Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the ultimate compliments at work is, “We’ll do fine without you.” If you want to be indispensable, do a really bad job.

It may seem backwards, but we can do without our best employees. Of course, this all depends on the definition we use for “best” and “good.”

Our best employees let everyone know what they are doing. Their work is made visible and is easy to find. They have no “secret ingredients.” Why would they have a secret ingredient. Someone is paying them for their ingredients. That someone owns the ingredients, not the employee.

Our worst employees hide what they are doing. They have magic numbers and secret brews bubbling in a big black cauldron in the dungeon. No one goes near for fear of all those things that lurk in dungeons near big black cauldrons. Indispensable employees are doing a bad job. They produce work, take a paycheck, but no one else can reproduce their work.

Our best employees can walk out the door with a smile on their face. We can pick up after them without missing a beat. We bid one another farewell with a personal loss, but a professional atmosphere of work. We will do fine without them. And the feeling is mutual.