The Glass is Too Big - Home

There are a few things that are pretty much certain whenever economic clouds form on the horizon. One is that people enroll in community colleges/vocational programs and that every newspaper, magazine, TV show (and in the last 15 years, web site) starts cranking out articles on how to keep your job, get more business, etc. in "these troubled times". Many of those articles make it sound like they're sharing some deeply held secret that's been locked away in the vault since the last downturn.

However, the thing is that the stuff that garners success is the same¹: Adding Visible Value. In the business/career areas of life, if you focus on that for 80% of your effort, you'll be surprised how well things turn out.

What exactly do I mean by Adding Visible Value?

Lets start with how every economic exchange works. First, there must be something which is, to one degree or another, scarce. That scarcity can be obvious and straightforward, like rare elements: gold, silver, platinum. Less obvious at first glance are the instances of scarcity like 1-on-1 access to arithmetic instruction or getting to see a sporting event not on free-to-air TV.

However, in all cases, there is something which is limited and someone who is the gatekeeper of that scarce resource. If you want what's on the other side of the gate, you've got to pay the gatekeeper. And, depending on how many people are standing at the gate with you (demand), the gatekeeper's price changes.

Of course, as people pay to get access to the scarce resource, they may not be paying a whole lot of attention to what they just got. So, as they're walking away, they may start to question why they're paying that gatekeeper at all. They may start asking other patrons or just themselves whether they're getting their money's worth. And, if the answer is "no", they're likely to quit paying the gatekeeper.

Now most employees and many businesses (that means you and I) are the gatekeepers of a scarce resource: our time. As we build a career/business, we fence off a portion of our time and offer access to it, for the purposes of applying it to specific tasks, in exchange for money and some non-tangible stuff as well.

There are only so many hours in a day and a certain number of other people attempting to sell blocks of time working on the same tasks. Thus, the marketplace where we earn our salary, hourly wage, billable rate, etc.

The key is that when that exchange happens, we have to actually add something worth buying to the equation. If you put in 8 hours and earn whatever 8 hours of your work is worth, is the person who paid for it actually getting something for that money?

In some jobs, that can mean that you were present. In some, that you attached a certain number of doors to cars. In others, that you served meals to customers. For me, it's that I solved problems for my client using software.

Now, I know that some of you are saying that you DO deliver that value, day in and day out and still find things not working out. I used to say the same thing, until someone pointed out that no one KNEW that I put in that effort. No one knew that I rewrote the entire malfunctioning module myself overnight to get it done on time.

My efforts were real, but invisible. The person paying for my efforts wasn't seeing them. When I started focusing on both delivering value and making sure that the person holding the checkbook was aware of that delivered value, my working life started clicking MUCH better.

Yes, you can still get laid off or lose a client when doing this (in the United States, you're more likely to lose your job because of something outside of your actual performance than for actually not doing your job). However, among those people I watch who lose their job, but work hard to deliver visible value, they seem to land on their feet more soundly. They tend to find a new gig more quickly and otherwise just have more success, even in bad times, even with periodic failures than those who focus on making sure they are getting their "fair share" out of the equation.

Since taking on this attitude, I find that I am always busy with work. Currently, I'm actually so overbooked (on track for 300 billable hours this month instead of my normally budgeted 167) that this site and nearly all of my online activity has dropped to a standstill. That, despite some of the people holding the checkbook laying other people off, doing paycuts, etc. Why? Because it's clear to them that I am providing clear-cut value for every dollar they're paying. They get functioning software solutions to the problem at hand.

¹Sure, at the edges there are opportunities that change a little bit, but on the whole, it IS the same.

© 2003- 2010 J Wynia. Very Few Rights Reserved.