Valuable Work

I’ve been on vacation the last few days visiting my friends from college, and as we catch up, the conversation I keep having over and over again is around what makes valuable work.

Like me, you’ve probably received lots of messaging in your life around which type of work is most valuable. It depends on the industry, but it tends to be people who have a certain skillset (in tech—coders, in medicine—doctors, in academia—tenured professors, etc) or it tends to be the people who think up big strategies and tell other people what to do. For instance, at my current job it’s really clear that if you’re not doing the big strategic work (even as an individual contributor who, by definition, is more of a doer), you aren’t really adding value according to leadership.

As a whole, society tends to value work that requires more training, “harder” training, or more ladder climbing. And the higher you are on those scales, the more you’re valued.

But as my friends and I talk, it’s become pretty clear my friends hold different strong suits. In particular, their strong suits are things like relationship building, making sure everyone understands the importance of their role, and helping people to feel safe in potentially domineering and chaotic environments. And my message to them has been: do you know how lucky your company is that they have you?

Here’s the thing: the big, flashy jobs are valuable (at least some of the time). But if a company doesn’t have people who are excellent at the soft skills or “lesser” hard skills (like copywriting or customer service), that company is probably falling apart. If they’re somehow still standing, their employees are probably at their breaking point and the work is probably subpar because everyone is stretched to their limit filling in all the holes of the “lesser” jobs company leadership scoffs at and deems less valuable.

Society has a tendency to try to persuade everyone that they should want the same thing. We should all desire to do the thing that adds the “most” value. But here’s the thing: we’re all built differently, energetically speaking and skills-wise. While we’re adaptable creatures and can learn new skills, trying to go after something that isn’t a good fit with your energy and inherent strengths is like trying to push a boulder up a hill. Even if it’s just a mental boulder, it’s a boulder nonetheless. And it doesn’t make any sense because the jobs that they can do well are just as desperately needed, if not more so—even if companies don’t want to acknowledge it.

There’s a company in Canada called Oak & Willow and their business model is to pay everyone the same. Everyone. The CEO makes as much as the person packing boxes.

And people will scream about this on social media. But your work as CEO is so much harder! they’ll cry out. The CEO’s response? Sure, I do more thought work which is “harder” work or perhaps “more valuable” to the company. But I can’t do the work I do today without someone else packing boxes. The business literally can’t run if someone isn’t packing the orders. Same with the person making the products, managing inventory, etc. Why should I make more than these people if they’re just as necessary to our success?

She has other things to say about this model as well (like the fact that everyone feels true ownership over the success of the company because they’re equal stakeholders), but she’s pointing out something that our competitive, superiority-obsessed culture doesn’t like to acknowledge: every piece of the puzzle is just as necessary as any other piece. Sure, these pieces are rarer and help create the boundaries of the puzzle. But if we all try to be corner pieces, or edge pieces hoping to one day make it to corner piece, we don’t end up with a complete picture. We just have an outline with no substance.

If we truly care about creating the most successful company we can, then really our focus should be on how to make the most complete puzzle we can rather than who can be in the most coveted positions and lord it over the other pieces.

This is also true about society at large. If we’re all white collar workers, then we might as well be living in an apocalypse because there’s no one to make sure our energy is running, our water is clean, our trash is picked up, we have food, we have homes to live in, etc. It’s absurd that there is so much obsession over being a white collar worker, even now when those are likely the first jobs AI will take over if it takes over anything. There are so many people who want to be farmers, teachers, [responsible] public servants, chefs, and other incredibly necessary positions. Think about all the kids who think it’s cool to be a firefighter, postal worker, or mechanic. I’m someone who believes that we would have the exact right balance of people in each job and industry if only society didn’t look down on certain jobs and every job truly paid a living wage. And we, as a society, would be so much better off for it because we would have more fulfilled people living in it and more people in jobs they excelled at.

What I would encourage you to do is this: next time you’re doing something that isn’t considered valuable, really question that. Could it be true? Of course. But my guess is that if you’re feeling pulled to take some sort of action that isn’t praised, you’re probably doing it because some part of you recognizes just how valuable it is.

So ask yourself: What is the result of my actions? Who is being impacted by me taking time to do what I’m doing?

And when someone else adds value to your life, especially when it’s something rarely acknowledged, make sure they know what they did for you. Because that’s how we start to get people to recognize that value isn’t a narrowly defined pathway. It’s everywhere around us.