The ones that will deliver the most bang for your buck? The $10K equivalent of Becoming indispensable?
The linchpin is an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen.
Develop unique skills * Become their Tylenol * Become an information conduit.
Develop unique (yet adjacent) skills
Learning new skills is a surefire path to becoming indispensable.
we should look closer to home: adding adjacent skills.
Adjacent skills are quicker to learn and deliver more bang for the buck
Adjacent skill play on what you know already and help you make better use of them.
Turn yourself into Tylenol
Tylenol products solve a specific problem a customer is looking for a solution for. Vitamin products try to make a customer’s life better in some way when they didn’t even know they had a problem to solve.
Be your boss’ second brain. Track their tasks, deliverables, and deadlines.
Organize your team’s information. Knowledge workers spend 4.5 hours a week looking for files. If that’s not Tylenol, I don’t know what is.
Create dashboards. Your boss is struggling for a centralized place containing the team’s metrics, goals and KPIs. Create this doc in a simple spreadsheet (or more advanced no-code app), and constantly remind them where they can find it.
summarize the key takeaways in a format that’s friendly for your boss to consume.
Become a conduit (to unique information)
not underestimate the influence of shadow power—advisors, assistants, consultants, and most especially spouses.
generosity-first networking (which BTW is one of the most popular modules from Supercharge your Productivity).
Having a system * Following-up methodically * Leading with generosity * Connecting the dots