As part of the website heresy month, I wanted to talk about a heresy that’s related to the workplace, and to how you help your customers. It’s the principle that you should never make the job you do obsolete. I suspect (and hope) I’m not alone in thinking that making yourself obsolete – working yourself out of a job – is in fact the awesomest thing you can do.
I’ve done work at companies where they’ve had That Guy, ossified into his corner cubicle like one of the crew on The Flying Dutchman, secure in the knowledge that he’ll continue to do the same job for the next twenty years, just the same as he’s been doing that same job for the last twenty years. The Catholics called that Purgatory. If you can avoid it, no one wants to solve the same problem, work at the same task, over and over again for eternity.
If you were a personal trainer, having clients who’d already started to go through a program like Hundred Pushups after an initial consult, and had started to get jazzed by seeing results would have to be a win. Then you could take their blossoming dedication to routine and basic fitness and start molding them into Roman Gladiators.
There’s only one of you, so there’s only so much you can do with your time. Working out ways to deal with these entry-level, starting problems lets you deal with the more interesting problems that you’d move on to after that, as a starting point. It lets you and your customers get to The Next Level.
You? You’re not worried about being obsolete because you’re nimble on your feet, and able to reinvent yourself. Making your old job obsolete is only an issue if you can’t see what the next level is for what you’re doing currently. Hell, the next step might even be doing something different that still helps clients in the same industry. Built To Last is a great book that touches on this area. It talks about examples of companies that have been around for over a hundred years, and how they’ve managed that. And the interesting thing is that some of them have moved into very different industries, or reinventing themselves to adapt to changing markets. IBM is a great example – they started out making glorified calculators.
From experience across IT consulting and commercial voice work, the principle holds true. There’s a core set of values and abilities that can be applied for success across a number of fields.
Don’t do it because you want to stay ahead of the curve, or because Someone Else Will Do It If We Don’t. Do it because it increases the overall Awesomness Quotient.
Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…
Look at the current services you offer to customers, and see if there’s something that can be automated, or made unnecessary by educating your clients. (plumber with too many great clients and too little time? what about putting together a basic leaflet on how to change tap washers?)
The second step is thinking about what you could do for clients with the time you’ve just saved. What’s the Next Level?
Do you have a job you could remove yourself from? Tell us in the comments!
Postscript
Some of you might not be aware of who I am, but I’m the sharply-dressed guy on the left of the banner. Due to a number of factors (mostly work) I haven’t been around as much as you all deserve, so I’m doing the right thing by you all and the site and moving to more of an assisting role. There’s no ugly drama behind this – Catherine and I remain fast friends, and I’m quietly hoping that this shift actually sees me around more in the months to come, not less.