Business Professionals who are Indispensable Key Talent Embrace Risk
1. Make Judgement Calls
Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth of knowledge combined with diagnostic skills or nuanced insight is worth a lot, too. Knowledge alone, though, has little value.
There are three situations where an organization will reward and embrace someone with extraordinary depth of knowledge:
When the knowledge is needed on a moment’s notice and bringing in an outside source is too risky or time consuming.
When the knowledge is needed on a constant basis and the cost of bringing in an outside source is too high.
When the depth of knowledge is also involved in decision making, and internal credibility and organizational knowledge go hand in hand with knowing the right answer.
2. BE SHAMELESS
SHARE
4. Connect People and Ideas
A Unique Interface Between Members of the Organization If your organization is a network (and it is), But what holds that network together In great organizations, there’s a sense of mission. The tribe is racking up accomplishments, going somewhere. That mission doesn’t happen accidentally. Key Talent helps lead, and he or she connects people in the organization, actively and with finesse. This takes emotional labor, and it can’t be done by following the instructions in a manual. The organization also includes its customers and prospects. That means that if you are the person who provides the bridge between the outside world and the company, you are in a critical position.
In most organizations, people do these jobs because they have to, and they do them to spec. But occasionally, you find someone who relishes the opportunity.
Delivering Unique Creativity
Three fairly simple words, very difficult to combine in a meaningful way. Let’s go backwards: Creativity is personal, original, unexpected, and useful. Unique creativity requires domain knowledge, a position of trust, and the generosity to actually contribute. If you want to create a unique guitar riff, it sure helps if you’ve heard all the other guitar riffs on record. Unique implies that the creativity is focused and insightful. Delivering unique creativity is hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship. The resistance, our fear of standing out, rears its ugly head every time we’re on the hook for this sort of work. So we avoid the work. The sparse list of people willing (and able) to do this sort of work makes it particularly valuable.
But there's a big difference between being indispensable and irreplaceable. One is important and can propel your career forward. The other can stagnate you.
Being indispensable is about delivering massive impact no matter where you are. It's much more of a characteristic - a mindset wrapped with skills and attributes - rather than the details and functions in a role. Indispensable people are the types that you can hand any project, put in nearly any role, issue a challenge to, and they simply make things happen by understanding what needs to get done and adapting their skills accordingly.
Being irreplaceable is the opposite. It's about being locked into a role because you're harboring finite knowledge, skills, or information that you can't or aren't willing to share with anyone else. Sometimes that's borne from insecurity. Other times it's a false sense that if you protect your sandbox so that only you know its secrets, you have job security for life.
If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. You can't grow your company or your profile, because it can't move forward without you. You can't grow, move on, do different things, expand your horizons. Being irreplaceable is actually a pretty crappy place to be in your career.
But indispensable? Hell yes.
Build your team to sail the ship without you. Teach them everything you know, and hire people smarter than you. Equip yourself to always bring something powerful, unique, and pivotal to your work, but make it a methodology, not a checklist that's unique to any one discipline.
And then carry that approach into everything you do.
The irreplaceable always, oddly, get replaced somehow. Think automation, outsourcing, downsizing.
The indispensable? They're they ultimate in adaptability, and thrive on whatever gets thrown at them next. Their skills and techniques are unique, and ever-evolving. Which means that few businesses can thrive for the long term without them.