In my last article, we started by looking into two ways of increasing your value in the market place. We will now be looking into the concluding part. Enjoy your reading!
3. CAPACITY: “The size of your tank determines the water you can contain.” Your capacity determines how far you can go.
Character
Competence
Capacity?
If you have character and competence but you don’t have capacity, it is not enough.
Capacity is the ability to have multiple competences. So you can multitask and be promoted to become a leader and a manager of others.
Today’s world is a world of multitasking, multiple skills and enlarged capacity to joggle many things together successfully.
Before now, when you were in senior management position, you would have had all manner of aids working for you;
- A driver
- A personal assistant
- A secretary or administrator etc.
But in today’s corporate world, that is no more the norm. It’s in politics that you can still find such expired, outdated and wasteful practices. You find politicians still having advisers, special advisers and adviser to advisers etc. all on tax payers’ money.
As an executive today, you drive yourself; assist yourself with typing, emails etc., instead of having four staff doing one thing each, you now have one person doing four things because of capacity.
- Keep growing
- Keep innovating
- Keep evolving
- Keep performing
Keep enlarging your capacity. A lot of people have found themselves stagnant and not being promoted in their career due to low capacity. Imagine a 10KVA generator carrying a 20KVA load, it will breakdown because it does not have the required capacity for the load.
You can dream and desire all you want; if you don’t have the capacity to carry the weight of the dream it will crush you.
There is a weight of glory and for every level of authority you desire to be promoted to, there are responsibilities tied to it.
For years I have taught leaders a major principle;
“Never delegate responsibilities without authority and never give authority without responsibilities”
Increase your character, competence and capacity, believe me, your value will soar in the marketplace.
4. COURAGE: The corporate world is a tough world and it’s an ocean of sharks. To be valuable and to increase your value in the marketplace, you must have courage and know how to survive among sharks.
- Conquer tasks
- Execute projects
- Face challenges
- Outrun competitors
- Survive changing economic climate
- Swim on diverse government policies that limits etc.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but it is:
- Moving on despite your fears
- Knowing that you are the only one that is afraid.
Courage is part of the entrepreneurial spirit; you need to step out and run your own business, and then develop it while you are still working.
If you don’t step out of the boat, you will not walk on water, but you need a boat to step from.
Employers in today’s world are no more looking for staffs to hire; they are looking for entrepreneurs to hire and teammates to bring on board. So, you must be a person of great courage to be valuable in today’s marketplace.
If you have character, competence, capacity but lack the courage to use them or exhibit them, then of what use will they be?
- A man of character needs courage to stay true to their principle.
- A man of competence needs courage to go on despite mockery.
- A man of capacity needs courage to take on all responsibilities.
- A man of courage needs courage to do all the previous three.
These things go hand in hand and you can’t leave one for another. Knowledge and understanding, experience and exposure, character, competence and capacity all help build courage.
The snail and tortoise only makes progress when they stick their necks out. Keep pressing on and stay courageous to increase your value in the marketplace.
5. CULTURE: Call it brand, ethics, protocols or experience. It does not matter what you call it, just have it and be it!
Every organization and sector has their own unique culture, ethics, protocol and brand. If you work within that sector or organization, wisdom demands that you become cultural by fitting into the culture to be valuable.
You can’t find favour and goodwill if you fight or operate contrary to the prevailing culture of where you work. You can’t be a subculture or a counterculture or else there will be trouble.
Can you imagine enrolling in a school where they wear uniforms, or working in an organization where members of staff are expected to wear uniforms and then you refuse to wear a uniform but still want to work there? It’s not possible. It’s either you quit or choose to wear the uniform because the only option is for the whole organization to change their uniform wearing policy because of you, but I doubt that.
To increase your value in the marketplace, you must be cultured. This requires that you become versatile about different sectors in the corporate and business world, and gain deep knowledge of corporate culture and marketplace ethics and protocol.
Be knowledgeable, flexible, adaptable and relevant in the sector you operate in and the marketplace in general and you will be fine. This is the last thing you need to develop but it’s in no way the least.
Your major goal should be to make an impact, make a difference and be valuable in the marketplace.