Will They Miss You

In my teens, my first job was at Church’s chicken and my second job was at Wendy’s. I was the fry station guy at Wendy’s and at churches, I was the the I was the guy on the chicken fryer. And no matter how much and how well I performed, no matter how good of a job that I did, I wasn’t indispensable. Because as soon as I decided to leave, or they decide it was time for me to leave, which wasn’t the case, I had a very replaceable skill set. So they may have missed my charm, they may have missed my sense of humor, but they didn’t miss my level of work, no matter how proficient in that space. I was in as time continues to evolve and and we begin to craft these skill sets, craft these expertise, these distinct competencies.

We have to make ourselves distinct. We have to make ourselves so distinguished at what we do that we stand out, head and shoulders above the crowd in the modern canon of corporate life and corporate America within the last 30 years is the example of Steve Jobs. Obviously he is an icon. He is a business Maverick of sorts, but there was a point in time when Apple thought they were better Apple thought they had the sauce. Apple thought that they could survive without the charm and the distinct competencies that Steve Jobs brought to the table. So they let them go. And this was a tough period in Steve’s life. So he decided to get busy on some other things. He created Pixar, or funded or was contributing to the creation of Pixar, and another computing company.

Now, Apple, they ended up having some tough years, they ended up realizing that a lot of the culture, a lot of what Steve Jobs brought to the table created a vacuum. When he left, he was the prevailing force that allow the culture to exist the way that people work, obviously, he was a little abrasive if you’ve read up on his biography, but there was a level of competency, a level of value and value is one of my favorite words value is it is sometimes invisible, sometimes it goes below the radar. But value to me is what you offer the world, through your expertise, to your understandings to the training through your own personal research through whatever bringing value to customers, bringing value to teams, bringing value to the environment that you place yourself within is, is a priceless art.

And knowing how to articulate that value is as well a priceless are. So after Apple experienced this level of you know, poor sales are poor performance, and the stock price began to plummet. And it’s in his absence, they decided to take a slice of humble pie and ask for Steve Jobs to come back. And that same value, that same culture that he brought the first time around, it only magnified when he came back. Apple who we see as today would not be possible if Steve Jobs didn’t have his second chapter, that um, that encore performance before he passed away. Now as we look at certain cultures, certain environments, sometimes we over inflate our worth our value to the bigger picture. There was one point when I heard this palletizer.

At my wife’s job, I heard her reference how he thought what he did, was really so significant to the organization. Needless to say, he wasn’t working there a whole lot longer not as a result of that, but his own overinflated self worth. That worth is defined by the value that you offer, not by the intrinsic value that your store housing within you, that you’re not sharing with the world, the expertise that you have learned that you have not learned to apply. That is personal value, but that is not a interchangeable inter relationship value. So I asked the core question again, will they miss you when you’re gone? Who will miss you? And why will they miss you? And as we begin to examine this question, as we begin to look at ourselves, within this mirror, and see the reflection pointing back, sometimes it’s hard to admit to ourself, that we are easily exchangeable.

We are a commodity that we trade our time on the open marketplace. But I have a secret. I’m just kidding. It’s not a secret because it’s so obvious. We can improve the value we bring. You don’t have to know how immediately hold the desire and begin to, to raise your level of curiosity, to look a little further to look a little wider to lift up a stone and see what’s underneath it. What you can learn today. What you can learn tomorrow begins with the question you ask yourself right now. What can you build within yourself What expertise or knowledge can you build within yourself? That makes you indispensable that makes you so valuable that it almost creates a vacuum, if ever, were you to leave?

So you can create that vacuum or you can create the value that builds up your team that shows everybody else how to do that, where you Begin to dominate the culture and the energy within the space that you operate within. Will they miss you when you’re gone? What will they say about you, as you move from job to job? You have a direct ability to answer that question, you can be an asset or a liability, and that liability isn’t worth it to anybody to invest in. It’s worth to invest in somebody who understands how to create value. It’s worth it to understand how to invest in somebody that is going to multiply, to leave where they are better than they found it. Are you a commodity?

Are you an asset? An asset producing asset? You know the answer. If you’re easily replaceable, if you’re that commodity, you also have a choice, you can build yourself up. And it begins right now. It begins with these questions. It begins with this curiosity begins with looking within your marketplace, looking within the industry, even across different industries and ask yourself who is pushing the needle for who is utilizing what they have in extraordinary ways? And how do I do that in my space? I’m not saying I have those answers of how, but I am saying the answers of how will begin to reveal themselves as you engage and engaging is something you need to do.