Gary North

Feb. 11, 2008

One of the marks of an insecure employee is that he tries to build layers of busy-work insulation around his job. He tries to make it appear as though it would be a lot of trouble to replace him.

The problem is, this keeps him from getting promoted. He locks in his job for a while, but that means he locks himself out of a promotion.

Then a change in technology that makes his tasks easy to reassign to a low-paid worker leads to the termination of his career. In a high-tech world, this is the wave of the future. "I can get it done cheaper in India" is the slogan of this brave new world.

To survive these days, a worker should make himself easily replaceable. He should go out of his way to recruit and train a potential replacement -- maybe two. He should let his superiors know this. That way, if a job higher up the chain of command opens up, the company can award the job to him. It's less hassle to promote him.

It is not possible to hide for long behind a wall of make-work insulation. Technology will not allow it. It is best to plan for the future and spend your time preparing for the promotion rather than hiding behind unnecessary make-work. You can't climb up the ladder if you're locked to the lower rung.