I was lucky. My first job set the bar for how the workplace should be. It was target-driven with great leadership and people who cared about people. Colleagues became friends whom I still love dearly. At the funeral of our Regional Manager a few years ago, many of us didn’t get as far as the church hall where they were serving refreshments. We had too much to talk about.
I was there for five enjoyable years, during which time I discovered the world of adult education. I saw more superb learning and development than in my life so far. It led me to pursue studies in adult education. There, I met the executive of a multinational oil company, who, over the next few months, chipped away at persuading me to join them. My objections were met with enticing fruits like new challenges, new learning, a generous development budget, and travel in Southern Africa, all of which were important to me at the time.
I walked on my first day, wearing new shoes and having great expectations. But it didn’t take me long to wonder what I’d been thinking. Despite the many benefits and learning it offered, the two years I spent there were the most lonely and unhappy years I have spent in the workplace. The offices were ugly. The politics was thicker than the carpets. The travel schedule was insane. There is nothing inherently wrong with the organisation, and many people have happily stayed there all their lives. But it wasn’t right for me. We are all different. What pushes your green button pushes someone else’s red buttons. You can pick your perfect career and be in the wrong place. The culture of the organisation, your boss, the people you work with and the way you work can make you more than unhappy; it can make you ill.
It was not all bad; it never is. There is always something to learn, something to make sense of, and new things to avoid in the future. I was introduced to and taught decision-making systems. I ran programmes on personal development planning. I met some great people. I learned how organisational politics worked. But the biggest gift was the beginning of an obsession to finding better tools to make decision-making.
No part of my education, or the many assessments I had done along the way, had given me tools to make better workplace choices. When clients come to see me, tears stream down their face, I realise they didn’t either. And the problem is often not the career they chose, or even what they do every day, it’s where they work. Which doesn’t mean you have to leave, there are many ways through if you know what the problem is. The danger is resigning in a huff, or joining another organisation and get more of the same because you didn’t know to ask. Clients report how they changed jobs for advancement, only to discover their new environment was not good for them. It’s not good for the organisation either. It has a huge impact on productivity, job satisfaction and wellness, all of which are in poor shape in the current workplace.
The world of Life/Work planning introduced to an organised way of deciding not only what I wanted to do, but where. Imagine your environmental choices as a pizza cut into eight slices.
The 1st slice: Where you live
Early in my work with Dick Bolles, he made a statement that surprised me. ‘Your most important career decision is where you live’, he said. I now see how critical this is for many people. I, too, fell into the trap of making a home move that was wrong for us, and we moved back at a great cost. For you, that may be the country you live in, the city you live in, the suburb you live in, whether you live near the beach or in the country, or you come alive with the buzz of the city centre. A workshop participant once shared with me sixteen criteria she had created about where she wanted to live. It included the climate, the size of the population, access to libraries, distance to wide open spaces, the kind of people she wanted to be around and so on.
Whether you are in the middle of your career, starting out or facing retirement, this may be one of the choices you need to make. When clients visit me at my offices in Durbanville South Africa, they comment on the quietness, the lovely views, the clean air and how fortunate I am to live and work here. I am hugely grateful for the lifestyle I have, but where I live and work is not just luck, it’s a career decision for me.
Where you live influences the kind of work you do, how you find work, and how you operate. With the ability to work online, the options are endless, but not every job can be done that way.
The 2nd slice: Where you work
Your physical work environment is where you spend most of your workday. It can be your office overlooking a green valley, a dingy office in the basement, your bedroom, or many hours in your car. Your physical environment includes the amount of light, the temperature, the noise, and the actual space or lack thereof.
The attention you give to your work environment is not about being fussy; it’s about doing your best work. I have worked in conference venues over many years and take care to find places that are great for the people I work with. My choices have little to do with the establishment’s star rating. Indeed, some have no rating at all. Some expensive venues have been stifling to work in, and we have simply gone elsewhere. You can’t dictate it all, but you can become more aware of what will give you energy and find ways to get more of it.
The 3rd slice: How you work
I have met with many exhausted professionals who are always on call or have insane travel schedules. Corporate executives with crazy hours worked in changing time zones till they became zombie-like and depressed. These are all the conditions that come with your job: the hours you work, the amount you travel, the amount of flexibility you have in your job, and the extent to which you are able to find a life balance that works for you. I met with a medical professional who told me her punishing hours, always being on call, and working in a half-dark Intensive Care Unit were making her job unbearable. You might have a job you love, but if it comes with working conditions that undermine your energy and well-being, you may need to work with that.
The 4th slice: The people you work with
The people you work with can have a significant impact on your happiness and productivity at work. That includes the people you report to, your colleagues, people in your wider team and the clients you serve. I have heard clients over the years say things like ‘I love my job, but I often have murder on my mind’ or ‘The people just drain my energy, they aim low, are negative and hit the toxic target every time.” You don’t get to pick all the people you work with, but if the people who determine your success are antagonistic to your well-being, you have a people issue to resolve.
An unresolved relationship with your boss is one of the highest stressors in the workplace. A senior executive was referred to me due to an irreconcilable relationship with her boss. She had been recruited through gruelling online interviews but never spoke to the person she would report to. And it was a complete misfit. Although clearly good at what she did, over a short period of time, she lost confidence in herself and her work. When I think back to some of the best times in my career, it was with people I liked and trusted and who wanted to make a difference. I apply the same criteria to clients. Not everyone is my client.
The 5th slice: Money
At Business School sessions, it usually takes about eleven minutes before someone says: ‘It’s all very well finding a career that you like, but you have to earn a living, too!’ I am tempted to say: ‘Oh wow, I never thought about that…!’ It’s kind of obvious. There are no other ways to pay school fees, buy fuel, pay for life insurance, or do whatever else is on your list.
The question, therefore, is not whether you want to earn money but rather how much you want to earn and how you want to earn it. What you earn is not only what you earn in cash. Sometimes, the rewards include great learning opportunities, being able to attend international conferences, and being part of something you really care about. Simply chasing a career because it pays may not be enough. You can end up feeling rich but dissatisfied and stagnant without a larger purpose. The key, I think, is to start by deciding what you want or need to earn, then work out how you want to do that.
The 6th slice: Organisational Culture
Peter Drucker famously said: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Culture is how people behave. If everyone moans and complains and finds reasons why things won’t work, that’s culture. Often, companies want to change their culture without being willing to change their behaviour.
Some organisational cultures value structure, procedure, compliance and sticking to the rules no matter what. Other cultures are more laid back and innovative. Neither is right or wrong, but one company might energise and inspire you while another sucks the life out of you. A gentleman, who had joined a competitor in the insurance industry for more money, phoned me one day and said: ‘I will go back to my old job for half of what I earn now. At the old organisation, I liked the people I worked with. I had space to think. I got to work on challenging projects. Here, there is no room to think. There are layers of decision-making to work through to get a simple decision made. I am dying for lack of mental air…’
I have just as often heard people complain that the culture is ‘too loose. Anything goes, everything is fluid, and meetings go on forever…please give me some structure!’ What works for one person doesn’t work for another, so discovering what is important to you can help you find an organizational culture that benefits you and your employer.
The 7th slice: What drives you
An environment that supports your work values helps you make an optimal contribution. No organisation has been designed to meet all your needs. Even if an organisation wants to meet the needs of every employee, there are too many people and too many variables to make that possible. Nevertheless, we all have things that are important in our work lives. That might be needing a challenge, being a specialist in your field, or being in general management.
The work values question is simply, ‘What is important to you at work?’ The list of possibilities is endless, but I have found the work of Prof. Edgar H. Schein on Career Anchors to be helpful to many clients over the years.[i] He has identified eight anchors, which can be ranked. These will then give you an indication of what is important to you. They may change as our lives change and as different things become important to us.
Here are the eight anchors defined in his work.
Technical/Functional Competence: If this is important to you, then you will want to develop and use your technical or specialist skills rather than general management.
General Managerial Competence: If this is important to you, then you will seek opportunities to climb in the organization so you can integrate the efforts of others. Learning technical skills are a way through, not the goal.
Autonomy/Independence: If this is important to you, then you want flexibility and the opportunity to define your work in your own way.
Security/Stability: If this is important to you, you will seek financial security or ongoing employment, even if you need to compromise some of your own wishes.
Entrepreneurial Creativity: If this is important to you, then you will seek to create an enterprise of your own together with the risks and obstacles it presents. You may use your current position to build the capability to do that when you can.
Service/Dedication to a Cause: If this is important to you, then you seek the opportunity to do work that achieves something of value to you. You may turn down a career move that takes you away from work that fulfils your mission.
Pure Challenge: If this is important to you, you like seemingly unsolvable problems and obstacles. You simply can’t resist a challenge, and boredom is your greatest fear!
Lifestyle: If this is important to you, you will take care to balance your work with your personal and family needs. Success for you is broader than your career. That doesn’t mean you are not willing to work hard, but how you live your life matters as much as your work.
You will have more than one anchor, and some will be more important than others. They might also change over time as your needs change. However, having a sense of which work values drive you will help you make more conscious choices.
The classic career shift is promoting your best salesperson into the role of Sales Manager, which fails miserably. Someone who is driven by challenge and autonomy is now put in a position where work becomes about meetings, administration, and people management. They lose their energy and enthusiasm, and no one (not even they) can work out why they are not making it, are increasingly stressed, and their potential seems to have evaporated. It is often assumed they have personal problems when they are simply in a role that doesn’t feed their work values. In a workplace that struggles with engagement, knowing what drives you is important to you and your organisation. The most common career problem I have encountered with executives who have come to see me is not lack of money, promotion or positional power but boredom.
A senior executive came to see me in his private capacity. ‘I run some of the largest projects in a prestigious and growing retail organisation. But I just feel I’ve done my time. I can do this with one hand behind my back.’ We established that what was missing was any kind of feedback from the organisation that would have confirmed the huge value that he was adding. However, as he considered his work values, he was able to find ways to find new energy in his role without having to jump ship. Not every position you take will feed into all your work values, but knowing what is important to you can help you make more conscious choices as you weave your career carpet.
The 8th slice: Maybe it’s just time
Sometimes, career choices are directed by hard criteria like interests, skills, environments, and values. Other times, particularly around midlife, it’s time to review what you want in your life and career. Midlife is often called a crisis, which doesn’t mean everything is falling apart. It’s simply a crossroad that invites new choices.
That job led to a small non-profit organisation with an audacious goal to establish a commercial bank for the lower-income market. The MD told me in the interview that we would either succeed or hit the wall in three months. It offered me an irresistible challenge, brave leadership, an entrepreneurial culture, and the chance to make a difference. Eight years later, as a registered commercial bank, we merged with one of the top three banks in the country. What a wonderful ride.
There is no perfect workplace. But if you know what drives you and what kind of environments allow you to do your best work, it will help you make better choices and make peace with aspects that don’t work so well. It will also prevent you from jumping ship only to find the same problem elsewhere or concluding you are in the wrong career when you are simply in the wrong place.
Your turn
What do you appreciate most about your current workplace?
What would you like to change without jumping ship?
What changes would make your work life more productive?
[i] Edgar Schein, Career Anchors