The Great Recession has expedited the transition to a virtual labor market, where each individual is an independent contractor constantly in the market, selling their services.  To succeed in this world, individuals need to define their product, sharpen their sales skills, actively manage their time and add greater incremental value.

The 12 million unemployed Americans are bombarded with advice on defining their personal brand.  Setting aside the gloss and polish offered by career counselors, the remaining content is the need to be easily defined in a 15 second elevator speech.  Simple and specialized products sell.  Complex and generic products die.  Specialized professional functions and industry experience are marketable.  Generalists need to become repositioned with specialist labels: as entrepreneurs, six sigma black belts, project management professionals, etc.  Certifications are highly valued.  The “signaling” theory of the labor market is winning, with HR, hiring managers and recruiters all relying upon external signals such as certifications, national/Big 4 consulting experience, top 25 university/MBA degrees and Fortune 500 experience.  Personal communications and sales skills command a premium within the universe of certified professionals.

At work or as a consultant, the most important driver of added value is the allocation of time.  Individuals divide their time among the functions of doing, managing, investing, planning and reporting.  Stephen Covey’s path breaking “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” enlightened a whole generation on this topic.  There is a critical trade-off between doing and other functions, which senior staff and managers must exploit.  There is a trade-off between urgent and important tasks at the heart of personal time management.  There is value in “sharpening the saw” by investing in activities with long-run benefits. 

The marginal product theory of labor value applies at work.  Individuals who devote their time to the highest incremental value activities at work are rewarded.  Those who do their “fair share” of low value activities are left behind.  Managing people, suppliers, customers, assets, risks and processes offers opportunities to leverage value.  Individuals with the greatest scope of authority deliver the greatest value and are rewarded.  Investing in people, products, processes and assets provides another opportunity to add greater value.  Strategic, functional, project and individual planning offers opportunities to leverage time in a more abstract dimension.  Developing, operating and enhancing reporting and feedback systems allow key staff to identify enhanced improvement and risk management options. 

Individuals who have managed to define and sell their personal branded product and secured significant opportunities to deliver value must also know how to deliver incremental value.  There are seven generic strategies for adding maximum value.

Buy low and sell high.  All activities must be delivered by the lowest cost resource.  If there is any individual, machine or supplier that can deliver a service more cheaply, eventually they will.  Identify the lowest cost resource and employ it.  Delegate.  Divide jobs.  Outsource.  Automate.  Simplify.  As Andy Grove once said, “only the paranoid survive”.  Get this done before others.

Match skills and talents to assignments.  Functional skills, industry experience, soft skills, courage, flexibility, creativity and other talents vary greatly across available resources.  Identify the 3-5 key talents required and employ those with natural talents.  Employ personality profiles, test results and Gallup Strengths to find matches.  Create an internal labor market that encourages staff to know and apply their talents as often as possible.

Leverage the cumulative positive impact of process engineering.  Call it TQM, ISO 9000, six sigma or lean manufacturing.  Employ incremental continuous process improvement, tactical Kaizen blitzes, re-engineering projects, management systems and cultural changes to obtain the maximum value from the quality revolution.  World-class firms continue to improve and leave others behind.

Leverage the benefits of learning curves in all activities.  Individuals with one year of experience may be twice as productive as trainees.  Those with three years of experience may be another 50% more productive.  Reach mastery level in critical activities. 

Create synergy through cross-functional project teams.  There is a limit to the returns on the first four strategies.  Eventually, a senior financial analyst, research chemist or national accounts manager will find incremental improvements more difficult to achieve.  For some projects, processes and functions there is a need to combine the highest talents of complementary functions. 

Leverage the unique assets of the organization.  Firms have core competencies, intellectual property, cultural assets, brand assets, relationships, best practices and most productive assets.  Sales or product growth in adjacent space has a high success probability.

Leverage the organization’s goodwill with stakeholders.  Suppliers, customers, regulators, investors, staff and communities have a vested interest in the organization’s ongoing success.  Provide them with opportunities to reinvest in the organization’s future.

Most of us will add the greatest possible value by following the path of least resistance.  We will leverage relative market values, talents, process improvement techniques, learning curves, teamwork, core competencies and common interests.  A self-aware, proactive strategy will pay the greatest personal dividends, while delivering value to firms and society.