It is a very competitive world out there.  Your job may be in jeopardy, because someone else wants your job, and is preparing right now to do your job better than you can do it.  Especially if it a good job.  (Those are increasingly scarce, it seems).

So, you have to always keep getting better yourself, at every facet of your job.

All jobs have those skills required to do the job, and then there are the skills required to do any and all jobs.  You know – the hard skills PLUS the soft skills.

So, take a look at yourself.  (You many need a coach to help you – you can’t always objectively look at yourself).  Are you competent in all the actual requirements of your job?  Good! – Now, get even better, because the bar is being raised year after year  — month after month.

And, are you pleasant to work with; easy to work with; responsive, attentive, “nice” (except when you need to be tough)?  Is your first response to say “thank you,” and, “you have done this well?”  Have you learned to praise first, and correct later — and criticize with care?

In other words, success requires not one think but many things – This + That + Also This, and then, there is always, the “and now, this.” 

The road to mastery, to genuine irreplaceable value to an organization, to success, keeps getting longer – the construction workers seem to just keep adding new miles to the route.