Management Tactic #25: Make Yourself Obsolete

A wise man once told me that it was his goal in every job he had to make himself obsolete.

Yeah, that needed some explaining at the time.

He was slightly exaggerating to make a point. The point was that he is always looking for ways to diminish the inefficient and unproductive parts of his job so that he could do more and do better. Also, he wanted to simplify his job as much as possible so that someone else could easily take it on, and he could move on the bigger and better responsibilities.

This is the exact opposite of the way many people do their jobs. Many people stretch out the mundane parts of their jobs to fill as much time as possible. They hide what they do and avoid transparency so that it comes across to their superiors as if they’re the only ones who can do their jobs. Those people are so afraid of becoming obsolete.

The key to understanding this is by making yourself obsolete at your current job, you make yourself considerably less obsolete to your company. You actually make yourself more valuable to your company, because you’ve demonstrated that you can do more than they thought you could.

I got this advice a few years ago, right before I began my current job. And on day 1, I started keeping a record of all of my duties and how I did them. I simplified my tasks, made them more efficient, and recorded them. (This goes along with what I call the “hit-by-bus” mentality. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I’d like someone else to be able to take over at least the fundamental aspects of my job simply by following my prerecorded instructions.)

I don’t have the authority to implement this idea where I work, but someday, if I ever run my own business, I’d like to have a standing policy that says if anyone can make their job obsolete, I’ll give them a raise and a promotion. Simple as that. Because I want to encourage people to innovate and think and challenge the status quo. I want people to ask why we do the things we do instead of just blindly going through the motions. I want people who don’t want to settle into a desk doing the same old thing that a kid fresh out of college could do in a quarter of the time.

How have you made yourself obsolete?

10 thoughts on “Management Tactic #25: Make Yourself Obsolete”

  1. Smart, smart, smart.

    I was just thinking about a news organization where I used to work. A new owner took over and gave everyone raises, but forgot to account for overtime. His budget was out of control. So, one day he decided that everyone could keep making the same pay rates that they had raised us to, but only if we all worked 45 hours a week. When we called this a pay cut with forced overtime, he kept denying it.

    I complained to him personally, because I had been working at that job for 7 years, and had found a way to produce the same amount of work as most everyone else but at greater speed. I hadn’t worked overtime in a couple of years. So I would have to work more hours to make the same amount of money, all to deal with an overtime issue that I never contributed to in the first place.

    I convinced the new owner of my case, and he told me I could make the same rate per hour as before, so long as I never went into overtime. I won my point, but the writing was on the wall. He ultimately bankrupted the company. Luckily I’ve always had a nose for mismanagement and left before that happened.

    I now work for myself, and the benefits of efficiency over busy-ness has never been clearer. Every business should recognize and reward that ethic.

    Reply
    • Cara–I’ve seen that happen too. For that reason, among others, I’m not a big fan of hourly wages. My preferred method of payment salaried, especially with the caveat that you employees can work as little or as much as they’d like, as long as they get the job done well and on time. The main instance where that doesn’t work is if it’s important for employees to be physically available for clients for a certain range of time every day.

      Reply
  2. A big step towards obsolescence is cross-training. Creating a system of tracking all duties carried out in an area, team, or company and ensuring that more than one person can do each one not only offers people opportunities for personal and professional growth, but it easily covers your business so you’re not left scratching your head when a certain person falls unexpectedly ill or leaves the team/company for some reason.

    Reply
  3. Another important step towards obsolescence that goes hand-in-hand with cross-training is mentoring/coaching…bringing individuals up within your organization through appropriate levels of challenge, creating a shared vision, role modeling, and encouragement to grow them so they can achieve more (achieve the things you currently do at a leadership level) and therefore allow you to focus on setting new directions and taking on new organizational challenges.

    I can go on all day about this (as a matter of fact, I teach a 4-hour class on it!), but I’ll let some other people submit a comment or two!

    Reply
  4. This is actually some of the best career advice I’ve read, and it goes along with my own mantra to success with a slight re-phrasing: “Make Yourself Replaceable”. As an employee in a company where people’s service time is usually measured in decades, I’ve seen many people who have done the same job for 10+ years. If thats what you want, thats fine – sometimes the “same job” can actually be pretty interesting, if the job itself morphs responsibility. But if you want real diversity in your career steps, make yourself replaceable such that when you do get a new opportunity, your soon-to-be-former boss knows s/he can replace you easily, or at least has a good blueprint on how to do your job.

    Education and hustle greases the front of your career skids – making yourself replaceable greases the back of them.

    Reply
    • Thanks, Joe. “Replaceable” certainly works just as much as “Obsolete.” I think that’s great advice. I think there are tons of people who do the same thing for years and years. Perhaps they do their jobs well. Perhaps they don’t. Either way, I’d get bored doing the same thing every day for that long.

      Reply
  5. I’ve delegated the least enjoyable part of my job to someone else which has freed up time for me to do the parts of my job I actually love. so I’ve pretty much took my job description and duties and gave half to someone else. I’m still looking for ways to delegate more while giving me more time and resources to create and innovate.

    Reply

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