Inserting yourself into the Value Chain

No matter where you fall in your career—Professional, Individual Contributor, Executive, Manager, Hiring Manager, this economy, coupled with an ever-evolving technological environment, often makes it difficult to assess where you stand in the overall Professional Value Chain. Are you firmly embedded into a career path that offers growth and advancement within a large enough and stable enough company not to even worry about where you stand?

If so, you’re in the small minority. For most of us, we see large organizations eaten up by larger organizations and with duplication of VP’s, Plant Managers, Purchasing people and Product Managers, most of us ARE vulnerable. In fact, most Professionals today are scratching their heads, wondering if they’ll have any kind of retirement or pension plan, due to continuing financial instability, a shrinking workforce and technology replacing human minds and hands in many areas.

Which is why most of us must continually measure our place in the Value Chain. By doing so, we can assess when it’s time to brush off the old resume, or to collect more business cards of peers and competitors at trade shows and conferences. As Executives, we have to do SWOT analyses of our company’s situation and be ahead of the curve if there is potential for sale, merger or acquisition. If you’re a small to medium size business owner or president, you have to take stock of the monopolization of all industries and businesses. Can you say exit strategy? Succession planning? The time to place yourself into the Value Chain is RIGHT NOW. Tomorrow you could be standing on the dock, waving as the boat leaves harbor.

So does that mean you need to make tracks to every career site on the planet and spam your resume out there like a desperate guy in a pick-up bar? NO. It simply means that in an increasingly more vague economic climate, it’s better to be assessing the climate during every season than to get cocky and sloppy about how indispensable you are.

Insert yourself into the Value Chain and be aware of how slippery it can be, simply to maintain your footing, much less to climb it. Good Hunting.