What makes you irreplaceable?

I'd like you to consider a hypothetical question for a moment. Let's imagine your company had to let someone go. What's the single biggest advantage that you have that would keep you in the company versus someone else? What makes you irreplaceable? Think about that for a moment. What answer did you come up with? Is that a lack of available alternatives? Perhaps it's knowledge that only you have about the business, maybe it's your unique skill-set. All of these things and many others that we'll yet discover are part of what makes you irreplaceable. Not long ago, I surveyed thousands of business owners to ask them what makes their employees irreplaceable. One common theme was that they knew how to do certain things better than other people. These business owners would have to spend considerable time rehiring or retraining to find another person with the same expertise. This is where the most valuable activities come in. I'll often refer to most valuable activities as your MVAs. Your MVAs are those activities you perform at work that are worth the most per hour, and are the most costly to replace. Notice the emphasis on your MVAs worth per hour. Some people consider their job only in terms of their salary. For example, thinking, I am an office manager, this is what office managers get paid, so that's what I'm worth. The reality is that most people in the workplace aren't filling just one position. They're really filling many positions by doing a wide variety of activities in a day. Using my example of an office manager, I may be dealing with accounts payable or accounts receivable part of the day, but there are other times during the day where I'm spending time doing many little activities that don't add much value. Someone else could easily handle these tasks. Your most valuable activities are the things you do that are worth the most per hour. When you spend the majority of your time on these MVAs, you're making yourself so valuable to the business, that finding someone else to do your work would be difficult. This makes you irreplaceable. We're going to help you identify your MVAs, and then help you discover your least valuable activities, your LVAs, and how to avoid getting trapped spending your time in them. For now, just understand that when you perform MVAs at work, you're making yourself irreplaceable, and when you spend time in your LVAs, you make yourself easier to replace. We want to increase the moments of irreplaceability by helping you focus on your most valuable activities.