Tammy Erickson, a workplace expert and author of Plugged In:The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work, advises that if you’re unhappy, see if you can upgrade your contribution to the company, or find a way to be more creative about your job.

via How to Survive in an Unhappy Workplace – Management Essentials – HarvardBusiness.org.

Sometimes it’s not about how much you’re getting from your job, but how much of a difference you feel like you can make. If you don’t feel like your work has value, it’s hard to get excited about it. But you usually do have some control over that.

To me it’s amazing what she creates with sand. Sand. Small grains of sand are turned into beautiful artwork right before our eyes.

I don’t know how she got started. Maybe she was on some beach one day and started messing around. Maybe she took a sand art class. Regardless, there’s no doubt that she creates something masterful with something nearly insignificant.

This week at my new job, I was waiting on my dry erase board to be installed. I tend to have spur-of-the-moment bursts of inspiration. As such, I like to have a place to write them down and let the creativity flow. Before it arrived, I felt like I couldn’t do much of anything. “But what if I have a great idea?” I thought. “Where will I write it?”

And then I watched this video. I learned that in the hands of a true artist, the tools are secondary. It merely takes vision and will in order to manipulate the tools in order to create art, beauty, and impact.

Maybe it’s time we stop waiting for the “right” tools. Perhaps we don’t need the latest of any gadget in order to do meaningful work. Maybe what need is a passion, a will, and a commitment to creating something of beauty.

Passion and talent is what turns sand into art.

photo credit: michelhrv

As much as we might like to look for a silver lining, sometimes we get stuck in jobs that, let’s face it, we hate. But in the face of certain circumstances like oh, I don’t know, a down economy and a tough job market, we may feel we must persevere. But how?

Luckily, CAREEREALISM has your back. In a feature called 6 Strategies for Surviving in a Job You HATE, they call attention to some techniques to help you muddle through somehow. Some of their advice is:

• Time For One’s Self: [...]  It is vital to set some time aside each day, particularly before heading into work.

[...]

• Decompression: Failing to “blow off steam” and letting frustrations build up can be dangerous not only to yourself but to others as well.

[...]

• Keep On Keepin’ On: Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well – even if it’s something you hate. Not only will this give you a sense of accomplishment and pride in yourself, it can also help you down the road should you need a reference.

Been there? Got advice? Sound off in the comments.

photo credit: sunsets_for_you

Last night, my wife and I received our first baby blanket for our daughter who arrives in January. It immediately got me thinking about an old, colorful blanket I had as a child. It had a picture of Snoopy on it, and while I did not need it to fall asleep every night, it was a must-have for Saturday morning cartoons or story time in the middle of the afternoon.

Whether it’s a pacifier, a stuffed animal, or a blanket, kids have security devices that help normalize their rapidly changing worlds. Adults have networks, expensive items they own, or careers. Or not.

In a conversation I had this week with a freelancer, he told me that he believes he’s more secure on his own than he is with a salaried corporate gig. I see his point – he’s at the mercy of his own skills and his ability to find new business rather than depend on someone or something else to make sure he still has enough work to do.

Then, I read this beauty by the very talented Carlos Miceli. He reminds us:

Job security may be the worst goal you can set for yourself.

The concept is outdated. If it ever existed, it was way too long ago.

Too much randomness rules our lives to aim for any kind of perpetuity.

He’s got a point. But so do those people who find a job they love working for someone else, reaping the best possible scenario of security or stability.

So the issue isn’t whether you should start a company or go work for one. The issue is what makes you feel most secure. Is it a salaried job somewhere you can climb the ladder? Is it hanging out your own shingle? Is it in teaching others how to make that decision?

Where do you feel most safe and sound when it comes to work?

photo credit: *Zara

I’ve been thinking about happiness at work lately. Having started my own company just about six months ago, and being happily busy and productive, the relationship has been obvious to me between doing something you love and being happy at work. Duh, right?

But it’s more than that: there’s a feeling of empowerment in having chosen my occupation rather than letting it choose me, and being busy with work that I feel good about. I mean, that’s not earth-shatteringly novel either, I realize, but the difference is huge: I went from being a passionate advocate for doing the right thing in multiple environments where that made me a pain in the CEO’s butt to now being a passionate advocate for doing the right thing as CEO of my own company.

Realistically, not everyone is going to start their own company, or will even want to, but we all still need to find happiness. So how do you reconcile happiness with long days doing work you sometimes may not love?

Coincidentally, in some of the blogs I read regularly for inspiration, I ran across a theme this week pertaining to work and happiness.

Gill Corkindale in HarvardBusiness.org had a piece on When Work Doesn’t Make You Happy that addresses that very question, and finds that choice, to the extent that we have it, is key:

“It all comes down to choice, and this is where I believe happiness lies. In choosing — as far as you are able — what you want to do and how you will do it. While not all of us can choose our work and colleagues, we can all choose how we approach things — with an open, optimistic, and positive outlook or with a frustrated, irritated one.”

In a somewhat similar (but perhaps more direct) vein, Jason Seiden, in a piece called Screw Your Career Path. Live Your Story, advocates embracing the surprises in life and finding your true self in the way you live out your choices:

“It’s time, as individuals, to remember that we are each protagonists in our own stories—not fictional ones, either, but real, live, actual, here-I-am-in-the-flesh-stories. [...] Only protagonists can know surprises, friendship, obstacles, twists, victories, villains, daring, love, temptation, loss, luck, setbacks, choices, laughter, tears… only protagonists can know success.”

And finally, from the managerial perspective, SmartBlog on Workforce covered the happiness-productivity connection in a piece called 3 ways to maximize your workers’ happiness — and performance:

“The secret to maximizing performance is to create an environment in which your employees are happy. A happy employee is highly engaged, flourishing and has achieved an acceptable work-life balance.

We know that high employee engagement leads to high performance. Recent studies by the Corporate Leadership Council, Towers Perrin and Development Dimensions International, show that a highly engaged workforce results in a 20% improvement in employee productivity, a 50% reduction in unplanned attrition and a 23% increase in customer satisfaction.”

It’s as if there’s been something in the air to make us all think along the same lines.

What about you – have you been thinking about the link between happiness and meaningful work, or between happiness and productivity, or perhaps the three-way link between happiness and meaningful work and productivity? What conclusions have you come to, different from what we’ve quoted above?

The big news on the career/tech front this week was that Brazen Careerist transformed itself in “an all-out social network focused on flipping the conventional wisdom surrounding the resume by focusing on “idea feeds.””

While Brazen Careerist has been a great place for Gen Y bloggers to find one another, its renewed focus this week could change the game for employers and employees alike.

The main frustration I hear with recent graduates is that no one will hire them because they don’t have any experience. And they can’t get any experience unless someone hires them. This is the awful Twilight Zone paradox of trying to land a job in our world. After all, how can you really demonstrate that you will do a good job, even if you just haven’t had the chance to do a good job yet?

I hope that Brazen can change the career game by showcasing the great ideas of its community members. Then, I hope this trend will catch on and allow all of us to showcase our great ideas when looking for work. And ultimately, I hope that companies and organizations the world over will begin to find ways to measure the potential of new employees, and not just the past.

Tell us: when looking for work, how do you draw attention to your ideas?

photo credit: chanchan222

Regardless of what you think of football or Brett Favre, you’ve seen the same song and dance happen in different sectors. You’ve seen the CEO who hops from one large company to the next, even after his judgment and ingenuity have left him. You’ve seen the teacher who needs to retire instead of hang on one more year. You’ve seen the designer who no longer has a knack for creating compelling book covers.

But none of them can let go. Financial needs aside, some people can’t walk into the sunset peacefully, knowing when to call it quits and to move on.

I’m sure there’s a little bit of Brett Favre in most of us. Something is telling us to move on, but we just can’t do it.

I’m reminded of a stellar article written by Dr. Jeff Cornwall, Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. He challenges the entrepreneur (and the non-entrepreneur, too) to not “become the noun of what you do for a living.”

He continues:

One of the risks of using nouns to describe what we do in our work is that it can reinforce the tendency we all have to get carried away with our work. I loved starting a growing businesses (most of the time, at least). I love teaching and writing. It is indeed a blessing to love what one does for a living and enjoy the hard work that goes along with it. But, with every virtue there is a vice looming in the background. Although hard work is a good thing, it can be taken to excess and become a vice if it keeps us from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.

Go read the rest of the article and come back here and tell us how you resist becoming the noun of what you do for a living. How do you keep things in check and know when it’s time to exit gracefully?

photo credit: peasap

This week I started a wonderful new job working with some phenomenally talented people, managing a complex, statewide, volunteer-driven policy initiative.  It would probably fill up my heart and soul no matter the timing, but I’m back on the job after two years of time away from the office.  Its significance at this point in my life is big.

It’s always advised to “take some time between jobs,” but often this means a couple of weeks.  These past two years have been a great luxury, and helped me sort out the goals and objectives I want most to achieve in my work.  In a sense, I have been working during the time away from the office, but the project was myself.  The whole process got me thinking about two types of reflection.

There is the looking at the past, and analyzing and evaulating the decisions and results; there is also what we see of ourselves in other people around us.  They may be clients or colleagues, but those closest to us eventually have a significant impact on our sense of self, and our ability to bring our dreams from thoughts to realities.  The length of time I had away from my own old patterns made it impossible for me to deny the changes I needed to make.  While it is surely easier to wish others would change, in the end it is always us who needs to alter what is happening in our own lives.

If you are struggling with needing to make a change, you might not need the extensive time I took to get there.  You might just need encouragement and validation!  Below are some questions that may help you get there more quickly:

Where do  you see your reflection?  In evaluation by others, in your own ability to steer your professional ship, in the kinds of clients you attract, in your paycheck, in your relationships with your co-workers?  When you pinpoint your most common reflection, does it ring true, or do you want to see yourself somewhere else?

What one change could you make within yourself to see more of the person you want to be?

photo credit: TheeErin

Take a stroll through most corporate offices these days, and the attitudes you’ll often encounter are anxiety and skepticism, whether camouflaged or blatantly on display. With all the layoffs going on around us and friends and family out of work, it is difficult for many people to work up even a modest enthusiasm for their work, let alone passion.

Yet for businesses to succeed in a tight economy, they need dedicated, passionate people. How can a leader instill passion?

John Baldoni addressed this question in an article on HarvardBusiness.org the other day called How to Make People Passionate About Their Work. Some of the suggestions were:

Focus on the positive. Passion in leaders can be palpable; you know in an instant that the executive cares about the company. In my experience, those senior leaders who stroll through the halls with a nod or good word to say to all are those executives who get things done. And it is because they are out and about, not cloistered in their offices on mahogany row. Rather, they are meeting with employees and customers, vendors and investors, getting to know issues and concerns. They also use these times to talk up the good things.

Address the negatives. Passionate leaders are not Pollyannas; they know the score, precisely because they spend so much time out of their offices. They see firsthand what is working and what is not, and because they have a relationship with people in all levels of the company, they can more readily mobilize employees to solve problems.

At first blush these suggestions seem at odds. But it is vital to address both the reality of the situation and to foster hope for great outcomes. At the risk of sounding like a Jim Collins groupie, Good to Great addresses this as the “Stockdale Paradox,” citing it as one of the factors that allows great companies to survive difficult times and ultimately triumph.

(Moreover, in the book The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin relates management examples where leaders are able to “hold two conflicting ideas in constructive tension.” This is a skill we need as managers and executives.)

How are you rallying your teams to be passionate about their work? How are you, as an individual, cultivating your own passion? Tell us in the comments.

photo credit: tm_lv

My dad worked 38 years with the same employer. I know there were times he thought about going elsewhere, but since he didn’t have a college degree, he always felt limited by what he thought wouldn’t be available to him.

I, on the other hand, have held a lot of jobs, and most of them were for less than a full year. Some were even 6 months or less. (A few have even been 3 or 4 weeks, but those were generally contracts or really bad fits.) In the earlier years of my professional life, my dad regarded my “job-hopping” with some anxiety and counseled me to stick it out longer with each employer. After a while, though, he began to recognize that I was doing good work and not leaving my employers in a lurch,  that I had a different role in most of these companies than the one he had with his, and that I was more comfortable with change than most people seem to be.

I bring this up to ask this question: do you know what your role is at your workplace? Are you a long-term fit, or are you there to fulfill a more short-term mission?

It’s an important question to ask yourself occasionally, as it may change from time to time. Company cultures do evolve as their leadership and the markets they serve evolve. Subtle changes in management two or three levels up can have ripple effects on your surroundings. And what might have started out seeming like a perfect long-term fit can, over time, become ill-suited to your goals and ideals.

In much of the marketplace, moving from job to job after a year or more is rarely considered suspect anymore. Under a year in each job, though, and you’re at risk of being labeled a “job-hopper.” If you don’t think that’s a weird bias for corporate America to have, ask yourself this: do we have even a quasi-derogative term in corporate parlance for someone who stays in an ill-fitting work environment far longer than they should? Why not?

It’s certainly true that hiring employees can be an expensive process, and training them even more costly. Some estimates put the cost at 1.5x to 3x the cost of the employee’s salary. So when employees leave after only a short tenure, it can adversely affect a company’s bottom line. But employees who make themselves too comfortable after years of service, consider themselves too senior to downsize, and become locked into an outdated view of “the way things are done” come with a cost as well. (It’s a cost that’s more difficult to quantify, and more difficult to find studies about, but the discussion is out there.)

Recently, I’ve had a series of phone interviews as a job candidate. I hadn’t been pursuing a new job (I’d already started a company of my own doing web marketing strategy and services) but I was gladly entertaining the conversations because it’s a company I really respect and, truly, you just never know. But I was struck by the fact that every interviewer asked me about why I had a history of “job hopping.”

As I explained to the folks I was interviewing with, my role in most of my previous jobs was, whether explicitly or implicitly, that of a change agent. And a change agent, by nature, doesn’t generally hold a long-term role inside a company. And in most cases, by the time I left each company, even after some of the shortest tenures, I felt that I had achieved what I was there to do. (By the way, as a side interviewing tip: the tie-in with the job I was interviewing for was that it was a consultant position, and my frequent role as change agent makes pretty good sense in that context. I wasn’t lying or rationalizing at all, but having a way to align your story with the story of the job you’re interviewing for really helps overcome anti-job-hopper biases.)

Could I have articulated at the outset of each of those jobs what I was there to do? Probably not. But that doesn’t change the fact that those companies and I each met at times when we needed each other. And I have, as a result, developed a skill for sizing up a company’s situation and helping it improve.

We each have a purpose in our professional lives, and our roles at work should reflect that, even if it becomes inconvenient to explain to future employers. As Penelope Trunk pointed out when she wrote about job hopping a few years ago:

A resume is not a laundry list of job and duties. It’s a document about a story. Your resume needs to show the story of a person who contributes in large ways wherever you go.

No one chooses at the outset to take on a role as a mindless cog in a machine, yet some of the compromises we are asked to make in the name of seniority require selectively ignoring parts of our life goals or ideals. We all owe it to ourselves to perform periodic checks of how well our roles suit us, and answer ourselves honestly.

What are your thoughts on knowing your role within your company? Thoughts on job-hopping or on seniority? Leave them in the comments.