Determine Your Real Value to the Company
"If you are really a very special person, you will not have to remind others." – P. K. Glass
Often we think we are the most important person in the world. We can’t understand why others just don’t see it.
Is it possible we are not as important as we think? Or, others do not see our importance as being as great as we do?
The value of an individual is always changing, and it is not always the same in every aspect of our life. Our value at home is different from our value at work. Our value to certain friends is likely to be different for each friend and will often change over time. Why then is it even important to evaluate our value at all?
Knowing what you contribute to the well being of your family or company is essential to understanding what you need to change and when you need to change it. Don’t you think it is important that you are accurate in your own assessment of yourself? Think of the potential problems if you expect you are more (or less) important than you are perceived to be by others. The problems could rapidly escalate. You would likely become much less effective in what you do, and often with little sympathy from others. Your ability to accomplish even routine tasks may become significantly more cumbersome or impossible. Would you lose respect, your position or even your job?
It is not unusual that people see the salary they receive, the number of people they manage, or how close they are to the top executives as the way to calculate their value to the company; nevertheless, most often these are superficial, political, or standard routine procedures established to give brief (and often poorly defined) feedback about what you could do to improve.
The majority of company executives realize the games that are being played and the limited value they offer. Some companies are required to put people in poor rating categories just to meet the required numbers, or to set someone up to terminate them. Managers have regularly admitted that the "fear" challenging some employees (e.g., friends of important people, relatives, union representatives, threatening personnel, backstabbers, etc.), with honest feedback due to a variety of possible consequences that could affect them.
Establishing a broader perspective on the REAL VALUE you offer to a company is essential. The criteria must take into consideration much more. It must be honest in assessing what you offer and what liabilities you create for the company. Just being on the payroll is a liability if there is no significant return on the investment. Learn to realistically evaluate the TRUE ASSET (or liability) you represent to the company.
HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR REAL VALUE TO THE COMPANY
There are eight "P’s" that have scientific support in determining VALUE to an organization.
- PROFIT: Do you know how your role affects the profits of the company? Are you objectively seeing the profits improve? In the economically deprived years have you used the opportunity to re-structure and adjust to new trends? Or do you wallow in self-pity about how bad things are and how good they used to be? Profit is the only reason a business exists. NO PROFIT leads to NO BUSINESS, which results in NO JOB!
- PRODUCTION: Do you dedicate yourself to constructive use of your time on the job or off regular work hours (often hours are dictated by the job demand)? Many managers use time dealing with minor or trivial matters and waste time of other to meet their own needs (i.e., talking, pulling people off more critical projects to do less important jobs, etc.). If you evaluate yourself by comparing your productivity to other in your company (or similar positions in other businesses) do you come out on the short side? Worrying or obsessing over problems without taking action as soon as a plan is in place, will reduce your value as a productive part of the company team.
- PERSISTENCE: When you have difficult jobs to complete that present multiple obstacles, do you continually change your approach and try new things or do you continue to do the same thing that previously proved to be of limited or no value? Sometimes managers and executives stick with old ideas that worked in the past. The dedication to being persistent on something that is not working is NOT what persistence means when assessing your value to the company. It is persistently finding better ways, better personnel, greater efficiency, and creating the atmosphere for teams to stick to the task no matter how hard it is. Then, even if the results are not perfect they will be better than giving up or producing something inferior.
- PURPOSE: Do you have purpose in what you do? Do you communicate the goals and process of accomplishing them, clearly? Do you create a feeling of purpose and value in others working around you? Do you believe in your company? Do you have enthusiasm about changes, growth, and new products? Do you appreciate your position in the company and see you tasks as an essential part of the overall operation? If you have purpose, others will know it and feel it too.
- PRIDE: Do you take pride in your work? Are the end products as good as they could be? Do you care about quality or only quantity? Do you generate pride in others that is verified but not only what they do but how they do it? Do you talk favorably about the company when away from the company superiors? If not, why not? What prevents you from being proud of what you do, or what the company does? If you don’t feel it, get out. You need to score high in pride to make many of they other aspects of being a value to the company work well.
- PERSONALITY: Do you have the personality that others find attractive and respect? Do you treat others with respect while holding your standards high? Do you have a high emotional IQ? (This is very highly correlated with success and value to the company.) Do you feel trusted and do you trust others around you? If not, why not? What will it take to gain trust? What are you doing now to improve trust and cooperation? Without trust the organization has only the life of a machine vs. an organism that grows and adapts to change. Businesses need to be living. Does your personality feed the living company in a positive way? Does your personality emit confidence, direction, optimism (which is also correlated highly with value and positive outcomes), and empathy? Do you demonstrate caring, compassion, and understanding of the co-workers and the employees under your direction? How do you know if others see this part of your personality? You get more productivity and are of greater value if you treat others in a dignified manner. How will you know? What how they respond to your requests and interactions.
- PRICE: How does this contribute to your value to the company? Are YOU priced right? Are you seen as EARNING your income? Or are you seen as an unnecessary drain on the company profits? You are a value to the company when the people in positions of responsibility see objective evidence that you are priced right. Being over priced will cause resentment and being under priced will cause you to be less satisfied. Either over or under pricing of yourself in a company will affect everyone around you negatively. Right pricing of your services to the business is critical in getting the greatest value for the money.
- PROBLEM SOLVING: Are you a problem solver or a problem maker? Individual that always look for solutions vs. whine about problems are of great value. If you have a project that is behind schedule or delayed by obstacles what do you do? Leaders take the problems that they are faced with head on. Do you creatively look for different ways of meeting goals that are blocking something important? You need to be clearly seen as an optimistic problem solver. You need to get appropriate input from others affected by possible solutions you would like to try. Problem solving is not just having a great idea, but being able to solicit enthusiasm and cooperation in implementing the idea in an efficient and timely manner. Solution orientation is valued highly.
When you evaluate your value to the company, you do you measure up? Often we have good days, months or years. However, what is your pattern with respect to the eight "P’s"? The managers and executives scoring high on the "P" value criteria will have what organizations need, and what most companies believe is most important to the success of their business. This is the REAL VALUE of you (and your contribution), not the usual annual review of you performance, or to calculate your next salary raise.
HOW VALUABLE ARE YOU?
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