations, book learning, and processes. It’s why he was initially assigned to the Cerritos instead of a flashier starship, much to his chagrin. His big problem? He finds any sort of parallel thinking or off-the-cuff strategizing to be beyond him. If he was supposed to approach a task in that off-beat manner, it would have been added to the manual already.

Hence, Boimler must learn how to trust his instincts and use a bit of moxie. Sure, we should follow the rules and laws most of the time, simply because humans need a strong social contract. But there’s a good reason that “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” can be a winning philosophy. As a student of Starfleet history, he should know that celebrated captains like Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway often went off book to complete a mission successfully.

For many creative types in marketing, we’re happy to have reliable full-time jobs, especially pnes that don’t require that we sit in meetings or look at spreadsheets all day. Hence, we are inclined to be quiet, do what we’re told, and go with the flow. Unfortunately, that means we are prone to be overlooked because we aren’t willing to take chances.

The Choice:

Boimler’s primary character growth throughout Lower Decks involved becoming more confident with his decision-making. He knew the rules. He loved the rules. But he had to learn when and how to adapt those rules to meet the demands of tricky situations. That didn’t mean becoming a rulebreaker like Ensign Mariner (whom we’ll discuss next), but it did mean learning how to be flexible and take each scenario on its own terms.

When he first joined the Cerritos crew, Boimler thought that following the rules would get him noticed. He eventually realized that “doing the right thing” was the easiest way to be ignored. Strictly adhering to the regulations is no different than getting a “meets expectations” on your company’s end-of-year review. He recognized that rules are guides, not commandments. More importantly, he learned how to discern when regulations that should have fixed a given situation were misguided at best and wrong at worst.

With that new perspective in hand, Boimler could make the hard decisions, especially when it came to taking care of a team. This led to promotions, awards, and recognition, the sort that could only come from people who could trust that he would do what’s needed. By trusting himself and believing in his own abilities, he could transcend mere regulations to become a valuable coworker and trusted leader. It also meant that he became more confident and secure in himself as a person, even if never he ever got a promotion.

The Change:

What does this mean for you, dear creative? Just because you don’t want to advance up the corporate ladder doesn’t mean that the lessons of Ensign Boimler don’t apply to you. You still want to get recognition and raises, right? Thus, you must learn how and when to step outside of your comfort zone if you want to get noticed. Coming in every day and doing amazing work won’t help you fly above the radar, no matter what you might think.

In my experience – since I have big-time Boimler energy – these changes can take various forms, including (but never limited to):

• Speaking up in meetings, specifically with productive feedback
• Volunteering to lead a project
• Submitting drafts that intentionally don’t meet all the terms of the brief, while having specific reasons why you used a different approach
• Crafting work that makes you happy without worrying if it will be shut down later
• Educating yourself outside of your skill set
• Reaching out to people outside of your immediate team for constructive feedback

To be truly seen and heard as a creative means getting creative about how you’ll be seen and heard, especially if you have a manager who is also a rule-follower and doesn’t like upsetting the organizational apple cart. You must take responsibility for your career.