Following a stint as intern in IBM, I was hired full time to create quality engineering reports. The factory in Greenock in the west of Scotland manufactured computers, laptops, and servers - thousands of them. I often wondered where forty thousand computers ended up going every single day.
It was an entry-level job with a defined set of tasks and others had similar roles for different computer parts. I was a commoditized employee and if my work was subpar or if I happened to up and leave, IBM could quickly replace me.
The weekly routine was inefficient. Here we were, working for the largest technology company at the time manually crunching numbers and scanning through data with the naked eye. Something that would take several days to finalize each week in time for the Thursday quality meeting.
I couldn't help thinking that with all this technology around us there must be a better way. So, I spent a few weeks creating a semi-automated process. Each day, my alarm would buzz at five, I'd take a shower, then brace for the wind and rain waiting for the first of two trains that would take me to the factory. By the time others would get to the office I'd already spent two hours working on automation and at the end of their day, I'd still be at my desk coding in Lotus Script.
A database administrator created me a DB2 query to execute that output a tabular list of production defect data. From a floppy disk the data could be plugged into a spreadsheet containing scripts, formulas, and tons of VLOOKUP's resulting in the final printable report summary.
What previously took three days now took hours. The process was adopted globally and freed people, including myself, to perform more valuable activities. In the months that followed I became process owner fixing anything that broke along the way. In just a few weeks, my differentiation and value in the company was elevated, and was no longer viewed a commodity. I was a product owner, transforming unprocessed data into actionable insight in a scalable way, and my customers were other employees.
In the few years that followed I had created a number of products, some which became part of the foundation of IBMs commercial supply chain software still on the market today.
Shifting from commodity to product is the easiest step in elevating a career, and there are many ways to achieve it. A product can be anything you create that provides value to someone else. Let's say a salesperson creates some PowerPoint slides containing compelling facts and insights about what is being sold. Well, that presentation can be used by others selling the same things. That set of slides has just become something that salesperson owns, maintains, and controls to benefit others. A product.
It's easy to spot people that are products in the office - they passionately own a creation that adds value to the company. In a lot of cases those people have become masters in a function or domain, and will more than welcome you as their internal customer.
