What Makes You Special?

Filed Under Personal

In this ever changing world where globalization and cut-throath competition is the norm, keeping yourself ahead of the crowd is far more harder than ever. Actually, just keeping your job is already hard, how much more with getting ahead of the pack? Endless ’stepping-up’ is causing a lot of stress on employees including those at the top jobs. This stress is usually passed to the family creating small cracks on relationships which potentially grows larger if not kept in check and addressed properly.

Amidst all these, have you asked yourself what keeps you on your job? For enterpreneurs, what makes your company at the top or at least, stay on the business? What makes you indespensable? Or are you? You maybe also asking yourself things like ‘Am I threatened with that hot and sexy assistant across the room?’ Am I at the either side of the bell curve? Am I not like everybody else? Am I different and unique?

The ‘What Makes You Special?’ marketing campaign of IBM says it all. Globalization and collaboration flattened the world and levelled the playing field. Innovation is a key to stay in business and staying special is paramount to growth. Though their campaign is targetting corporations, the basic values also applies to individuals.

As we all know, the new economy calls for proactiveness - the ability to respond to a changing environment and conditions. It promotes on-time, on-budget approach in doing business which usually translate to streamlining to keep up with the competition. Terms like ‘Market Forces’ are becoming a common word for a rank-and-file which on the old days, can only be heard from top executives.

Sadly for lowly staffs like me, these business jargons are beginning to affect because eventhough we just are small part of the workforce and in the whole company, we are still part the larger picture. Our contributions, small as it may be, is a vital bloodline for the company. And with that in note, we cannot blame them if they want to keep the performers, send off the non-performers and acquire fresh ideas from new recruits. The truth is, we have become a commodity and to be able to avoid becoming obsolete, one has to evolve and change for the better. We need constant checking on our own performance and shortcomings in order to improve. Moreover, we need to load up more knowledge and experience so that if the time comes that we can start our own business, we are ready. We need grow continously so that we stay special!