Focus on creating value and rest follows
Feeling undervalued at work is a natural feeling to have, especially at a startup.
- I don’t think my salary / ESOP is commensurate of the effort I am putting.
In a bigger organisation, the same feeling takes in a different form
- I don’t want to work extra because they pay me only … while my manager makes …
What this feeling is saying is that you are worried that you are not capturing enough value of what you create. Someone else is reaping the benefit of your efforts. This builds resentment, and eventually hurts growth.
A better way to go about work would be to focus only on creating value and not worrying how much are you able to capture. If you create immense value, it is definite that a lot will flow back to you (often in surprising ways). Detachment leads to more.
Focus only on becoming more valuable every day, and all rewards follow from that. It can’t be possible that you are creating motion and other’s don’t notice. There is infinite value to create in this world.
Deepak Parekh, who grew from deputy general manager to the chairman of HDFC never owned more than 1% of HDFC. His inspiring words capture this really well -
“I’m not really an entrepreneur, but I ran HDFC like I owned 100% of it”
Relevant read -
- Go Giver [Book]
- Always play game one