What it Means To Have Work, WORK FOR YOU.
It’s 9am on a Monday and as I write this I’ve already had two conversations with people who are deeply unhappy with where they’ll be showing up today. They work in different roles, for different people at different companies, they don’t know each other, but they both used identically wording.
“This isn’t working for me.”
Man, if I had a dollar for every time I thought it at my last job, I wouldn’t be writing this. Sadly, it’s a phrase I am hearing repeatedly from friends and clients. We all have expectations for what we’ll get out of our 9 to 5. But in today’s lean, squeeze the last drop out of it, productivity driven mess that has become Corporate America; fewer people are feeling the benefits of having a job.
So what does it mean to have work — work for you?
A partner at my first consulting firm once lectured us that there are five main things that drive personal satisfaction at work: Money, Opportunity, Great People, Interesting Work, and Proximity to Home. According to him, you can only satisfy three of the five areas at any given time.
It’s pretty easy to identify what isn’t working for us. Its harder to figure out which areas hold the key to our job satisfaction right now and how to go about getting them satisfied.
While incomplete, I believe his logic was brilliant and his lecture has stuck with me for years. So let’s add a few things to his list like: how connected you are to the organizations mission/direction/products, to what extent you believe your work has purpose, how well you fit within the organization’s culture, how much time you have to live outside of work, and how valued you feel as an employee.
Want to find out how work can work for you? Try this.
Combine the two lists
Rank each item, from 1-10, related to how important it is currently to your level of satisfaction. (Meaning if being inspired at work means it’s really important to believe in the company’s product — then connection to product may be #1 for you)
Circle your top 5
Now indicate how satisfied you currently are in those areas (1=this isn’t working for me, 5= this is totally working for me)
Get specific, list what three things would need to change (if anything) in each area to increase your satisfaction by 1 to 2 points
Now the hard work starts. Create a plan for how and when you will take action and enlist supporters.
It is possible for work to work for you.
Perhaps not in your current job or company, but a role that does work for you is out there. And once you get clear on what is most important to you, it’s going to be so much easier to find it.