yourself for relevance?
Your Value Is In Your Impact
And Not In Your Presence
The Circle of Value
In my book titled DRIVE: Intentional
Living for exceptional leadership, I wrote
about the 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso
featuring his mistress Marie-Therese
Walter which was sold in 2010 for $106
million. Another Picasso painting Garcon
a la Pipe was sold for $104 million.
I once projected each of these paintings
on a wall to a group of people that I was
training and I asked them how much they
would pay for the paintings. Someone
offered to pay five dollars, another offered
to pay ten dollars and the highest bid
of the day was twenty dollars. Now,
why would they offer to pay so little for
something that was so valuable? Because
they did not know the value. In essence,
it is not enough to be valuable. Your value
must be appreciated for it to be relevant.
value of salt comes out relative to what it
is added to. Jesus taught that we are the
salt of the earth thus implying that our
value as people will come out as we give
ourselves to making our world better.
As I have established in the previous
discourse, intelligence does not guarantee
relevance. The very definition of the
word relevance tells us that it has to be
connected to something. You cannot
be a stand-alone relevant person. Your
relevance is measured by the value you add
and is NEVER measured by your opinion
of yourself.
To stay relevant, you need to understand
the circle of value. This is a two way
flow of value comprising of an inward
and outward flow. The inward flow is the
value that is added to you. This comes
through reading, through associations that
stimulate thought and through exposure.
The outward flow on the other hand is
made up of the value that you bring to the
table – the table being a time in history,
There are different genres of music and your family, your community, your place
each one has a following. The classical of work, your nation or whatever it is that
musicians, opera singers, jazz musicians, you are a part of.
hip-hop musicians and many more. Each
has a following but the disaster happens
You need to be constantly alert to evaluate
when a rock musician parades his gift
if your circle of value is shrinking or
in front of classical music enthusiasts or
expanding. If shrinking it means that the
when the opera singer parades his gift in
people who value your intelligence or skill
front of electronic dance musicians. People
are diminishing in number. If expanding,
who do not appreciate what you have will
it means that the people who value what
never see you as relevant even if you are
you have are increasing in number.
gifted or intelligent.
Salt has no value on its own. Its value is
not intrinsic. That is why you never hear
of a meal of boiled salt or roasted salt. The
Donald Trump in the book, How to Get
Rich, talks about his encounter with
a man called William Levitt – a real
How relevant are you to your world today?
People do not get paid because they are intelli-
gent. They get paid because they are relevant.
Relevance is not a function of how intelligent
you are neither is it a function of size or pres-
ent day success. It is not a function of how deep
your pockets are today. It is a function of how
innovative you are and how well you are able
to read the future and use your innovation to
capture the future.
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estate developer who is credited to be the
pioneer of the modern home development
model of building estates and homes for
the middle class. Levitt according to Time
magazine was one of the most influential
figures of the twentieth century.
At the peak of his success, he sold his
company for One hundred million dollars
(which in today’s money would run into
billions) and then married a new wife
and retired into the French Riviera.
Twenty years later he tried to get back
into the game but the magic was gone.
He eventually went bankrupt and in the
meeting with Trump two weeks before he
died he said, “I lost my momentum. I came
back and I wasn’t the same.” His circle of
value had shrunk. In fact Trump said that
at the event where he met him, he was
standing alone in a corner all by himself.
The one time master of real estate who
everyone wanted to hear from was now all
alone.
When your circle of value shrinks, your
ideas no longer matter and your voice is
no longer sought after. I believe one of
the things that drove Levitt to his death
just two weeks after this encounter with
Trump was the fact that he discovered
that his voice and his ideas had run their
full course. He had been away and life had
simply gone on without him.
The greatest leaders are the ones who work
hard to make themselves relevant but this is
in regards to management and operations.
The day you get to a place where your
thinking no longer matters, your life is
technically over. What is the net impact of
your absence? If your absence doesn’t make
a difference was your presence necessary?
Your life will be measured by impact and
not by presence.
What is the point in being present if your
presence is not making a difference? The
difference that you make is the yardstick
for measuring your relevance. Never forget
the fact that you are the salt of the earth.
Your relevance comes from the value you
bring and the value you bring will come
from the quality of your ideas.
When the inward flow of your circle of
value increases then you will be strategically
positioned to expand the outward flow. As
long as your circle of value is expanding
you can never become irrelevant.