Startups are difficult.
Building is often harder than maintaining.
And most startups are in building mode. Whether building the product, or its growth engine.
If you’re a startup employee in a role which impacts the startup’s growth trajectory, this guide is for you.
2 Steps to Indispensability
Ensure that
- Incremental value you bring to the startup is very high.
Value in this context means attributable revenue. - Costs you bring into the system need to get lower over time.
Cost not only means your compensation, but also organisation’s time and energy spent to have you contribute to the system.
The Law of Indispensability
As long as the discrepancy between ‘value you add’, and ‘what you cost’ is high, you will be indispensable.
3 Steps to Increasing your Value
- Building the Right Skills
- Building the Right Mindset
- Building the Right Expectations
Building the Right Skills
It’s better to find high value skills, that contribute to revenue.
And skills closely connected to your current skillset are more valuable.
For example, learning ad copywriting or conversion tracking while you’re learning Meta Ads is adjacent and highly valuable.
As opposed to learning keyword research.
Keyword research can tell you what’s in demand in the market, but it’s not adjacent to Meta Ads.
But if your goal is to run Google Search ads, all 3 skills – ad copywriting, conversion tracking and keyword research become adjacent.
Building the Right Mindset
Good organisations give you feedback in many forms.
Since you aim of becoming indispensable at a startup, I know you have a growth mindset.
But if you’re anything like me, you may have set high standards for yourself.
Or consider mistakes as failure.
This feeling of being perfect in the things that you do, actually gets in the way of you performing your best.
Execution momentum matters far more in a startup than we expect.
So if it’s a reversible action,
Done >>> Perfect
Building the Right Expectations
Set realistic and clear expectations for yourself and with your team.
Understand the startup’s goals and align your objectives.
If your startup is growing fast, you will often experience a moving goal post.
This means that expectations can change often.
Communicate about what you can deliver and by when.
This involves managing both your and your team’s expectations about the scope and scale of your contributions.
Demonstrating reliability and accountability in your work builds trust. It establishes you as a go-to person within the organization.
Doing the right thing, even when you think no one is watching, pays off.
Trust me, business karma is real.
And the payback is faster for startup employees. There is limited politics to hide behind.
3 Steps to Reducing your Cost
- Save the team’s energy
- Save the team’s money
- Save the team’s time
Save the Team’s Energy
This is the most underrated way. Making your manager’s life easier is the easiest way to become indispensable.
Solutions > Problems
Here’s how to handle problems with your manager, from the worst way to the best:
1. Pretend everything is fine.
2. Highlight them but downplay the issue.
3. Accurately escalate them and ask for help.
4. Bring a few viable solutions for them to select from.
5. Highlight the solution you recommend with their blessing.
6. Solve the problem, share your reflections, and ask for coaching.
Think deeply about each possibility:
1. Pretend everything is fine.
Please don’t do this. Fastest way to get fired.
2. Highlight them but downplay the issue.
You are delegating your work to your boss. Avoid.
3. Accurately escalate them and ask for help.
If you’re truly stuck, this is better than nothing. But you have to learn from this situation. Apply learnings it to similar ones.
This still requires quite a lot of your manager’s energy so you won’t get away with these for a long time.
4. Bring a few viable solutions for them to select from.
You’ve brought down the friction and shown them wisdom by thinking through the options. This builds trust.
You need to pinpoint what’s keeping you from picking one.
5. Highlight the solution you recommend with their blessing.
Now we’re on our way to become the best reportee.
If the stakes are high – high cost, hard to reverse, highly visible – this is the best path.
This is sometimes better than solving the problem yourself. Your manager may have a better vantage point and you could prevent disasters.
6. Solve the problem, share your reflections, and ask for coaching.
This is what is what is required in roles where high ownership is required. These are the roles that get paid the most.
Owners solve problems.
You can fight back if you think solving a problem is worth it for the organisation.
Saying ‘it’s not a part of my job description’ is not expected of an indespensible startup employee.
This is easy to understand in theory. Hard to practice.
And like any important skill, it’ll take deliberate practice for it to start becoming effortless.
The above section inspired from Dave Kline’s MGMT Playbook: Your Manager’s Dirty Little Secret.
Save the Team’s Money
Each role either drives revenue, or saves cost. All others that don’t contribute to increasing revenue or saving cost one day go redundant.
I’ve always stayed closer to roles that drive revenue than save costs. It’s easier.
Theoretically, you can only save upto 100% of the cost. But there’s no limit to how high you can push the revenue.
You can help the team save money by eliminating wastage. But know that in a growing startup, team’s would always prefer revenue growth.
Save the Team’s Time
Ask any founder and they’ll often trade off money for time i.e. whatever gets outcomes faster is often prioritised.
So how do you save time?
Either do an efficient job…
OR
Make it easier for others to operate with you.
Incompetent nice guys often survive longer in a good organisation than competent jerks.
Before You Go
This post assumes you want more control and more say in your life as a startup employee.
You possibly also want stay for a long time at a particular startup and be rewarded generously for the money you’re making.
But know that the reward of doing great work, is more work. So be absolutely sure you’re climbing the right ladder.
I teach hard skills in my course on SEO for Product Managers, that can help you get your next promotion. Check it out here.