10 Unconventional Ways To Become Your Company’s Most Valuable Employee

Jeff Wood
Jeff Wood
Sep 6, 2018 · 10 min read

“Profit is the byproduct of making a difference in other people’s lives.” — Mel Abraham

Imagine your boss sitting down and discussing who to give bonuses to at the end of year Christmas party. Who are the lions getting fat swells in their bank account, and who are the sheep getting company blankets? Imagine your boss with their boss discussing whose jobs they are going to eliminate. Who are the key players and who are the optionals? Sure everybody contributes and sure companies need all different shapes, sizes, bodies and hands to function, but who are the crucial guys and girls upon which all others exist? Who makes the biggest waves for the organization?

Are you one of them?

Support roles are crucial, but when it comes to securing a living and jacking up the excitement of work, you need to become a key player at your company.

In his book, Seeing The Big Picture, author Kevin Cope discusses the five key drivers of all businesses: Cash, Profits, Assets, Growth, and People. To be a key player, you need to affect the key drivers of business as clearly, directly, and obviously as possible. That’s it. That’s the game, the beginning, and the end. That is the code that inks your name on the “Retain At All Costs” list. Everything else — your title, age, experience, rule-keeping, role-playing, adherence to the dress code — it’s all white noise. For the key players, the movers, the shakers — those with permanent residence on the list — the main objective every day, every week, every month, is contributing to the cash, profit, assets, growth, or people of their company as abruptly as possible.

So how does one get on this list of key players? If even CEOs and company presidents lose sight of the big picture, how does someone who is a couple layers removed from directly impacting the main things start directly impacting the main things? How do you create your spot at the table of the untouchables?

It boils down to finding creative ways to impact the key drivers, and using those key drivers — and only those key drivers — as your daily compass and measuring stick. How can you make what you do every day overlap with one of the five key drivers?

To get you started, here are 10 unconventional ways you can become a key player at your company and get your name on the list.

“If you are creative, you can jump from job to job and always be successful because jobs are 10% technical skill and 90% creativity.” — Robert Rodriguez, film maker

1. Cut Cycle Time of Projects to Increase Asset Productivity

A company’s biggest asset is its people. If a project takes eight weeks and ten people, assuming a traditional 40-hour work week, that is 3,200 hours of work. Reduce the number of people involved to six and cut the deadline to five weeks and you will have created 1,200 additional hours of available productivity. If average salaries are $80,000, you just increased your company’s cash by $46,000. Involving only essential people, reducing cycle times, and limiting revisions to only analysis-driven improvements are some of the biggest and most fundamental pro-business moves there are.

Publicly and privately, ask questions like:

  • Could this project be successful without Barry and Cynthia?
  • Why would it be impossible to complete this projects in five weeks rather than eight?
  • How will this requested revision improve the profit of our company?

If you push for shorter meetings, less involvement, and roll your eyes at needless revisions, you’re a jerk. But when you analyze ways to free up more time and create more hours of available productivity, you’re brilliant. All jobs involve elements of show business, it’s all about how you present yourself and your ideas.

2. Enhance Features of Existing Products or Services

With the products or services your company offers, even a tiny price increase can translate into millions of dollars in additional profit, and the way to raise your price is by enhancing features.

  • Make a ritual of regularly brainstorming product add-ons you could bundle with top-selling items.
  • How could you increase the depth of service your customers receive to raise the price?
  • How could you remix or update your company’s top money-maker?

80% of your company’s profits come from around 20% of your products or customers, worry less about new and more about enhancing the important things that already exist.

3. Maximize Asset Productivity

Anything your company owns or makes that has created, does create, could create, or could be exchanged for some form of value is an asset. Brainstorm new ways your company could make money from those assets. No limitations here, spill it all out. Think nontraditional and non-sensible, this is as much an exercise in creativity as anything.

Consider things like:

  • Renting out space and office equipment you own and do not use 100% of the time
  • Repurposing existing materials for new audiences
  • Selling the rights on copywriter materials to third party vendors
  • Selling templates to similar businesses
  • Hawking old equipment
  • Interviewing experts within your company and posting them as podcasts that could eventually command advertising money
  • Putting together how-to guides for start-ups in your industry

What intelligence, insights, experience, or equipment does your company have that others would value? How could you monetize those things without interfering with daily operations? Others are too busy to even consider these questions … key players swoop in and change the game with ideas everyone else is too busy to think of.

4. Identify New Distribution Channels

Where do customers come in contact with your brand? Now, make a list of everywhere else and decide if any new channels could work for your company. There are physical retailers, value-added resellers, wholesalers, and distributors. There are already catalogues, consultants, dealers, online retailers, and independent sales team who specialize in the sales and distribution of what your company does. Identify them.

Key players connect their companies to new opportunities. New distribution channels often create a mass-increase in profit without any additional innovation or marketing. It is more about investing in potential opportunities.

“Artificially constrain money and time to encourage creativity and identify what is most important.” — Jason Burkholder, founder of Kindred

5. Free Up Time for Sales and Marketing Employees

Sales and marketing employees get away with murder because they directly impact the profit of a company. It is hard to fire someone who clearly brings in money for everybody else, so these guys and gals are part of the untouchables.

Take a look at their daily grind and figure out ways to create more time and opportunities for them. Equip them with the right tools. Redistribute their busy work to other people with the realization that the more sales and marketing professionals focus on sales, the better the company does. Everybody wins.

6. Become a Library of Data on Your Customers and Competitors

Regardless of job title, you are in the expertise business. You should subscribe, follow, and research all major publications and names in your industry. Take diligent notes and always record the source (statistics are __% more believable when you cite the source ( )). Develop the reputation of being a well-spring of knowledge for your company on what your competitors do well, what makes them succeed, what your customers like, what your customers dislike, and anything else under the sun that has to do with your space.

Becoming a library of data has never been more convenient. It is a golden chance for young employees to contribute in ways others may overlook by funneling a hyper-active social media bend toward something incredibly useful for their company. Carve out a niche for yourself and become an expert.

7. Connect Your Boss with Key Players Who Have Audiences Your Company Needs

Benjamin Hardy, author of “Will Power Doesn’t Work,” discusses the importance of finding people to help you achieve your dreams. He argues that focusing on who can help is more important than how you are going to do it. For individual goals, he recommends asking yourself the following questions:

  • Who can help you achieve this?
  • Who do you need to learn from and be mentored by?
  • Who has the networks and connections and capabilities to help you achieve this?

Being the key player for your company that you are, ask these questions about your company:

  • Who can help us achieve our goals?
  • Who has already accomplished what we are trying to do and could teach us what worked and what did not?
  • Who already has the audience, network, and connections we need?

Be the one to figure out who can help your company and your value will sky-rocket.

“Creativity is the new literacy. A ton of creativity is involved in all areas of success.” — Chase Jarvis, founder of CreativeLive

8. Share Good News on Social Media

One of the five key drivers of business is people. Kevin Cope accurately states that people are the most important key driver because they control the other four drivers. Having the right people in the right seats and exceeding their wants, needs, and expectations is crucial if a business is to succeed.

Actively promote the good news about your company of social media. Highlight all the good things about working there. Do your part to actively recruit talented individuals who will catapult your company’s efforts. Be very aware of how your business appears to outsiders and work hard to keep that image clean and upbeat.

If your company is not a good place to work, first work on changing the culture and then worry about sharing the good news.

“Taking yourself too seriously is kryptonite for creativity.” — Tim Ferriss

9. Know When to Innovate and When to Work Fast

The average adult consumes 50% more calories than they think they do*. Unless we measure stuff, our estimates are pitiful!

Along the same lines, you may think most of your daily work responsibilities have value, but you may be overestimating the importance of certain tasks, and underestimated the amount of time you spend on the most important things. Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox, tracked his time, compared it with his priorities, and was shocked to see how little time he was spending on key driver activities. “Everything was completely backwards,” he said.

There are plenty of job responsibilities you have that do not influence the key drivers of business directly or even indirectly. You need to get really good at identifying these items quickly and just grinding them out as quickly as possible. View your job as an outside consultant would and the choice is obvious: If it does to affect a key driver, go for speed.

10. Lead with The Right Questions

And finally, always begin your day and your projects with the right questions. The questions you ask yourself every day will determine the quality of your job, the quality of your life. To get your name sealed on the list of extraordinary game-changers, you should always ask questions like:

  • How does this positively impact the cash, profit, assets, growth, or people of this company?
  • What is an alternative approach to this task.project that would create more more time and money for the company?
  • What two big things am I going to accomplish today that will contribute to one of the five key drivers?
  • What is the big picture that my managers and bosses are overlooking?
  • If this task does not impact one of the five key drivers, how can I do it faster?
  • If this were easy, what would it look like? (*Question Tim Ferriss always asks himself)
  • Why am I lucky to be here?
  • What is awesome about working here?

Conclusion

A few years back, I worked at an agency and was unexpectedly laid off. I was married with two kids, my wife was seven months pregnant, I went in to work one day and — SMACK— company needed to cut a ton of positions because revenue was down. I was shocked. I was well-liked, did great work, and was busy every day. Pathetically, I did not even know the company was bleeding. I did not fit the mold of an employee that would be let go, right? Well, looking back, I was well-liked and I did do great work, but a lot of the work I was for internal purposes or pitches not affecting any key drivers of business. I was hired to be an eventual leader when a number of deals happened, but I was also a relatively new hire, those deals did not happen, we lost our largest client weeks before I was hired, and there was simply not enough money to support the number of jobs they had created.

Possibly the worst part about it all is I was laying the foundation of what would have been an enormous client for our company! But I never communicated it to our head of business development, nor did I work hard enough at developing it while I had the chance.

Could that happen to you?

When your company hits hard times and your boss and their boss discuss who stays and who goes, you need your name to be on the list of key players, period. You will only be on that list if you affect the key drivers of business as clearly, directly, and obviously as possible. That’s the game, the beginning, and the end. Co-workers pull you in a thousand directions, but you and only you are responsible for figuring out how to spend 80% of your time on the most important things.

You position yourself as a key player and the most valuable employee of your company, or you get positioned as an expendable supporter. A lion or a lamb. Up to you.

  • = Office for National Statistics

Ready to Dominate?

I have created a free 10-chapter sampler of my book, The Dominant Designer, to share more insights, strategies, and habits of successful designers and creatives. But I think the principles apply to everyone.

Get free 10-chapter sampler here

Buy the book here

Jeff Wood

Written by

Jeff Wood

JeffWoodCreative.com / Design. Speed. Power.

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