Replaceable You

We all like to think that we are that one person in our family, team or company that is irreplaceable.

The bad thing…most of us are replaceable.

Sure…you can try to be the best at what you do…but unless you ARE the BEST at what you do, you are replaceable.

Very few people can be the best…so…by elimination, very few people are irreplaceable.

Seth Godin states it well in his book Lynchpin (amazon affiliate link):

“If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.”

Let’s take a tour of the world of IT for a minute and think about the people within most IT groups.

You’ve got System Administrators. Developers. Project Managers. Testers. System Analysts. Business Analysts, Managers, etc etc.  The list goes on and on…

Out of this group of people how many are irreplaceable?

Each of these positions are necessary in the modern day IT group. That said, each is replaceable…but each is replaceable via internal or external means…via fireing/ hiring or via outsourcing.

Every single IT professional in every role has some chance of being replaced. From the CIO down the ladder to the most junior level IT grunt…everyone’s replaceable…unless they aren’t.

Think about your team.  How many on your team could be replaced (with someone of equal experience) and not have much of a hiccup?  Sure there’s some knowledge transfer that has to happen, but for the most part things would operate smoothly.

Out of a group of 100 IT professionals, are 10 irreplaceable?  How about 5? How about 1?

What makes an IT professional (or anyone) irreplaceable isn’t that they do a job or that they know something that others may not know…its how they do their job and how they apply their knowledge.

No longer can you lean on your years of service, expertise or ‘what you know’ to be successful and/or to remain employed.  To be irreplaceable, you’ve got to be irreplaceable.

You’ve got to be the person that everyone in your team / organization looks to for answers. You’ve got to be the person that everyone knows is irreplaceable.

Are you truly irreplaceable? Are you the person who gets the phone call when something ‘must get done’?  If not…you should be.

Image Credit: Replaceable By steve heath on flickr