Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [9]
Belief.
The advice from Mayor Bloomberg and the freelance success website is not only an illustration of how misguided we are about how we think about time, but also an example of how flimsy our thinking is when it comes to work in general. We’re not bashing them. Instead we’d rather show that the foundation of our assumptions about work has gotten shakier and shakier as technology and globalization have changed the world.
Look at Addie. Just out of college, she is new to the workforce. Addie is a smart and capable employee. She grew up one of those kids whom people label “overscheduled” but while her life is very full, she’s also excellent at managing her priorities. In college she was the type of student who got good grades, had a boyfriend, took part in extracurricular activities, and was able to make it all work. She’s an effective, dedicated worker, but while her career is important to her, so are her friends and outside interests. For her, all aspects of her life matter.
Unfortunately her attitude about life isn’t sitting well with her manager and the rest of her team. She likes to work at odd hours and at coffee shops, but her boss says that that doesn’t fly. According to her manager, the other people on Addie’s team don’t like it when she leaves the building to get some quiet time to work, or when she asks to leave early on Fridays, even though she’s completed her work. On one hand, Addie draws praise from her boss, who notes that people like her and appreciate her contributions. “You have great ideas,” Addie’s boss says. “But if you’re coming and going all the time you won’t get promoted. People won’t take you seriously. After all, perception is reality.”
Perception is reality.
How many times have you heard that expression with regard to work? Maybe you’ve said it yourself or something like it.
“Better look busy. I hear the CEO is on the floor today.”
“It’s not what you know but who you know.”
“I have to make that meeting. It’s my only chance this week to get face time with my boss.”
The funny thing about these attitudes about work is that they aren’t taught in school. You don’t learn about how the workplace works in a class. There are books about how to get ahead in business or how to make friends and influence people, but there aren’t books that teach you how to behave at work. There is no resource for normal.
So where do these beliefs come from? We learn about work from watching our parents and elders experience work, from the stories they tell. We hear advice like Mayor Bloomberg’s or get some coaching from our mom or dad about how to act professional before going off to our first job. But mostly we learn about what is normal at work by experiencing it. One of the lessons work teaches us right away—whether we’re working at a restaurant or doing grunt work in an office or mowing lawns for our neighbors—is that there is the job you do and the job you appear to be doing.
You have your tasks and responsibilities, aka The Job.
You also have the sometimes unwritten and unspoken rules that you have to play by, aka Work.
These unspoken and unwritten rules are based on beliefs that we all share about how work gets done and what it looks like to get work done. We have so many beliefs about work it would be impossible to name them all. Here is a partial list:
• Most work happens from Monday to Friday, eight to five.
• People at their workstations are doing work.
• Results are proportional to efforts.
• “Summer Hours” programs help create work-life balance for our employees.
• People who work a lot of hours get more work done than people who work fewer hours.
• Nonexempt employee status is a way for us to protect our employees from working too many hours.
• Working “out of hours” is not good for work-life balance.
• Flexibility creates performance