Organization Value

Focus intensely on how your contribution can favorably impact the business.	Write down your organization’s goals on several levels, if that is appropriate. Work with knowledgeable people to make sure you truly understand the stated goals. Then, write down three goals of the organization that no one has written down because they are deeply ingrained in the culture or perhaps not “safe” to say. Identify how your job contributes to as many of these goals as possible. And, list two ways you would want to shift your job to provide even more value. Discuss this with your manager.
Expand your impact whenever you can so that you become more and more valuable to the organization.	Identify three ways others could get more value from the work you already do. Investigate whether this would be valued by others as well. Talk to your manager about how you could be more valuable to the company. Be sincere about your desire to contribute. Explore shifting your responsibilities, doing things in a different way, and improving certain skills. Explore with some trusted teammates how you could deliver a better result from the overall team. Explore switching some responsibilities, changing processes, and building knowledge and skills you might need.
Do the best you can on your job:	Work on actively setting expectations for the quality and timeliness of your work. Seek to usually meet, and sometimes exceed, those expectations. Set a specific goal for yourself to measurably improve your work within the next six months––enough that others will notice and be pleased by the improvement. Work toward the goal of being the best you can at your job. Discuss with your manager your sincere commitment to improve your contribution in specific ways. Ask them for honest feedback and help, and then hold them to that commitment. Be sure not to be critical of their comments and advice. Understand others’ points of view and learn.
Take responsibility for what you should own.	Explore any areas you can find where others hold you accountable for things, but you resist. Identify the core cause of the conflict and what you can do about it. For a week, attempt to never blame something on someone else. Find a different way to frame the issue so that it opens the door to your influence or control. At the end of the week, evaluate whether this change made a difference for you or other people. Find an area where you could take ownership of something that would have value to the organization. Investigate how you could make this happen without negatively impacting any one else.
Vocally support the organization’s goals.	Identify three areas you most strongly support the organization’s stated goals. Without mixing negative information with positive, figure out how you could honestly answer, “Why do you support that goal?” Identify three forums, groups, meetings, discussions, where it would be appropriate for you to mention your support of an organizational goal. Set for yourself an objective to actually do it, and see how people respond. Vocally challenge others’ cynicism in a constructive way. Search for ways to explore the sources of their cynicism, and change the point of view in order to find the underlying logic and rationale. Understand how you detect the difference between authentic enthusiasm and faking. Make a list of words, phrases, or actions that indicate whether a person is or is not being authentic. Increase your usage of the ones that seem most useful and genuine for you.
Choose your battles carefully.	Identify three times you chose the wrong time to fight a battle. List the situation, outcome, and how you could have known in advance you would lose. Identify three times you have lost, but you considered the issues worth the fights anyway. Be clear about why it was worthwhile. See if you can identify ways you could have reduced the negative impact of losing the battle. Identify three times when you fought a worthy battle and won. Besides the outcome, why did you consider it worthy? What else did you get out of it? See if you can find ways you could have reduced any negative impact on other people. Identify three times when you won the battle, but in the end, it was not worth it. Examine the larger costs to yourself and others. How could you have known in advance it was not worth winning the battle?