Value and Validation

There is only one way to keep growing in your career.

Provide more value.

You provide more value for what you take home, and you keep growing. Usually:

• You do more for the same price
• Or you do the same thing for cheaper

But one important step is required before you can:

• Go ask for that next raise
• Go ask for a contract renegotiation
• Go ask for an upsell

Validating Your Value.

In a silo, it is easy to think you are running the show. Oftentimes it feels like without you the company would be handicapped. That you are invaluable. That you are irreplaceable.

But How Do You Know That for Sure?

Go talk to any manager out there and they will proudly tell you how they run the whole ship. Come the next firing round, the company is fine letting go tens of people just like them.

So were they running the ship? Or were they just running their delusions?

Hard to say.

But what I can say is that in many cases, even when people are providing value, they aren’t doing a good job of validating it.

Without validation, your value is, well, not valued enough. And without blinking, you will be replaced with the next best offer.

So you know you have to provide more value. And now you know validating that value is important.

What Next?

Go to our new best friend GPT. Ask ‘how does one validate the value they provide to the stakeholders?’. And you will get some pretty good suggestions:

• Defining objectives and metrics to deliver upon
• Communicating regularly and often
• Working with feedback loops
• Benchmarking your skills

But in my experience, when you know for sure that you are not being valued enough, you need to go ‘all in’.

The ‘All In’

The ‘All In’ can take many shapes depending on your role, skills, and arrangements. But basically, it is a gamble against all odds.

It has to be something where:

• If you win, you make significant progress in your career
• If you lose, it is time to find new work

Don’t read this as simply ‘hold your client or employer hostage’, that never works or increases your value. At most it makes you an exploitative, failed professional.

But do read it as knowing your worth, knowing what you should be valued at fairly, and then demanding what is due. If you care, of course.

Typically any CEO, Client, or Customer will need a promise of two things:

1. Feasible Budget
2. Long Term Trust

And you offer them both:

• You justify the budget with the value you provide, ensuring there is no better offer out there compared to you
• You justify the trust by committing to the relationship long term, ensuring you will stick to the arrangement agreed upon

Have you ever validated your value? If yes, what method did you use?

Keep Growing.

With or without my help – I wish you the best.

---

---