Knowing how to improve the chances of increasing your net worth is challenging. I came from the bottom myself. Hard work, playing the odds and the standard advice rings hollow without stories demonstrating how it can work.
Making a real million dollar contribution is a sure way to get noticed. It is easier said than done. So here's three examples that got me some notoriety and a "get out of jail" card in corporate life:
My first employment was a million dollar effort that I wasn't cognitive of. I was what corporate America desired most of their employees- bright but clueless. I didn't realize my worth until the very end. That was when I realized that my contributions were quantified, and it was my own ignorance to blame for failing to profit from my own growth.
Upon returning from an unprecedented vacation of an entire work week, I soon became aware that something really bad happened. Something to the tune of $15 million! That should have been my first conscious realization - the sheer size of that number!
My next conscious realization should have taken notice of the huge number of e-mails dedicated to the problem. Too many to read thoroughly, I started skimming through them. I started to get a real bad feeling about it, the farther I went into it and pieced together what happened.
When I discovered the conclusion, that I was the MAIN scapegoat for this incredibly costly mistake, it should have been completely obvious the amount of my worth was underpaid! Instead of thinking like a business man and examining the significance of the numbers, I took the whole ordeal personal.
There was huge potential in being the lowest paid, but apparently most significant player in a multi-million dollar blunder! If a brother is going to take that kind of responsibility, surely a brother deserves a significant raise! But I didn't think like that. Not then. Instead, I was hung up on the ridiculous situation and focussed on the juggernauts rail-roading my sensitive little ego.
The first to share the blame was the top section head manager. He was relatively new and immediately instituted department wide changes. The most significant of this case was the elimination of the defect engineer. The defect engineers duties would be spread out according to classification.
"What?! Who is going to do the classification? That's the whole purpose of that position." My immediate concern was voiced.
"Don't worry. You will only be responsible for defects in your area of expertise. We'll split it up, so everybody shares the burden."
"That doesn't make any sense! I don't know how to do the defect engineer's job." My question was not being answered.
"Don't worry. You will get specialized training."
Lie! The training never happened. We were supposed to pick it up on the go. That was the biggest mistake in this multi-million dollar blunder.
The next in line was that manager's boy. He was the area coordinator, and admittedly very good at his job. Maybe a little overconfident with the manager's constant approval? He networked several of the machines to a common server. That expedited the updates of software revisions. This was new to us and we were too busy to remember that all of the machines were linked, right or wrong.
The problem was immediately identified by a random qualification test of one of the machines. Production didn't recognize that one bad now meant they were all bad either. Standard procedure was followed, but the techs worked on the single offender all night long and couldn't fix it.
When they filled me in with the details that morning, I had a quick hunch what the problem was. My hunch was correct and production applauded my ten minute fix that solved their all night problem. Except I was too busy going on with my new Defect Engineers duties to think that all the machines had the same problem. I didn't know what the hell I was doing in that role! I was expected to see the subtle change in the product occuring. It was an easy catch for the REAL defect engineer. What in the hell was wrong with me?!
And so it was, that week and the following week that I was on vacation that the product was mis-processed to the tune of $15,000,000. And I was the tech to fix the problem at the early stage, and I was at the helm in the Defect Engineer's role to catch the problem early - and I was the MAIN person to blame for the blunder. The department manager called a special meeting to say so. Never mentioned my name, but everybody knew who I was!
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I hit the streets and immediately landed a new job. I was so excited and elated!
I couldn't wait to tell my boss off! And my boss's boss and the area coordinator and the whole damned board of directors and the CEO! Man! was I pissed!
My first day back, I had an abnormal extra spring in my step. I had a fixed grin on my face and I couldn't wait to tell my boss the news.
"I am quitting. This is my official two weeks notice."
"What!? Are you serious?" He was obviously rattled. "You know that KK is going to want to talk to you?" He had an obvious fear of his superiors.
I chuckled with a hint of disgust, "I should hope so! I have a few things that I want to tell him!"
It didn't take long for the word to spread. The area coordinator was the first to come and talk to me. He was still skirting any responsibility in the matter.
"I have talked to KK about this. You know that we value your contributions and there is a wage increase in store for you?"
"That is too little too late." My disgusted response to the realization that I was grossly underpaid for years. "I have already accepted another job and I will honor that commitment."
He was suddenly shaken. "Well, I think that you should re-consider. I don't know how much you're making, but from my talk with KK, we are ready to make things right for you..."
I just hardened my stance, "After what's transpired? I don't think so. I have a new job. A new beginning! That is ALL that matters to me."
He became obviously angry with me. He didn't say another word to me, ever. Not even when I bumped into him at the pizza place months later.
Despite the rumors indicating otherwise, I worked out those entire long two last weeks. On the last day of my final minutes, the facility suffered a power outage. Everybody else was out to lunch and I was alone in the bay doing my best to salvage the product in the process. I got that strange feeling of somebody watching me and it was KK, standing in the main hallway watching me scramble.
I'd finally made it to the last hour and my appointment with KK. I wasn't the slightest bit nervous. The outcome of the meeting didn't matter to me at all. In a lot of ways, I became more of a man in those coming moments.
I walked straight into his office, standing tall. He offered me a seat and I declined. And then I let him have it! I didn't use a single cuss word, but I was stern and direct.
I told him how he created the environment for me to fail. I told him how he coddled his "boys" and threw me to the wolves! And I told him how it felt to be singled out in the department meeting. When I finished my ranting monologue, I looked him straight in the face. He was looking down. And to my surprise, the apologies started.
He was oblivious of the impact that all of this had on me. He certainly didn't intend for those things to affect me the way they had. He backed up, admitted his wrong doing, and sincerely apologized. And then he tried to persuade me to stay.
Something drastically changed inside of me as this was transpiring. This was not what I imagined? I was becoming less warrior, not taking everything personal and getting a wider angle on things. A better business perspective!
I realized that it wasn't a pugilistic relationship. That was MY mistake. It really was a cooperative effort. I realized that I did own half of the power of negotiation. I was not powerless as I had feared. They did care about me and they did really want collective success! If I had been more open about my needs and desires, it would not have become so isolated and personal. I would have benefitted from a more healthy business relationship.
That experience of my last minute on my last day was so empowering! It started to make perfect sense. I didn't have to be envious of others. I could have what they had too, what an epiphany! But that wasn't a "six million dollar idea" as much as it was a "six million dollar blunder".
My next opportunity came at my next employer. We had a long conveyor belt that was difficult to track and resulted in $2 million of annual product waste. At least three different engineers had given their best shot, but the problem remained.
I was assigned to go on a business trip to learn about a new machine that we were purchasing. My reputation as a scribe and willingness to share new information got me on the plane with three other constituents.
I quickly got bored with the sanitation demonstration and wandered away from the small crowd. What was really drawing my attention was the long conveyor belt running on a nearby bake tunnel. One of their engineers noticed my snooping.
"How do you do that? That belt tracking is tight!"
His eyes lit up and I immediately knew that I was lucky enough to ask the right person. "We have demanding standards and found this one particular vendor out of a dozen that met those needs."
That single discovery saved our company millions! It was something that I could hang my hat on. It probably got me out of jail a time or two?
My next example wasn't as much a single idea as it was a sustained million dollar effort. There was a fair amount of good luck involved in this case because I happened upon a perfect storm.
The technician whom I took over from was fired. He was a union guy, so it took the better part of two years to get rid of him. He did a poor job in every aspect. Things were in dire straits when I took over. I was up for the challenge and my skill set and experience was a perfect match for what was needed to turn operations around.
It took six months of scrambling to get things back to par. After that the section manager held a meeting to introduce a stretch goal. They had identified $1.2 million annual waste from the machines that I was supporting. In addition of that was $100,000 they were spending on field service just to keep running.
One field tech in particular made most of the visits. He was a dedicated, intelligent, straight up guy that made the most of his limited time there. We became immediate friends, like two thieves meeting in the night.
The million dollar waste number was calculated from the performance capabilities claimed by the manufacturer. The devil was in the details though, and the machines were far from their operation capabilities because of lacking discipline on our part.
The caring field tech had made a substantial list of recommendations to improve performance. But that implementation would require the efforts of full time employees. Since the tech responsible for that was a loser, absolutely nothing on the list was done for two years. Once I got my head above water, I set to changing that.
Over the next six months, I started by making some lasting improvements that compounded. We continued checking off literally a couple hundred little things that contributed to the goal. Along the way, I added a few big hitter ideas of my own.
I was there for almost one year exactly when we had a follow up meeting for the stretch goal. We were still short of the stretch goal, but we had gotten half way in six months! Adding that to the $100,000 that I'd saved the company in field service, and my $50,000 salary was up for negotiation.
They tried real hard to keep me on after I was offered another job. The kick in the ass there was that the union would not allow my salary boost! They said that I had peaked for my classification! But the company pulled out the stops and offered to make me salary which would remove the union control of the situation and allow them to top my recent offer. I still declined because my new offer was more consistent with my long term goal.
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