If you’re a motorcycle mechanic, a rack of repaired motorcycles is a clear indicator you can point to after a hard day’s work. Similarly, the h-index is a grading score given to professors at research universities that ranks their impact in a chosen field. Both a high h-index and a rack of repair...

Here are three steps knowledge workers can follow to naturally build and demonstrate value in their organizations (without coming off as arrogant jerks)

• Step 1: Understand the difference between intensive and extensive value.
• Step 2: Build your own scorecard.
• Step 3: Se...

Each month, complete your own monthly performance review. Your scorecard should provide the foundation, but you can add in answers to questions:

• What major projects did you move forward with in the past month? How does that impact the overall business?
• In what ways did you go a...

Once you’ve decided which type of value you’re looking to build, you need to determine how you’re going to track your progress. Many positions come with built-in metrics that can be used to measure impact. If you’re a support professional, you might look at how many emails you have sent in a give...

In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

These vanity metrics might include how quickly you resp...

If your goal is to develop intensive value, you want to build clout around a specific area:

• Take classes and read books about the topic.
• Take on extra side projects to tinker and experiment until you know virtually everything there is to know.
• Join conversations within ...

If your goal is to develop extensive value, relationships are key. Extensive value is built through getting involved in multiple areas throughout the organization.

• Build a thorough understanding of each department, how they’re interlinked, and the key projects going on at any one time....

At the start of the year or quarter, identify the progress you want to make and how you’re going to measure success.

Here are some tips:

• Select metrics that are easy to measure and highly valuable. You should be able to gauge progress from week to week.
• Build a consisten...

• If your annual performance review isn’t until December, it’s easy to forget what you worked on in March. This practice ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
• You’ll get better at identifying and communicating your contributions.
• Depending on the size of your organization, ...

In the real world, people who know how to make themselves and their contributions seen (without being annoying about it) get ahead of their higher-performing peers all the time.

As the work world shifts from an hours-worked mentality to a work-accomplished one, remote workers need to maste...

You could send in a quarterly update to HR or send over a weekly email to your supervisor with a recap, or both. The cadence and medium will differ; the goal is still to keep everyone updated with our progress.

There’s a fine line between demonstrating your value and overly boasting about y...