The 4 Keys to Unlocking Your Value: Part 1 – Clarity
- Clarity.
- Purpose.
- Courage.
- Persistence.
These concepts sound all ‘lofty and aspirational’, yet can be manageable and solvable when we break them down to their essence.
Over the next 4 posts, I’d like to dissect each of these 4 concepts. I’ve found these 4 themes to be multipliers if you are intentional about considering them as you work your days.
Let’s start with clarity.
Clarity: Do you know how you are being measured? If you are in sales, do you know your number — how many deals must you close this quarter or fiscal year?
If you are in finance, you probably are expected to manage the company’s financial assets, recommending shrewd investments and cutting foolishly futile and stagnant parts of the operation.
Some of the other roles – let’s call them the ‘glue’ roles — are more difficult to quantify. As a software developer, what metric are you being measured? Bug-free code? Breakthrough innovation? Excellence in software craftsmanship?
How about another ‘glue role’: product management? You don’t write code or sell product, but your success is typically hinged on the harmonious rhythms of many: sales, development, operations, legal, marketing.
Are you working in one of these roles? If so, what should you do? Throw up your hands and get blissfully comfortable with ambiguity? Wrong.
Instead – try this approach: push for a constructive conversation about what is expected of you. Come to this crucial meeting with the metrics you can influence and the levers you hope to pull to enact positive, multiplying change for the team and organization.
Warning: this won’t be easy. In fact, you may have numerous conversations to get at the crux of the most impactful business-changing metrics.
Clarity doesn’t just fall from the sky like a blessing from above. If you want to know where you fit in and how your contributions positively grow the entire organization, craft your vision of what your role means to the organization.
What does your contribution do for not just the bottom line, but also for the softer side of teamwork, collaboration, learning, innovation?
With clarity you can go places. Without it, you’ll stumble blindly, undermining your confidence and delivering the organization lost productivity, missed deadlines and its evil twins: detachment and disengagement.
Go get clarity today – your future depends on it.
Until next time,
Dan Naden
