Who do you work to please? Are you working to please yourself, the company, the customer, the boss? Are you working for money, success or for recognition and glory.
Working for a boss!
Most of the people, I know work to please the boss. They may not admit when asked but their behavior is like that. They come on time when boss is town, and when she is not they are late. They act and prioritize based on boss’s way of working whether or not it is healthy.
Their whole success strategy revolves around the boss. Unfortunately that approach does not work for too long and all are able to see the lack lustre contribution.
Working for the client!
This sounds like a way to go, after all the “Customer is King” and “Customer is always right”. While this is generally a better approach then focusing on the boss, this approach has a lot of limitations people aren’t able to see.
First and foremost, many a times – especially in consulting, creative, and information based work, clients don’t actually always know better. They may not know what is possible, what are better ways of doing things and also the issues and risk of a particular approach. In which case, following the clients advice blindly will result in sub par results and eventual blame on you.
It is better to understand the issues and be consultative with the client.
Working for an idea!
Many people are driven by their ideas. For these people everything revolves around the idea – the idea of changing something, a better way of doing something, or a new invention.
When working for an idea the energy level and emotional engagement is very high. The main pitfall in this is there is a tendency to over emphasize the power of the idea and under value the other issues around the idea. Many a brilliant people become skeptics when they are not able to convert their ideas into reality.
Working for money!
To many it does not matter how it comes, they just want more money (of course we are talking legally here). There focus becomes how, how soon, and how much more. They get very creative in their endeavor as their mind is singularly focused on money. Slowly they loose track of whether they are adding value or not, whether they are really “earning” the money or not.
Also soon the boundary between ethical and unethical starts to blur and he distinction between legal and illegal can be defined solely by the notion of ‘It not illegal if I am not caught’.
That is the story of many people who have become rich very fast and then crashed equally hard.
Creating Value – An Alternate Approach
An alternate approach of viewing work is to have a Value Focus. Understand that an organization employs a person because of the “value” that they will add to the organisation, to the client. The wealth it will create.
Understanding the important of Value creation ensures that your “eye” is on the ball at all times. Under this scenario a person is comfortable disagreeing with a boss or a client if they see better end result.
When the focus is on the end result, the person is able to create better visualization which then guides them on many decisions and all the actions taken. They command respect with people all around as a person who delivers results and that gives them more influence and power to further push through their ideas and decisions.
Focus on Value Creation rest all will fall in place including getting the money you want and the respect of all the people you work with or for.