Knowing what you are worth

Do you accept or reject your worth?

I was reading how 'value’ is from French, Latin descent meaning ‘to be worth'.

When mentoring people 1:1 and working with teams in organisations, this is a theme I see many of our issues and challenges originating from. And this worth or value isn't just price, salary, bonus or other monetary value.

It’s about what you believe your time is worth, your ideas and contributions, what your skills and services are worth, your talents and expertise, what your involvement and commitment are worth.

Have you ever felt resentful when you’ve given so much yet received little in return?

Or the reverse ... where you received a lot and didn’t have to give much at all!

How often do we focus on what value we are giving ... and getting?

A leader recently gave her team permission to leave any meeting if its not making use of their time or the expertise they have.

The value equation is one we need to understand better and apply in our own world. We have much to value in ourselves. It’s that we don’t know it, deny or doubt it and this holds us in the ‘worth less’ zone. 

The waste of misdirected effort

Imagine working on a task or project and later finding that much of what you’ve done isn’t needed, that you'd kept heading down a path that wasn't necessary.

I noticed a colleague working on a project recently, spending hours and days preparing and producing some work and ... it’s not needed. It was never needed. They estimated they'd spent a week of time, at a minimum - all of it not needed.

Time could have been better directed towards more valuable activities.

We make many decisions every day about what we’re doing; I doubt we’re truly thinking about what’s the best use of our time. We get caught up in activities and tasks that we spend way too much time on - disproportionate to their value or their return to us or others.

The 'sunk cost fallacy' drags us in and we don’t want to turn around and head back out because we wrongly believe we need to stay the course and keep on down this path. But we don’t have to.

It’s never too late to call time on something that’s not right or not valuable or not worth it. No matter how far you’re along the 'wrong' path.

Be willing to call ‘stop’ or ‘time’ or say ‘hang on a moment; can we pause here?’ and then shift to the more valuable path.

Fix a fundamental first

Before you go all wow with new initiatives, first identify processes or systems that drive your customers crazy.

Do you know what they are? Rather than creating cool new whatevers, fix a fundamental.

Like how customers give you their money. A leading Australian utility have a nightmare loop going on for me at the moment:

Bill is due

Click on email link to make payment

Directs to download an app

Done that already

Attempt login on app

Don’t have a password

Create new account

Account already exists

Use one time code

Code arrives - Code expired

Try password reset

Link arrives - Link expired

Try another code

Code arrives - Incorrect code

Use ‘make a payment’ on www

Directs to download an app

Try ‘my account’ on www

Provide email or mobile to login

Account doesn’t exist/isn’t verified...

😣Aaaargh!

This is stuff that’s worth fixing.

And if you’re ‘ironing out kinks’ with your system, make other options that are:

➡️possible

➡️accessible

➡️feasible and

➡️visible ... now-ish.

It’s a valuable thing to a customer, to part with their money to you easily and painlessly.

Action: Find out what pains your customers about your systems. And if you don't know, get in touch with them to find out

It may not be all planned out and certain

I received a call from a company wanting guidance on transitioning to new-ish ways of working. We talked about why they wanted to do this, yet they also wanted a plan, a document that showed what would happen when so they could ‘roll it out’ across the business.

But here’s the thing: as the world is all uncertain and changing, so too might this change or transformation process. The way it starts may not be how it continues or how it ends.

As the team learns more, they’ll hopefully try more. As they try more and experiment more, they’ll learn more. And so this evolution happens of learning, experimenting and learning.

There’s a kind of irony here. If we need to begin working in some more agile, adaptive and responsive ways, it will mean we’ll need to be more agile, responsive and adaptive.

We can’t do it by being controlling and coercive and delivering 186-slide PowerPoint decks. It doesn’t mean no plan but it does mean being more adaptable. Throughout. Stay adaptable, responsive, interested in what’s next.

Action: Talk about expectations of change. Some people want detailed information; others are okay seeing how things change, unfold or evolve.

Locked, blocked, stirred or primed

Locked, blocked, stirred or primed.

It's how I see people, teams and business on awareness of new ways of working. Work keeps evolving and customer needs do too, so we must adapt and respond to these forces. This is agility.

🔒 LOCKED - Unaware of old ways It's easy to stick with old ways of work not thinking anything is 'wrong' with them. But that view is most certainly fixed, locked.

█ BLOCKED - Unaware of new ways If you're not learning, reading, thinking and listening more about how work is changing, this is most certainly a block to success and progress. Are you waiting for someone to do it for you?

☕️ STIRRED - Aware of old ways With this new ways of work talk, many of us can get stirred up, rattled, wondering 'what does this mean?', or 'what will I have to do?' Just realising there are old, last century ways of working and newer this century ways, is sure to stir. And that's ok... because:

👍🏼 PRIMED - Aware of new ways You can't un-know stuff. Once you come upon the way clever leaders, teams and businesses are doing things in this new world of work, you're primed, pumped and ready for change.

ACTION: Plot yourself, your leader, team and the executive or board on this model - and have a conversation about it