Proving Your Value

A buddy of mine, a manager of small IT department, recently got notice that he was being laid off. His company figured they could do better by outsourcing his function. His comment to me was that his bosses had no idea all he did. He felt they didn’t understand the value he provided to them, and I am sure they didn’t.

Technologists, like my friend, aren’t always the best communicators. While they may know how to make systems hum, they don’t know how toot their horn. Making sure systems are well-run and secure are all that matters, right?

The truth is that in many cases technology operations can be outsourced easily and effectively. Think about it, are the nuts and bolts of your network so unique that a good engineer couldn’t figure it out and support it fairly quickly? Grossly oversimplifying things, I would argue that if someone couldn’t come in and take over, you may want to take a look at how you’re managing your systems.

What can’t be outsourced is how well you know your organization and use that knowledge to help it achieve its objectives through technology.

Having solid and stable systems is a minimum barrier of entry, so much so that there is almost a paradoxical effect in that it has almost no value. That’s right, no value! Yes you have to get it right and getting it right is critically important, but it is an expectation. People don’t generally value the things they expect.

So where does the value come from?

The value is your interactions with management and staff, your ideas, and your contributions to the strategic plan. It is how you help the organization and those within it move forward. It is also how well you communicate and sell the importance of those contributions.

I suspect my friend lost sight of the communications end of his job. It may not have made a difference in the end, but his bosses should never have been in the dark about what he did and the value of it.

How do you prove your value?