What are you worth?

Posted on | June 10, 2010 | No Comments

How do we quantify our value?

This is the question that we constantly find ourselves asking, especially when you are looking at an employment contract and deciding whether to continue to negotiate or take it.

The problem we face as a workforce is, as Seth Godin put it in a recent blog post, that we migrate between hourly and linchpin work.

I would add that as we migrate between the 2 types of work, hourly and linchpin, we get confused.

But Godin’s example makes it all very clear. You have talent and you need to find the avenue to exploit that talent. And you need to be aware of the need and value of your particular talent that can be translated into a product or service.

I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem–there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, “I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed.” They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. “Here, this will work.” And then he billed them $45,000. That’s quite an hourly wage. It’s also quite a bargain.

As a professor I look at this and say EXACTLY!

Education is not a career for a mega salary, BUT, if you have your eyes wide open there are opportunities where added value can be delivered from the academic experience of the professor.

The problem is HOW to tap into linchpin elements of a situation. Unfortunately too many academics have their eyes wide shut and miss the opportunities in front of them.

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