How To Be An Asset And Not A Liability To Your Company
posted in Gratitude, Abundance, Empty Your Cup, Attitude, Career, Practical Tips, Working Smart, Using Law Of Attraction At Work, Problem Solving, Are You Asset Or Liability, Henry Ford, KPI |Hey Folks,
I have taken great pains (4 post) to set the stage for what I am going to share with you today. I did it not to “fill in” posts but I sincerely feel that to really appreciate what I am going to say in this post, you need to understand the real situation. So take some time to read them before you continue with this post:
Understanding The “Boss” Mentality
Understanding The Effects Of Globalization And Outsourcing
Understanding The Effects Of The New Economy On Our Salary
Misconceptions of Key Performance Indicators, Promotions and Pay Increments
Summary Of Prior Post
“We live in an era where the economy dictates that companies pay their employees what they are worth and that worth is determined by how much a company is willing to pay as cost of the products or services they produce. Anytime the an employee ceases to produce the value they were paid for, the company would be forced to reevaluate the need for that employee.”
Who’s Considered An Asset
To be an asset in a company, it doesn’t always mean that you need to climb the corporate ladder (although it is a common result of being an asset). Every company needs assets at every level of their company structure. You don’t always have to be a manager or departmental head to be an asset. For example:
A production line worker that is always on time, meets his daily production target, helps fellow colleagues in times of need and encourages and keeps the team in high morale is an asset.
A housekeeper keeping the office and toilets pristinely clean everyday creates an environment so comfortable and conducive to work that every employee feels good when reaching office is an asset.
How To Be An Asset
What I am going to show you is a series of thought provoking questions that will guide you to:
1) Discover and determine your current value in your company
2) Find your direction and balance in your company
3) Become a positive influence in your company
Discover and determine your current value in your company
First, you need to asked yourself these basic questions:
1) For what purpose where you hired for?
- You can check the job description for your position or alternatively, check with your boss. You need to know exactly what your role is before you can determined your value.
2) How do I determine the value I have created for my company?
- For some jobs such as sales, this is simple, the amount of sales they bring is their value. For some jobs such as accounting and human resource, it is not as simple to determine. In such cases, the KPI will be an invaluable tool to justify your value. If you do not have a KPI set for you, talk to your boss and get one.
3) What values have I produced for the company?
- Again for jobs such as sales, just check your figures. The rest will depend mainly on whether they have met their KPI’s set for them or their department. The minimum that every employee could do is to meet their KPI as this alone tells your boss that you are not a liability.
Find your direction and balance in your company
Once you have the answers to the above, you have to ask yourself these questions next:
1) What is your vision of yourself in the company 5 years from now?
- Would you like to remain in the same position or proceed to the next level? Understand what that vision of yours will implies. If you decide to stay at where you are, you will need to understand that there will be a cap to how much salary you can earn in the long run. And if it is higher salary that you desire, you will need to improve your skill set (management skill, communications skill, etc) to advance.
- For example, a production line worker will never earn $5000 a month but a production line manager has the capacity to do that. However, he will need knowledge of how to run a production line, quality control measures and procedure, people management, scheduling, etc in order to advance.
2) Are you happy with that vision and is that what your heart desires?
- I know some employees who are perfectly happy to stay where they are while some may decide to scale the corporate ladder. Whichever is your preference, you need to be at ease with that decision. A happy and grateful employee is productive, well liked and becomes an asset while a resentful employee spreads negativity and affects the productivity everyone else around him and becomes a liability.
- Both the happy and resentful employee is in similar situation, draws similar pay and is equally productive (quantitatively) but they are viewed in a differently in light of their actions, which is a result of their thoughts.
3) What are the values you need to create to get where you want to be?
- If you desire to escalate, find out the job description or KPI of that position and acquire the necessary skill. Talk to your boss, he should be able to facilitate. If that position is higher then where your boss currently is, helping him to get there before you could help you greatly.
- If you desire to stay put, create you own unique proposition. Be the most productive employee, most helpful employee, the most innovative employee, etc.
Become a positive influence in your company
What ever you choose, remember to deliver the basic value you were hired for (meet KPI) and be a positive influence on your team, department and company. By looking towards the positive side of things and events, you put yourself in a position to spot opportunities and capitalized on them.
Here are some positive influence tips:
a) Communicate In The Right Direction - If you have doubts or negative feedbacks, convey upwards (to your bosses). If you have positive ideas and encouragements, convey downwards (to your staffs, colleagues).
b) Volunteer First - When management asked for volunteers, be the first to volunteer for the task that you know you are proficient in. You kill 2 birds by getting brownie points for volunteering and avoid being tasked something that you aren’t able to handle.
c) Help Yourself First - Always complete your own task first, then extend whatever help to the rest of the team. If team work is part of your KPI, clarify with your boss which comes first (teamwork or own task and write it down).
d) Keep A Smile On - Maintaining a smile on your face at work can do wonders to you and all that is around you. It is like an infectious virus then everyone will catch and it make people happy 
e) Share Abundantly - Share your experience, knowledge and skills with your colleagues. By sharing abundantly, you will attract others to share with you, even your boss. I assure you that you will gain more then you have given out. For example, I share 5 tips with 30 colleagues and 5 of them share with me 1 tips each. Net total is that I have 10 tips now, 25 of them have the 5 they had while the other 5 have 6 each.
f) Always Bring At Least One Solution For A Problem - Never give your boss problems. If you must, bring along some probable solutions. If you have only 1 probable solution, add a solution you know your boss won’t take so you give him a choice.
“Don’t find fault, find a remedy;
anybody can complain. - Henry Ford”
g) Don’t Leave Problems Alone - I have seen many clerks manually extracting figures from their system by printing out reports then manually collating figures into an Excel spreadsheet. They spent 2-3 days a month doing just that! An elegant solution is to get your IT department or vendor to create a automated report that will takes just minutes to get the same report. Even when a cost is involved, I believe it will be justified in the long run.
“Most people spend more time
and energy going around problems
than in trying to solve them. - Henry Ford”
h) Run It Like You Own It - Always think of how a certain decision, action, process, etc will benefit the company (not yourself). Only when you start running the company like you own it, the benefits will come a full circle to benefit you.
“If there is any one secret of success,
it lies in the ability to get the other person’s
point of view and see things from that person’s angle
as well as from your own. - Henry Ford”
i) Never Work Hard, Work Smart - Working hard without working smart is the dumb mans way of earning a living. An employee working smart can produce the same result in much less time then an employee working hard. Using the same example in (g), the smart employee with automate the report has 3 more work day per month then the other who works hard (hard manual labor). If you spot and solve a problem that saves 10 man-minute per employee per day for a company of 1000 employees, you save your company 48,000 man hour each year henceforth! That is roughly 18 years your annual value to the company, imagine that!
j) Work Hard Only When Necessary - Sometime the company finds itself in some situation where they need you to draw a little deeper into your reserves to help them out! Do it, you will be appreciated. What you don’t need to do is to work late everyday even when you don’t need too. It could be deemed as inefficient.
k) Never Say “No” Right Away - When given a task or problem to consider, ask for some time and think about it seriously. It lends credence to you that you have given it due thought, even when you know from experience that it cannot be done, and sometimes, you might just find a solution that you haven’t thought of.
“I am looking for a lot of men
who have an infinite capacity to
not know what can’t be done. - Henry Ford”
l) You Always Have A Little More Then You Think - When you thought you have given all you have, just empty your cup one more time, reset your objective view and take a look at the whole team, department, company, processes again. You are bound to find something more to improve on.
“The man who will use his skill and
constructive imagination to see how
much he can give for a dollar,
instead of how little he can give for a dollar,
is bound to succeed. - Henry Ford”
I have shared a great many tips with you folks and I do hope you have benefited from it. If you have other tips or opinions, please feel free to contribute here. And nope, I am not going to talk about liability. Talking about it will just get you focused on it and I would prefer that you focus on being an asset. 
With this post, I end my series of 5 post on “Are You An Asset Or Liability To Your Company?“.
Love,
James
PS: Folks, the key points in this post is Perspective and Gratitude. To understand and be thankful, allow a soul to drop whatever resentment is holding you back and gives you room to achieve greater things in life even when your skills stays the same. Think about it.
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