Want to safety-proof your job? Over at US News and World Report today, I talk about the 12 signs you should look for to stabilize your career, and discover when it’s time to escape a sinking ship. Read it here.
Category: Workplace
When you’re passed over for a promotion and your former colleague suddenly becomes your boss, it’s more than a little awkward. But, assuming you want to keep your job, you’re going to have to move forward. Over at The Daily Muse today, I talk about the three conversations you must have to get back on your feet. Read it here.
May we all benefit from better email etiquette! Over at US News and World Report today, I talk about the four P’s to writing a great email pitch. Read it here, and stop composing bad messages.
Bad bosses are pretty common. I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly amazing boss, but get closer with every position. As you learn how you enjoy working, and what you are good at, you become better and better at finding the right people to work with. In the meantime, hop on over to US News and read up on six strategies you can use to manage up. Read it here.
Categories
Are Meetings Passé?
Meetings are a dying breed of face-to-face engagement that have taken on more angst, agony and abuse in recent years than even the lowly cubicle.
“There’s nothing more toxic to productivity than a meeting,” Jason Fried argues, author of the best-selling book, Rework, “They break your work day into small, incoherent pieces that disrupt your natural workflow. They often contain at least one moron that inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense… The goal is to avoid meetings. Every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.”
Did you get that? It is painstakingly difficult to form everyone around the table for a discussion. More than that, it’s unproductive. It’s time-consuming. It’s inefficient. Your co-workers are morons. Feelings could get hurt. Souls misunderstood. We should avoid each other at all costs. Don’t talk. Crouch and hide behind a monitor, like you learned to drop and roll for a fire.
Fried argues if you absolutely must hold a meeting, you should set up a timer and invite as few people as possible. Which really describes an industrial factory full of machines, not a cadre of smart people in a pioneering workplace, does it not?
More and more, solutions toward a better workplace include making sure we’re as far apart from each other as possible. Escapism is cloaked in flexible schedules, location-independence, and working from a coffee shop to the point of being revered; it’s okay that most people could never see another person and still do their job effectively.
We intentionally court the label of recluse as status symbol; evading a meeting is hip and progressive. Conversation is out.
A good deal of this obsession can be credited to our educational pedigree, where the American obsession with rote learning and standardized testing has married that old and outdated hag of work, the industrial model. Their child is the monstrosity of a workplace that we have today. Such systems, the trappings of knowledge and innovation, have actually killed creativity to the detriment of the current and future economy, and of course, our spirits.
We’re running away and far away in the wrong direction. Away from each other and towards nothing at all more grand, preferring the safety and fortitude of our screens more than the uncertainty and uncontrollability of real-life interactions.
Creativity once required a lone artist with his canvas or an eccentric inventor toiling away in his garage. But the new economy will increasingly require us to work together, to learn through the discovery of dialogue, the challenge of ideas and the experience of being in the same room – after all, the subtleties of a person’s mannerisms just don’t come through in a smiley face emoticon.
So maybe you could start a new kind of work revolution. One that doesn’t push away from each other but attracts us closer. Get up and talk. You know, within a physical distance that doesn’t require the use of email, text or gchat. Throw out your timer. Fight over something. Be interesting. Interrupt someone’s work.
Reach out and touch someone.
Work is the constant sifting and winnowing of how we make sense of the world. And real work can’t be done solely inside of a screen.
Speak Out.
“Work is the only thing which makes life endurable to me,” Charles Darwin wrote, later remarking that work was his “sole enjoyment in life.” Darwin’s work allowed him to withdraw from the world to concentrate entirely on his genius.
Burying yourself in work is so ingrained and glorified in our culture to survive, that nowhere is safe, even the previously safe haunts of creativity where the tradition of daydreaming and an idle nature were once protected rights. Such inefficiencies are now subject to intense bright-lights examination.
One ad agency describes the process they went through to obtain ISO 5000, a certification previously reserved only for factory lines and manufacturing. The process revealed some “surprising inefficiencies” but came at a price. “All the hyper-efficiency can be exhausting,” reported the Chief Creative Officer Jeff Gabel. “You’ve removed your slop factor.”
Exhaustion is now the modus operandi. As such, workaholism is not a reaction to passion, but the inefficiencies of the modern workplace.
“The fact is,” Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent, says, “few white-collar employees work 9-5 at all anymore. We’re expected to address work issues on weeknights and often on weekends. We’re constantly reachable and it goes without saying that many are reviewed on the merits of their ‘always on’ capacity.” (via Max Kalehoff).
Most of us are working the usual 9 to 5, but also when inspiration strikes. Whereas in the industrial revolution, work was indeed done when you completed your widgets for the day, the knowledge society demands your energy when it’s seemingly most inconvenient. Right before bed and long into the night, for instance, or first thing upon opening your eyes in the morning.
There’s a credible explanation for these 9 to 5 outliers, which is that the productivity pockets are cushioned by breaks – a tweet, sleep, dinner, interaction with friends and family. Such idleness is great sustenance.
Alain de Botton, best known for his philosophies on everyday life, agrees. There’s a glorious stubbornness to human nature, he says. We need a break, we need a pause, we’re not made for continuous action. Looking out the window is a fundamental part of human nature, he argues.
“Periodic breaks relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking,” argue the authors of Creativity and the Mind, a landmark text in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity. Their research suggests that regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, Wired reports.
We’re working all the time, not because we need to, or even because it’s effective, but because our jobs require us to show up, be seen, and scrub through the afternoon slump. But the truth is, no one is working at 3 pm. That should be nap time, argues De Botton. (Interestingly, those who nap have a higher capacity to learn).
The culture of workaholism, worn with a badge of narcissistic and perfectionist pride, isn’t mixed with a lot of real work, he says. In our squeeze for uber-efficiency, we’re making a giant mess of inefficiencies.
A recent Wall Street Journal post profiled a young “superhero” who “rises at 3:30 a.m., works out before work, takes three of his four kids to school, works flat-out all day, gets home for dinner and bedtime with the family and then works until midnight.”
If you were counting, the young superhero gets a whopping three and a half hours of sleep. Disgusting.
Workaholism is sick and it’s wrenching to watch the pedestal we build for it.
We are not drones, and we should not indenture ourselves to workaholic servitude. Our rhythms, what truly brings about the bliss of efficiency, require not the constant ticking of the clock, but a restful mind, a glance in the other direction, a check mark in a box that doesn’t exist on any spreadsheet.
That is, sometimes work needs a little life.
By all accounts, the current state of work is good. Flexible schedules are beginning a workplace transformation. Hierarchal structures are being dismantled, replaced with decentralized team-oriented organizations. Rewards are no longer exclusively linked to extrinsic motivations like salary or titles, but to projects that make us feel good and do good for the planet.
Fresh-faced workers are responding in kind with idealism, strong ethics, and bright-eyed expectations to change the world. With energy and impatience to do something that matters. Even in the recession, we shine to thrive.
And it is from such high hopes that we discover such low realities. Where real life makes every effort to shut us down. Cramp the rainbows. Take out the sun. Step on our rose-colored lenses.
One twenty-something likens entering the real world to “a confidence-killing daily assault of petty degradations. All of this is compounded by the fear that it is all for nothing; that you are a useful fool.”
The bully to blame is work politics and its shameful hum in the background of most companies is a deafening precursor to what we know, but ignore: companies that are built on lies, deceit and manipulation fail.
A recent UK study revealed there is a clear gap between dreams and reality. One in three graduates believes their employer has not met expectations, that management stifles innovation, and that their opinions are undervalued.
Workers are spending more time learning a game with unspoken rules and invisible puppeteers than engaging in any real contribution to society. A fashion designer started a once-anonymous blog to expose such humiliations in his own industry, writing his first posts on “designers whose careers he thought had been unduly advanced by the support of fashion’s power brokers, rather than evidence of hard work.”
But most of us are silent on the issue. Many of us just settle, choosing to bow out of the game, and some bow out of the system all together. Others join the dark side, if you will. And still others – a small, but inspirational minority – bring such goodness and dedication to their jobs that you can almost see halos forming above their brow line.
There is a natural learning curve to growing up, of course. And while it’s okay to learn that change is hard, that everything doesn’t work out because you wish it so, that you have to pay dues, and that life is generally not fair, it’s not okay to live a life without integrity.
It’s not okay to engage in power plays. It’s not okay to cheat and form alliances and be exclusionary. It’s not okay to be unethical or gossip or commandeer confidence and ideas and dreams as a buck-toothed swindler. Pirates, we are not.
When did manipulation become the status quo? When did deceit become “just business”? And when, exactly, did we start ignoring such desperation? When did it become a humming that we worked alongside instead of a shrill invasion?
Instead of gorging on control and power and greed like goblins, companies should take note of Netflix and their “Freedom & Responsibility Culture.” A company that doesn’t theft and abuse the self-worth of their employees, but encourages it with great candor.
“The [Netflix] executives trust staffers to make their own decisions on everything – from whether to bring their dog to the office to how much of their salary they want in cash and how much in stock options,” reports BNET.
In their internal presentation on their work policies, Netflix asks what it would be like if every person you worked with was someone you respected and learned from, defining a great workplace as one filled with “stunning colleagues.” Where responsible employees thrive on freedom, are worthy of a culture of innovation and self-discipline, and even brilliant jerks can’t be tolerated.
Netflix argues that “the best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than trying to control people.” They urge their managers to ask themselves when they are tempted to control their people, “Are you articulate and inspiring enough about goals and strategies?”
The result is that the company isn’t bogged down in the policies, rigidity, politics, policies, mediocrity or complacency that infects most organizations. Instead, they are adept, fast and flexible. And they’re honest and human. Incredibly human.
Netflix is just one example. My job at a non-profit that served the poorest of the poor, but kept laughter flowing through the office is another. My current position is still another.
And those examples are the future of work, the next step after company-supplied daycare and work-life balance programs.
A future without work politics. A future with goodness. And probably some rainbows too.
What do you think are some of the problems facing work today? Have work politics been an issue? What are some trends you see for the future?
There’s buzz in the media that Generation Y is finally being put in our place. The recession won’t play favorites and Gen Y will see just what Gen X and the Boomers have been talking about. Besides this being ridiculously sad – honestly, are we really a society that beats down optimism? – it’s also completely erroneous.
The Economist reports that “the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty (remember the guff about ‘the search for meaning’ and ‘the importance of brand me’) are being ditched in favor of more brutal command-and-control methods.” (h/t The Schiff Report)
Except companies that operate according to the latest trend and resort to command-and-control methods are neither Gen Y-friendly, nor anyone-friendly. You cannot have one set of values one month and a different set the next, because what makes individuals productive in one economy does not change in another.
If you value an open, collaborative approach, that shouldn’t change when times get tough. Especially when Gen Y values are so beneficial to everyone.
The Economist goes on to say that Gen Yers “have labored under the illusion that the world owed them a living. But hopping between jobs to find one that meets your inner spiritual needs is not so easy when there are no jobs to hop to.”
Except that those who can perform will always be able to find a new, exciting position. And Gen Y knows how to perform, especially under pressure. We’ve been multitasking since we could make a to-do list and we readily embrace change. We came of age during 9/11 and as Nadira Hira argues, “corporate America often appears just as scary and unstable (and untrustworthy) as the world at large, if not more so.”
Just because we’re experiencing an economic meltdown for the first time does not mean that we’re going to hide in the corner. We’re not going to settle. Really, we’re not surprised. We saw all this growing up– lay-offs, bankruptcy, politicking – and it’s exactly why we wanted to change the workplace in the first place.
As the Financial Times reports, “today’s younger generation are better prepared for economic hard times than their parents or grandparents: they were not expecting jobs for life… switching jobs and reconsidering careers are second nature to them.”
So, stop listening to those who say Gen Y won’t survive the recession. Here are four ways to really feel secure in today’s economy –
1) Turn down job offers. My mother was horrified and I was elated when I turned down a job offer a couple months ago. But it is one of the most empowering career moves you can make because you get to practice negotiating, you get feedback, you’re in control and you have the option of using it as a bargaining position later.
2) Get paid what you’re worth. I’ve increased my salary 60% since my first position out of college. If you’re keeping track, that’s a 20% raise each year. Silvana Avinami, a self-proclaimed strategic job-hopper reports on Brazen Careerist that she does even better than that, averaging a 30% raise with each hop (see comments).
You simply cannot do this by staying at the same job unless you’re there for a very long time. You just can’t. “Loyalty is about delivery,” and when you deliver, you should be rewarded accordingly.
3) Over-perform. You probably don’t love what you do. And if you don’t like your job, even a little, you’ll start performing badly. That’s bad because high performance is the key to a successful career.
“It makes sense,” Penelope Trunk argues. “If you don’t need to get another job anytime soon, then you don’t need to perform well in the next six months. You can coast. Job hoppers don’t coast or their resume will look bad.” Job-hopping allows you to find out what you like and figure out your strengths by forcing you to make an impact quickly.
4) Risk everything. Because safe is boring and maybe that’s good when times are easier, but they’re not. Safety doesn’t create innovation. But innovation does create new jobs and new opportunities. Innovation creates new markets and cures for illnesses and ideas that make us excited to get up in the morning.
You really want to help the economy? Put yourself out there. Risk everything. Do it for you, your family, your friends. We’ll all thank you.
Recession proof.
Here’s the thing. I work with a lot of men. During phone calls, I speak with men. For meetings, I sit down with men. At networking events, more men walk in the door than women. In particular, at entrepreneurial events there are lots and lots of men, and just one or two women.
And guess what? I could care less.
Sort of. Because not immediately, but always eventually I notice there are fewer women than men in my life. And then, inevitably, I feel that it’s necessary to say something like, “Where are my women at?” I don’t know why such words fly out of my mouth because I feel comfortable around these men. They’re good guys. But there’s this undercurrent that just doesn’t feel right.
Monica O’Brien calls this casual sexism, and basically tells us to shut up about it, play by the rules and move on. Which is good advice. It’s the path that’s gotten me where I am today.
Indeed, this month’s issue of Portfolio observes that nobody wants to talk about it because most people think there’s nothing to discuss.
Generation Y women in particular are growing up believing they don’t have to worry about sexism. In college I certainly didn’t feel there were inequalities.
It was only a few months after graduation that I learned otherwise. Somehow I had finagled my way onto the Board of a local nonprofit, and the rest of the Board was comprised of men. Older men who didn’t listen to me. There was one woman who joined our meetings by teleconference; she was pregnant and bed-ridden. And those meetings always made me a little indignant.
Like when I read advice that tells me I have to get married and have babies before I’m thirty. I guess it’s smart advice, but it doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t feel that my entire life needs to be managed around having a baby, because I don’t feel that my sole purpose in life is to have a baby.
But it seems that because women are different, being built to have babies and all, that our success isn’t the same as the success of men.
For example, when one of the top alpha females in my area personally called me last week to congratulate me on a recent success, I was ecstatic. I told Hercules all about it, and he said to me, “That’s great. But you know, she’s really not all that smart.”
And I took what he fed me, because I respect Hercules and I like him a lot. But then, do you know what I did after that? Each time I told the story, I added that clause to the end. That this wonderful, well-respected woman who personally called me might not be that smart in reality. What?!
That belittles her success and it belittles mine. It’s casual sexism at its best.
This is what Gen Y women are dealing with. And it may be entirely more dangerous than outright discrimination since it seeps quietly into our minds and then out of our mouths. That sucks.
Because while we may not be marching for our rights any longer, we’re still debating whether pantsuits are unfeminine and men like Jun Loayza now think it’s charming to ask if we were “a little crazy as an undergrad.”
We’re not out of the woods yet.
Gen Y women will have to breed an entirely different form of feminism to deal with this. I don’t have the answer here, because I often feel conflicted. I genuinely enjoy being a woman. In my view, I want to wear the dresses and have the power. Only time will tell if I can have it all.
Working girl.
On the third round of interviews for my current job, my interviewer was a Boomer whose opinion as the head of a similar and larger organization was valuable to my future Board.
After talking about Gen Y leadership, in which I blatantly quoted my blog to close the deal, she asked me what I would do if I witnessed unethical behavior.
“I would investigate to see if it was really unethical behavior,” I said, “or if I was misunderstanding the situation.”
It was the perfect answer for a business that loves gossip, but doesn’t like to make waves.
Then out of nowhere I felt compelled to add, “And I would probably call my mom and ask her advice.”
My interviewer smiled. Turned out my answer was right on all counts.
We ended up spending a large part of the remaining time talking about her relationship with her mom. She described how her mother had come to interviews with her, and how she continued to count on her mom in her high-profile position.
Gen Y isn’t the only one counting on parents for advice. This is behavior magnified and built upon from previous generations.
I call my mom all the time. Not as much as she’d like me to – a constant source of debate – but I value her thoughts and respect her advice more than anyone else.
She’s usually right too. Men, career, friends, she just knows. Everything. Annoying, that.
“Most Gen Y’s have strong, positive relationships with their Boomer parents,” Tammy Erickson argues at the Harvard Business Review. “They speak with Mom or Dad when they have a problem, and most feel that their parents understand them.”
I’m not saying that you should always listen to your parents, or that they’re always right. My own mother, who I referenced in my interview to get the job, and who praised me for my smart answers, was hesitant that I should even take it.
She didn’t really understand what I would be doing. I still don’t think she fully understands. But I took the job anyway.
I also listened to my mother at the same time.
Listening to my mom is recognition that I am becoming an adult. See, asking for help is one of the most adult things you can do.
There’s no one better to ask for help than your parents, because despite the fact that sometimes they might annoy or guilt-trip you, they really, in their heart of hearts, want the best for you. And they’re always proud of you. They always love you. That’s what parents do. And they know you better than anyone else.
I find it funny to read that some experts believe that Gen Y “may well shatter,” as the result of intense Boomer parental involvement. Do you know what I do when life isn’t going my way? I call my mom. And do you know what she tells me? “This is your life,” she says. “Stop crying and deal with it.”
Okay, it may not be those exact words, but today’s parents are not ignorant. They know that despite their coddling, Gen Y will need to become independent in order for us to succeed.
So we might as well stop getting up in arms that parents are helping their children. Because in the game called life, we really need as much as help as we can get.
“Use your parents’ insight to gain experience when you have none,” Rosie Reilman argues. “But don’t let them live your lives for you. This is your life. Take ownership of it.”
I agree. I’m not saying don’t grow up. We should grow up and take responsibility. I don’t believe, for instance, that you should move back home after college. Because of how I was raised, I think that’s irresponsible.
But I think we all feel, especially in our twenties – and maybe it never ends – that we’re doing a good job of just acting like adults. And maybe if we’re good enough actors, we’ll actually become adults someday. With the help of our parents, of course.
While Erickson believes we should accept all this as “a changing cultural norm,” Scott Williamson argues that “accepting this sort of behavior just enables more of it.”
But I believe we want to enable a workforce that asks for help, that respects their parents, and who aren’t afraid to admit that we don’t have all the answers. Certainly, there are instances when it can go overboard, but why must we continually let a few bad apples set the tone?
We shouldn’t sensationalize what is generally a good trend.
Motherly advice.
At the bottom of the hospital hierarchy are ER doctors.
I know this because straight out of college I dated two med-students back to back. Also, Belle’s boyfriend is a neurosurgery resident. He never lets me forget it. Which is fine because I’m not the one who thinks that great veins are a turn on.
An emergency room is open twenty-four hours a day, and responds to everything that comes in. ER doctors have no specialization. They know a little about everything, and so they also know nothing.
Generation Y is the ER doctor of generations.
We’re doing pretty darn good. We’re saving lives. But is it enough to live up to all the hype?
Not having a specialization means that we’re buying blueberry pies rather than making them from scratch. In other words, we’re not putting in the time to create quality, seemingly preferring quantity as proof that we’re a demographic force to be reckoned with.
What’s good about this is that we have the ability to respond quickly to issues that come up. The presidential campaign, for example, or the Virginia Tech shootings.
What’s bad about this is that it is an emergency room approach. We’ll fix things as they come along. Place a band-aid on and sing a song.
We’ve yet to look at the underlying structures of the workplace and the economy and cities and relationships, and therein lies the opportunity. It isn’t that we’re not making change already. It’s that we can be making more meaningful, more impactful change.
My own organization struggles with this. We often worry that in being everything to everyone in order to serve the varied tastes and interests of young talent, we are also nothing to nobody.
We also believe that we are doing many good things, and we certainly are. But we have issues. Issues that are symptoms of a larger underlying structure upon which the organization is built. And if you’re only addressing the symptoms, and not the underlying causes, you’re in trouble.
We’re scared to change, and indeed, we seemingly don’t have to change. We are a good organization. And Generation Y is a good generation.
But don’t we want to be great?
Without understanding, addressing, and changing our structure, Generation Y will forever be stuck in the emergency room.
We need not just to be the neurosurgeons of the world, but the researchers, the fearless learners, engaging in the constant “sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
Ryan Healy of Brazen Careerist argues that “our fights and causes will be not to tear down established systems like the federal government and big business. Rather, we will strive to fix, repair and rebuild these broken systems, because history shows that the systems do work – if properly designed.”
And therein lies the point. The systems aren’t properly designed. If what we were doing was working, we wouldn’t have global warming, extreme poverty, and war.
Most of Generation Y is comfortable, yes, but the world is not.
Healy goes on to argue that our advances in the workplace are evidence of how “we aren’t revolting in the streets, but improving broken systems.” I hope that we don’t just improve, but redefine.
We do need to work within the system. It is only within a system that you will fully understand how to change it. It’s taken me six months at my new job to understand and grasp the intricacies of my organization in order to be in a position to actually address them.
It is only by being fully involved in the corporate cultures in which we work, in the neighborhoods we live in, and in the politics that govern us that we will be the civic generation of builders.
Generation Y is doing this already. As young workers enter the workforce, we begin to realize that life is harder than the sheltered life our Boomer parents led us to believe. This is good. We need to be a little surprised, a little incensed at what the real world has to offer. We need to test our idealism.
And then we need to use the gap between our current reality, and where we’d like to be, to not only fill the cracks in our foundation, but then engage in the often more interesting work of seeing what the foundation is made of.
Addressing the underlying issues, and not just the symptoms, is perhaps one of the most exciting things we as a generation can accomplish. Besides, we already have the passion and dedication.
Structural force.
This post was originally published at Qvisory.
As a twenty-something in the workforce, you will be questioned time after time. Here are three ways to build credibility:
1. Develop skills that travel.
Most likely, you’ll change jobs 6-8 times before your thirty. You need to develop a set of talents that will travel with you from job to job. Career coaches call these transferable skill sets (e.g. communication, interpersonal, and management skills). Essentially, the skills you’ve been developing since grade school. Consistently developing these abilities will not only open the door to any job you want, but will make you successful wherever you go.
2. Hug thy naysayer.
Generation Y wants to be liked. We grew up being coddled by our parents, and frankly think we’re the best thing on earth and like to be told so. Not everyone agrees with us however, and a lot more don’t even like us.
While it’s important not to get wrapped up in what others think, you need to build relationships, even with the people bringing you down. Learning to deal with criticism effectively is about knowing yourself, who you are, and what your motivations are for working.
The next step is to develop mutual respect. When comments get heated on my blog, I often email the person and talk to them individually. I say thank you a lot, even when their thoughts make me want to scream. I appreciate that they’ve taken the time to respond to what I had to say. It’s best to engage in conversation when all the players are at the table. That’s how you learn.
3. Don’t work harder, work smarter.
When a twenty-something doesn’t show up to the office at 9 AM, the rest of the world worries. But our generation works differently. Make sure it’s in your contract that your performance isn’t based on when you show up to work, but if you get the job done. And if you want to wear jeans to work every day, say so. Be upfront about how you can add the most value. You’ll work better if you’re able to choose how you are productive, and your results will speak for themselves.