Jack Griffin - How to Say It: Be Indispensable at Work: Winning Words and Strategies to Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Get Ahead

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Table of Contents

As ever, for Flora

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my editor, Maria Gagliano, who showed me how to get this book to end up much better than it started out.

PREFACE

Irreplaceable, Indispensable, Incredible You

Times are tough.

The phrase is so true its tired, and Im tired of it. This book will help you be one of the millions who work when others arent working. But its about much more than surviving tough times. Its about buildinga career, a future, a set of alternatives. This is a book about not only making yourself irreplaceable and indispensable in your workplace and in your industry, but branding yourself in this way to your boss, your coworkers, your staff, and to yourself. Its about finding the fire in your belly and about marketing your skills, competencies, achievements, and potential not just to a prospective employer, but to your present employer.

How to Say It: Be Indispensable at Work is not full of feel-good mantras and its not a new theory of management. Its a compact, concise, hard-nosed set of strategies and words that will get you hired, get you noticed, and get you aheadbecause staying employed is always important, but its never enough.

PART ONE

Finding Facts and Facing Facts

In any enterprise, bad information is an enemy, good information an ally. Part One is all about getting the good stuff, the information that will help you make yourself irreplaceable, indispensable, and incredible to those you work with and work for. Chapter 1 provides the tools you need to accurately assess the state of your workplace, your company, and your industry now. After you accurately assess workplace, company, and industry, Chapter 2 will show you how to take a frank, unblinking inventory of your achievements and your transferable skillsthe elements of your personal human capital: the basic value proposition you offer your employer. Chapter 3 will take you beyond the basic self-assessment of Chapter 2 and show you how to dig for your buried treasurethe powerful elements within you that you have yet to exploit, perhaps have yet to discover. Finally, armed with an assessment of your working environment and all that you have to offer, the last chapter in Part One guides you in setting goals that are as high as your dreams can set themeven in (especially in) a challenging economy.

CHAPTER 1

REALITY CHECK

Tough times. Lean times. Hard times. Scary times. Doesnt really matter what you call the particular year, quarter, month, day, or minute you happen to occupy. If youre in a job that offers a living wageor something even betteryou are always working in highly competitive times. This is the case whether the economy is going bust or going gangbusters. The facts, eternal and immutable, are these: Your employer wants problems solved, opportunities exploited, the job done. Convince your boss that no one solves, exploits, and does more and better than you, and you will make yourself indispensable. Not only does that mean youll keep your job but also it will clear the way for more of a jobmore responsibility, more money, and more of a future, for the simple reason that your boss and her bosses will want more of you. In tough times? Especially in tough times.

Read the Writing on the Wall (Before They Knock the Walls Down)

This book is about rising even when the times seem to be all about falling. The best way to hold on to your job is to make yourself indispensable in it, which means doing everything possible to make your bosses want not only to keep you but to give you more.

But before you can rise, you need to know if the ground is firm beneath you.

You cannot know where to go, much less how to get there, unless you first determine, realistically, where you and your firm stand.

Sometimes, the first word you hear of a downsizing, business closure, mass layoff, or a layoff targeting just you is shortly before it happens or even when it happens. Sometimes, management will be open, honest, transparent, and give you fair warning. Sometimes. More often, its up to you to read the handwriting on the wall. Here are seven signs that your companyand therefore your jobmay be in trouble:

1. The star players are leaving. The back-benchers are staying. If you notice that the best people, the movers and the shakers, the folks you (and others) admire most are jumping ship, take the hint. Not only is this a probable sign of a troubled company, it can readily make a troubled situation more troubled. The best two or three people leaving is like the first rocks in a landslide. Their loss can trigger an avalanche. Really good employees like to work alongside other really good people. The loss of more than a few of these tends to trigger the flight of even more. In contrast, the less able, the backbench players, tend to stick around, and if theyre in a position of power, they are also inclined to hire and promote other also-rans or, worse, people incapable of even finishing the race. In this way, the cracks in a companys foundation may broaden into a full-scale collapse.

2. The company stops making sense to you. If you find that you can no longer understand your companys strategy, dont be too quick to sell yourself short by assuming management is just too clever for you. The fact is that viable companies formulate strategies that make sense and that are essentially straightforward and pretty easy to understand. The strategy of a good company can be explained concisely and clearly without obscure language, imprecise verbiage, or a lot of weasel words. If you cannot understand your companys strategy and, equally important, cannot explain that strategy to others, your company is likely headed for a fall.

3. The company lags behind the rest of the industry. Market-leading companies are called market-leading because they lead, rather than follow, the market. They grow faster than their market does. This is how a successful company expands sales while it simultaneously grabs market share from its competitors. If you (or others in the company or the company as a whole) are losing sales while the industry is doing well, your company is faltering.

4. Off the mark time and again. Few firms hit their target numbers every time, especially when the economy is challenging. But when missing the target becomes routine (in a public company, falling short of quarterly Wall Street earnings; in a privately held firm, failing to achieve internal budget goals), something more than a tough economy is happening.

5. The layoff parade marches onand on. In tough times, with demand contracting, companies lay people off. Its a hard fact of life. But when layoffs are repeated, becoming almost routine, you know theres trouble.

6. Cash-flow problems. Look into your companys cash positionsomething thats easier to do in a publicly traded company than in one thats privately or closely held. If more cash consistently goes out than comes in, you are approaching the End Time. Like Grandpa used to say, Taking out without putting in soon hits bottom.

7. Nobodys sayin nuthin. When management stops communicating meaningfully with you and your colleagues, you probably should assume the worst. Failure to communicate is not synonymous with silence. Words are supposed to reveal, not conceal. If you cannot understand what management is saying to youif its all jargon, doublespeak, and technobabblesuspect that there is something to hide.

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