Good Morning,
My current read is Patrick Lencioni’s ‘Three Signs of a Miserable Job’ (http://www.tablegroup.com/books/signs/). I simply loved his other books: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Five Temptations of the CEO. This book was just as spectacular as the others.
The three signs are very simple and make a lot of sense, but as you will see, much of the world of business and organizations tend not to embrace these concepts in any real or passionate manner. These signs apply in all industries and wherever present open the door for team members to be miserable in their jobs.
Anonymity – This is where we do not feel acknowledged for who we are by our organization and more specifically, our boss and the management team. This knowledge is not just a few superficial facts. For people to feel acknowledged managers should know quite a bit about their team members and be truly interested in them (even if it does feel touchy-feely).
For example: It is not: ‘That
It is a real getting to know each person. It is more like: ‘That Sanford is a hard worker, and did you know he celebrated his wife’s birthday on Easter and recently started volunteering at his church, had his first book published and loves to read.’
Which do you think will cause someone feel more acknowledged?
Irrelevance – This is where we know that our work has meaning. What we do impacts others based on the very work we do. The lady who waters the plants and changes the garbage bags in the building I work in has a very important job (what would the place be like with dead plants and garbage piling over the containers and smelling up the place?). Although, unless she feels her work is relevant, she may think it just a grind and be miserable. Although it is not my job, I personally thank her each time I see her for helping make the workplace more cheerful and keeping it clean. I have been doing this for over a year. Now, whenever she sees me, she smiles. Maybe she remembers that her work makes a difference to me, that what she does is important.
Immeasurement – This is basically not being measured on how well we are doing our jobs, or being measured by statistics which have little or no relevance to our actual function. If we have no way of saying if we did our job well one day over another, then we fall into this category of immeasurement. The challenge is to both find ways to measure our productivity in a way that does not hinder our productivity and measure something relevant to our success.
I have a team that used to use a daily tick-sheet and counted up all of their interactions and activities. In the end we killed this process because it was taking upwards of a half hour a day just to count productivity, and many of the items they counted were not key to their daily success. We have to find a simpler way measure our performance, and we have to find the right metrics to record. While we are not there yet, we are still looking.
As a manager and or leader, it is our job to help reduce or, if possible, eliminate these roadblocks for our team members to have a happy job. No matter what kind of job, working what kind of industry, these signs can be used to help improve how we like our jobs or those who work with us enjoy theirs.
We can all tackle anonymity using such tools as the MacKay 66 created by Harvey MacKay. This is a list of 66 questions which if filled out will tell you many many things about someone, like a customer or employee.
Irrelevance is also easily conquered once we honestly look at what everyone does and see who our work impacts. Teams who do not work directly for customers often help those who do, or even the bosses themselves.
Immeasurement is a tough one for some folks, but when you can say that you have done a good job every day, with stats to prove it, it makes it easier to enjoy your job.
If I have not said it enough times, I simply love Patrick Lencioni’s books, and highly suggest everyone read them when you get a chance.
Enjoy!
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