Communicating the Value of Your Work

INTRODUCTION

As the world gears up for a new normal – whatever that may be – many people are reviewing their jobs and businesses. Some are doing so for reasons of their own. For them, the pandemic has been a period of reflection and their priorities have evolved. Therefore, it’s logical that they would now be reviewing the job they do, or the service they offer, in the light of their changed priorities.

For others, their review is the result of circumstance. Perhaps they were furloughed: a word that was largely unknown until a year ago and certainly didn’t figure in many career-development plans. Or they fear the next reorganisation: hence pre-emptive scrutiny of the value of their work is often tinged with anxiety or uncertainty.

Then there are those people who, while relatively happy in the job they currently do (or the service they offer) want to reinvigorate that activity in some way. Perhaps their work has become a bit dull though familiarity. Reinventing a career does not always mean changing it: it may simply mean seeing that role from a fresh perspective, in order to value it more. 

WHAT IS VALUE?

When people tire of a job or a business, this usually means that the value has become unclear: either to the professional, their clients/employer and frequently to all parties. Perhaps those skills are no longer in demand, as once they were. Or the job that was exciting in the beginning has now become tedious. Or the latest boss / client is too demanding or critical: always asking for more without appreciating what they are getting.

Sometimes, we just get too comfortable, and sooner or later this starts to show. We coast along, doing what needs to be done, but without putting any real energy or fresh thinking into the role. Sooner or later, someone notices… and the value of our work gets put in the spotlight. Questions get asked…. usually questions of value.

So what is value? Whether we are looking at a job or a contract through our own eyes, or the eyes of a client or employer, what exactly are we looking for?

Before you read further, I invite you to write down c 10-20 words that represents the value of your work.  Depending on your situation, you may want to fine-tune this question to “What’s the value of the work that you feel you’re providing?” Or even: “… that you could provide in an ideal scenario?” Or separately: “What’s the value of your work as seen from your employer’s or client’s point of view?” Choose the question that best fits you today.

You will get a lot more value(!) from this article if you can do this, before you read further. Your gut-level response will be sufficient for now.

CLASSIC PITFALLS

When it comes to looking at value, many people are simply looking in the wrong place. The effect of this is to cloud their glasses, so that they find it hard to see the real value of their work. Let’s review three of the classic pitfalls.

So if you have successfully resisted the temptation to read ahead, before doing the exercise above, congratulations. Many people simply don’t take the time to look at their value lenses, far less to clean them. So even if you now discover you have fallen into one of the following pitfalls, at least you know. This means you can do something about it.

The first pitfall is the “Knowledge Pitfall”. If your words above are all about expertise, specialisms, qualifications, know-how etc, then you are probably mixing up expertise with value. This is very common in the “expertise professions” particularly in technology, but also in finance, law, accounting, training, etc.

The value of any expertise lies in the benefits it creates (or the threats that it avoids). Your expertise may be in cyber-security: but the value of that expertise lies is the businesses that you protect from attack, the costs / disruption that you save them, the security that they enjoy, their continuing ability to trade. Value is never the same as knowledge.

A second pitfall is the “Achievement Pitfall”. Many CVs and websites are now rewritten to highlight achievements. While this can be good to build your credibility, it’s not necessarily the same as the value of your work. To illustrate, you may have successfully launched that event on time and within budget…. but the value of that achievement lies in what happens as a result of the event, not just in your meeting event deadlines.

A third pitfall is the “Ratings Pitfall”. In short, this is the long list of positive adjectives that often feature in reviews or in LinkedIn testimonials. While sometimes flattering, these tell us nothing whatever about the value of someone’s work.

The value of your work does not lie in ratings of performance. Value is the difference your work makes: the benefits created and/or the threats avoided. As such, value lies in other people’s world, not in yours. Maybe that’s why we rarely look at it: we just move on to our next task.

When we get to this point in workshops on value, some people start becoming quite uncomfortable. A look of incredulity (even shock) slowly dawns across faces, as they confront an awkward truth: “I simply have no idea what the value of my work is”. It’s not uncommon for quite established professionals to realise that they have never really studied their own value, at least not in any deep and factual sense of that word. 

BEING AN EXPLORER

While this realisation can be uncomfortable at first, this discomfort soon gives way to excitement, as long as a professional comes to understand the true nature of the adventure ahead. You are not being asked to chase adjectives, or ratings, or even LinkedIn recommendations (though you will probably pick up some of these along the way). On the contrary, being an explorer of value is about what happens in other people’s world, as a result of the work that you do with them.

From the work I’ve been doing with professionals over two decades, I now bring you some good news and some not-so-good news. First the latter: I cannot promise that you won’t occasionally come across some disappointing feedback, or disappointing people that don’t even want to talk to you about the value of your work. But here is the good news: most of us don’t even know 20pc of the value we create. If you become a consistent explorer, the disappointments will seem minuscule, in comparison to the wealth of value that you will uncover. For example,

• A career coach found that she not only helped an outside candidate to get a senior role: that person had a profound effect on the entire organisation (remove comma) and its profitability.
• A support engineer restored the reputation of his company, due to his diligent and painstaking approach to performance problems.
• An accountant didn’t just look after accounts: she allowed several clients to focus on business-development rather than getting bogged down in cashflow and taxation matters.
• A humble assistant (who had all her life undervalued her work, frequently saying “I’m just an assistant”) was astonished to discover that her Executive Director trusted her judgement more than anyone else in the organisation.

HIDDEN VALUE

Whatever your role: whether in an organisation, contract or as a supplier, I confidently predict that over 80pc of the value of your work has yet to be discovered. This remains true even if you are a diligent explorer of that value, as many of my clients down the years will testify.

In these pandemic times, there is tendency to devalue skills in many ways. Outsourcing, people-per-hour, automation, reorganisation, over-supply…. there are many forces that can make you “just another project-manager”. The good news is that it’s in your own power to counter this culture of skill-devaluation by becoming an explorer of your own value. This in turn will allow you to…

1.      Plan your career / business on the basis of a solid value-proposition

2.      Charge more for your services, in line with value produced

3.      Re-invigorate your current role, if you so choose, or…

4.      Re-direct your career or business-direction along value-centred lines

5.      Energise your days and sharpen your focus

6.      Feel a new sense of purpose and meaning in your work

A value-centred exploration is equally relevant if you are a young professional, or unemployed, or in a new field. You can become a student of value even before you enter a field… because your enquiry is about the field, not about you.

THE ROLE OF SELF-WORTH

Most people are driven by conditional self-esteem, not unconditional self-worth. Therefore it’s no surprise that they look for ratings, qualifications or badges of expertise: anything that give them an identity, no matter how conditional. The extent of this preoccupation is astonishing; costing many people lots of hours, lost sleep and a lot of money.

Self-worth is intrinsic and unconditional. When you know you are OK already, you can now become an explorer of other people’s fields, even the wilderness beyond the horizon. You are not chasing validation or ratings: you are curious about marketplace needs and evolution. You are a true explorer.

Self-worth is not a result of your exploration: it’s the liberation that allows you to set off in the first place. An unconditional sense of your own value allows you to clean those lenses of any needy self-preoccupation: to focus instead on the changing world around you, and the challenges these changes bring for other people. This is where the value of your work lies.

John Niland ? March 2021

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