Day 8: Most Valuable Contribution

Today you will learn what your Most Valuable Contribution (MVC) is by breaking down large global challenges into employer specific pain points, and framing that in a way that is attractive to employers.

Summary

What is the Most Valuable Contribution You Could Make

Your Most Valuable Contribution (MVC) is going to be you leveraging all of your skills and knowledge in the highest capacity to solve the biggest problems and consequently make the businesses that you're working for more money.

• This isn't based on just the jobs that you can do, but instead where you provide the most value while some receiving the most value in return in the form of compensation and job satisfaction.

What Does Your MVC Mean For Society?

Making a social impact as a global citizen is a measure of the number of people whose lives you improve and how much you improve them, as defined by the organization 80,000 hours. That means there's two ways that you can have more social impact:

• You can help more people
• Or you can help the same number of people to a greater extent.

A few things to keep in mind about making a difference:

• Social impact doesn't necessarily mean saving lives. It could be making improvements to a quality of life, which can be just as significant. This might involve making people happier, helping them reach their potential or making their lives more meaningful.
• We're not always going to get exact objective measurements of social impact.
• Social impact includes all of the people your actions are going to help both immediately and over the coming decades and beyond through indirect impact.

What Does Your MVC Mean For Businesses?

Our contribution to a business is going to be solving problems, alleviating pains, and helping to move the business forward towards their mission or goal.

Large global issues can be broken down into root causes which can be further broken down into employer specific pain points

• You will make a contribution by matching your skills and background with those pain points you are most equipped to serve.
• You can use those skills, go into this company, start solving some of their problems and by doing so, the company does better and helps to solve some of the root causes of a larger problem.
• Your direct contribution of skills help solve the problems in the company to the root causes and to the global challenges.

Why do MVC's Matter?

By deploying your MVC you will:

• Gain a sense of purpose, connecting what's meaningful to you, your interests and all of the skills that you've acquired with some large problem that's going on in the world.
• Have clarity in deciding which companies to apply for jobs with.
• Identify how you are valuable to the employer.
• Have higher probability of getting a job that's going to be relevant over the next 30 to 40 years.

How to Determine Your MVC

In the activity below you will take the following steps:

• Choose a Global Challenge
• Research the Root Causes of those Challenges
• Identify Organizations Solving Root Causes
• Identify Employer Specific Pain Points
• Conduct informational interviews for further in depth research

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Activity

Download today's worksheet and complete the exercises inside of the worksheet.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.