Are you in A job or THE job?

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Most of us in our careers will move between jobs and employers. We will spend time in roles that we love and roles that we need to do. The ability to recognise which type of role you’re doing, and why, is critical to being both successful and happy.

You’ll do “a job” for a number of different reasons. It might be necessity – needing to pay the bills put food on the table. It might be development – learning a new skill, getting sector or management experience. Or it might be more personal – the need to stretch or push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Doing a job is fine. It gets you where you need to be at the time that you need to be there, it provides a means to an end – as long as you know the end that you’re after. It only becomes a problem when you forget and confuse it with being “the job” and then it seems to lack something else.

By this I don’t mean that there is one perfect ideal role for all of us. For some that may be the case, for others there will be more than one. It really depends on your career, your drive and your desire. And of course, “the job” may not be a constant state over time – things change.

Working in “the job” has a higher level of fulfilment, it meets your needs on more than a functional level. It could be the people who you’re working with, the fit between your work and home. It might be the ability to do things that you’ve always wanted to do, or work in an industry that you’ve always wanted to be in.

When we look back over our careers, I bet we can all differentiate between the two. Sometimes it is harder to do so in the moment. So if you’re feeling downbeat or ill at ease with your current employment situation, ask yourself – is this a means to an end, or an end in itself? If you can be clear where you’re at, why you’re there and where you’re going next, the whole thing becomes a lot more tenable and clear.

The future of jobs

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Last week the REC published their report on the Future of Jobs. I’d absolutely recommend taking a read of it if you haven’t already. It is freely available here.

What really excited me about the commission was the range of interests being expressed and how much agreement there was in the views being conveyed by different parties. Ultimately, those representing employees, those representing employers and those representing government and special interest groups want pretty much the same thing. The summary conclusions of the report make this abundantly clear.

For employees:
“The best jobs market in the world for individuals is one with opportunities to get
into work and subsequently progress, and one where people have genuine choice in terms of ways of working. A future UK jobs market is also one where individuals feel fulfilled, respected, and recognised, and where people can succeed irrespective of their background. Realising this vision rests largely with the government – particularly with regards to the need for an education system that nurtures individual potential and prepares future generations for the changing world of work. However, a future jobs market must also be one where individuals take personal responsibility for their own career development and take advantage of lifelong learning opportunities. Advice, guidance, and development for all workers is an essential development.”

For employers:
“The best jobs market in the world for an employer is one where evolving skills and staffing needs of employers are easily met, where productivity levels are improving on the back of increased investment in skills, where recruitment procedures have been ‘re-imagined’ to reflect the new world of work, and where management and leadership capability has been radically enhanced. Planning for the future jobs market must be a priority for UK plc and for the public sector. Demographics, ‘flexible hiring’, managing a multigenerational workforce, adapting to new technologies, and the use of data will prove critical to organisational success. As technology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotics gather pace, businesses, recruiters, and managers must plan their workforce more creatively and ensure that they are able to access the talent that they need. Access to UK, EU, and global talent will remain critical, but we also need to see more employers working with schools and colleges.”

For policy makers:
“Policy-makers should seek to ‘get in front’ of the seismic changes that will impact on the jobs market. The government has a key role to play in ensuring that education is adequately preparing young people for this new world of work. The government must also lead a radical focus on lifelong learning and create an infrastructure that enables individuals of all ages to make transitions and compete in this ever-changing jobs market. The Brexit process will have a profound impact on the UK jobs market; we need to ensure that the post-EU landscape is one in which both demand and supply of staff remains vibrant. In addition to a world-class skills and work infrastructure, we need a progressive and balanced immigration system that allows businesses to ll the jobs they have available. We must not take the UK ‘jobs machine’ for granted. There is a need for a proportionate and effective regulatory and taxation landscape that reflects modern working practices while also facilitating job-creation.”

Of course, saying it is easier than making it happen. But we all have the ability to make micro changes that move our organisations in the right direction. And in that, we need to consider the world through the lenses of all the stakeholder groups. Building a successful future means building one in which as many people as possible can share in and profit from that success. If we can do that, we’ll all be able to be proud of the work we’ve done.

Dignity isn’t optional

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Last week’s rolling fatberg of a story featured a Hollywood mogul’s repeatedly obnoxious and fundamentally unacceptable (illegal) behaviour. I can’t imagine there is anyone that isn’t up to date with the story – widely reported – so I won’t go into the story. But here’s the summary;

Powerful man preys on less powerful women in industry for his personal gain.

Who knew?

There are multiple things that stand out for me in the story, but most prominently is the negligent inaction of so many men and women that stood by and let it happen. Who, without any shadow of doubt, are complicit.

I heard an interview with George Clooney who stated they were all aware that the guy in a question was a “womaniser”, but no one knew it was this bad. I’ve seen actresses that have significant power and global influence stand up and recount their stories years after – allowing multiple repetitions of inappropriate behaviour. I’ve read stories of actresses decades ago being warned to avoid certain situations.

Don’t give me the line that his power was overwhelming, I repeat: they were all complicit. 

It reminds me of a situation that I investigated in the past – an incident at a Christmas party between a senior male employee and a much more junior female employee. The actions were portrayed as innocuous, and between two people of the same age in a different context they could well have been so.

But this was a work context, with a significant difference in power, age and experience. And for me they were far from innocuous entirely because of those facts. As we investigated it became clear that the people who’d talked about the events in the corridors and over water coolers suddenly, “hadn’t seen anything”. I’m proud to say we stood our ground nonetheless and took action.

In the weeks that followed, as the rumour mills rolled, several senior colleagues of both genders told me that the guy had a bit of a reputation, that he was well known for acting inappropriately for years and that they weren’t surprised. None of these colleagues had anything to fear from stepping forward at any point. So why hadn’t they?

Let me put this really clearly, where inappropriate behaviour happens in the workplace and you standby, you are allowing it to happen. The movie industry is an unusual one, that mixes work and leisure in an unnatural way but nobody is trying to claim that his advances on women weren’t work related. That’s why he was sacked. And it can and does happen in any work place.

It is beholden on all of us to make a stand – particularly those of us in leadership positions, regardless of our gender. Everyone should be able to go about their lawful work, without fear of intimidation, harassment or assault. That’s not a high bar to set, it’s a basic human right.

Are you running a marathon, or becoming a marathon runner?

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One of the fundamental reasons organisations struggle with change is that they frame it in the wrong way. I’m not a huge fan of sporting analogies, but forgive me this once.

One day I wake up and say that I want to run the London marathon. There are clear success criteria, clear steps to take and a very clear deadline. I can get my friends and family energised, maybe get them to sponsor me or come and cheer me through to the finish line. Of course, there are things that might get in the way – I might not get a place, I might pull a muscle, but other than that it’s a pretty straightforward (if daunting) task.

This is the “change” that most organisations like to face and are well equipped to achieve.

Now what if I was to wake up that day and say that I wanted to be a marathon runner? How would that change the approach and the context? When would it be achieved, when I’ve done one, two, ten? When I can run a marathon at will? My friends will probably not be too interested, they might even find me a bore and wonder why I’m slogging my guts out after work rather than going for a pint.

This is the change that most organisations are trying to achieve and are struggling with.

The joy of the first scenario is that once it’s done we can forget about it. Go to the pub and have a pie and a pint and spend every weekend on the sofa watching other people run around. We can revert back to our previous behaviours, with the task complete.

The issue with the second scenario is that we are talking about sustainability underpinned by behavioural change. We are transitioning into a new form of being, with no real sense of measurement, but a pretty clear sense of whether it has been achieved or not.

The difference between acting with agility and being an agile organisation.

The problem comes when organisations approach sustainable change with the mindset of task completion. We want to know when it will be done, why it hasn’t happened yet and why no one is coming along on the journey with us. We want the razamataz of the finish line and the medal and all we get is a pile of sweaty training clothes.

Creating meaningful, sustainable change is hard. It takes time, practice and repetition, it takes failure and despair. Worst of all, you’re never really sure if you’ve achieved it, or when or if you’ll arrive. Despite all the sweat, blood and tears, despite all the hard yards, you will only see how far you’ve gone, not how far you need to go.