What am I worth?

I had to call an airline to correct a ticketing error (my fault) for my holiday travels today. At the end of the call, there was a one question satisfaction survey:

“If you ran a customer service company, would you hire the customer service representative you just spoke with?” I was a little taken aback, but it’s the right question.

That’s the question each manager, each budget owner, each business leader should be asking about how they deploy budget/resources/people. In other words, why not start with the most important opinion: The recipient of the interaction, the person whose business outcomes rests on the interaction – sometimes called “The customer" (though that term gets confusing when used in this context).

It reminds me of a slight variant I have used in my own work. When there is a question about the value add of an HR activity or service, or person, we’ll sit down with the client who is supposed to benefit from the situation, and ask a similar question. When it’s about my partnership with a business leader, I can turn it into an offer that is simple:

"For what my services cost you, you could fund 1/8th of a software engineer’s compensation. (I’m cheap, it’s true, but my services are spread across multiple P&L’s so I’m not quite as cheap as that implies.) If that would be a better use of company resources, and your own budget, we can probably negotiate that change."

No one has taken me up on that offer – yet! I’m sure Finance and HR would hate trying to muck about with such a messy formula. But it drives home my intention / goal to the people I work with, even when they are not happy about a situation, that I’m ONLY there to push on the stuff that matters to their business’s and people’s success – and that my engagement is a deliberate choice on everyone’s part, with a heavy emphasis on the word "choice."

I should note: This approach has several potential downsides. For example, where decision makers' interests diverge from company success, they may not actually care to learn what value the company derives from one's services. They may be more interested in fealty, or politics, or advancement, or a million other things, ahead of what makes the company successful. In such situations, one may be shown the door -- or at least choose to exit.