A professor stands in front of his class.  On the desk, sits a jar and a pile of rocks.  He asks a student to fill the jar with as many rocks as possible until it is full.  When the student finishes, the professor asks the class if the jar is full and they all say ‘yes’.  The professor presents a pitcher of sand.  He pours the sand into the jar and it fills the space around the rocks.  He asks the class again if the jar is full.  They exclaim ‘yes’.  He then takes a pitcher of water and pours it into the jar until it begins to spill over the top.  Now the jar is full. 

The lesson is that there is often more room in the jar than you think, but only if you put the big rocks in first. 

For the last 6 months, I have been extremely busy – a bit over-committed with client work.  As good as that is for my bank account, I know it’s not really a sustainable business model.  I have been so busy delivering, I haven’t really made time for business building.  So, last week I allocated time for big rocks – 4 hours per day working on my list:

1)      Begin design on that new client training/coaching program I’ve been meaning to do

2)      2011 financial planning and set up of systems and files

3)      Re-write  that research paper I did into a more usable white paper for my audience

4)      Mindmap/outline the Flying Solo Live talk for September

5)      Create a schedule and library of future blog posts

Over the week, I was able to make significant progress on items 1, 2, and 3 and make a good start on 4 and 5.  It’s not as much as I had hoped to achieve, but it’s significantly more than I’ve achieved in the last 6 months. 

But, I can’t do that every week.  So, how I will I sustain it?  Clearly, these tasks have to go in the jar first.  Each of these tasks required significant head space just to make a start.  They can’t be squeezed in between client work or meetings.  For my business, that means being more careful with my time:

• Set an appointment in my diary for this work.  Treat it with the same respect and attention that I would give a client
• Keep a prioritised list of ‘big rocks’ to tick off the list – aim for 1 per week.  That could be 50 per year!
• Remove distractions – no email, phone calls, or Twitter while working on the big rocks
• Get moving  -  If I get stuck on something, don’t turn to the internet for a distraction…get moving!  45 minutes of walking time is great for new ideas

“Our mental development, unlike our physical development, does not have to end at age twenty; we can keep growing and developing in adulthood”**.

The question that has been central to me is: ‘can people and organisational cultures really change?’ I am now convinced that the answer is ‘yes’.
 
I became intrigued with the work of Robert Kegan while studying for my Masters in Organisational Coaching. It’s the most powerful way I have found to understand patterns of thought in myself and others and how those patterns impact the way we see the world.
 
The basic proposition is this:

Our mental development and growth helps us overcome our immunity to making other changes in our lives – it is when we begin to see and understand the commitments we hold around not changing, that we can begin to change.
 
I realise that our libraries and bookstores are littered books about personal change and growth. There is a reason for this – it’s something people seek. Unfortunately, it’s not something people often find. The problem with that literature is its inability to close the gap.
 
That gap between wanting and doing is a learning problem and closing it is about learning and changing the way we think about change.  Kegan and Lahey’s book is a great way to understand this learning. 
 
**Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work.. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Readers of this blog are well aware that I am fascinated by the elusive concept of finding satisfaction with our work.  Ironically, as I write today’s entry, I am currently experiencing my perfect working moment:  a creative setting, a view of the harbour, and a power source for my laptop.  I have escaped from my home office to the 2009 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

It seems fitting, then, that my first event of the weekend was Caroline West and The Happiness Mistake.  I arrived (fashionably late) for the session that was already full.  Before disappointment could set in, a friendly volunteer directed me to the overflow broadcast area on the main pier where I listened while studying the jellyfish and sipping my coffee in the sun.  This is what West would call happiness state 1:  a momentary pleasure.

West actually proposes 6 separate definitions of happiness that take into account complexities that include states of mind, endurance of feelings, and the source of your perception.  It is for this reason that she also proposes that we abolish the word happiness altogether for something more clear and achievable.

If you are struggling with the concept of professional happiness, it is no wonder.  You may not even know which happiness you are striving for.  Is it maximising the number of happy life moments or working toward achieving a big aspiration?  Is it measured against an internal standard or something external to you?  All of these will have an impact on your pursuit of happiness.  West suggests that we take the advice of Aristotle and take the time to contemplate our work.

In his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton reports that fewer than 15% of us are happy in our employment.  He suggests that industrialisation drives our need for scale and specialisation.  But scale does not help us find meaning in our work and meaning is what we need to increase our pleasure.  De Botton suggests taking the time to find meaning in our everyday tasks much in the way one might while gardening or doing the washing up.

But the dissatisfied professionals I see most often are those who do not feel they have that much control over their work environments.  The tasks (and sometimes the jobs) seem to be given and taken away at random so that the thing that gave you meaning yesterday may no longer be yours today.  That’s where I think ‘Plan B’ comes in.  When I worked in corporate, I always had ‘Plan B’ (I called it the ‘I quit’ plan).  It was both the action plan and the savings plan that supported my mental health.  Your Plan B might simply sit in a drawer at home gathering dust, but just knowing  it is there can make a big difference to your professional happiness – call it a philosophy of happiness with a little reality sprinkled in.

 

Can’t everyone take more control?  Try this quick test:  Take a look at your ‘to do’ list for this week. How many items on it are ‘other driven’?  How many are ‘self driven’? If your to do’s are activities that only benefit others, you might not be doing anything to benefit your own career development.  Some ideas for changing the balance…

1.       Build a personal brand – where do you really shine and what is best left to others?  What is your personal philosophy about the work you do?   This takes a bit of reflective time, but is well worth the effort.  Half the battle of figuring out what you do well is recognising it (and ‘not it’).  Whatever ‘IT’ is, it is worth celebrating.  Take time to figure ‘it’ out.

2.       Spend more time out of the office – my favourite quote from my friends at Pragmatic (pragmaticmarketing.com) is “the answers to your questions are not in the building”.  Companies make mistakes and miss opportunities because they spend all of their time talking to each other.  Pretty soon, the truth becomes self-created and is not valuable to the rest of the world.  Get out of the office and talk to others.  Get some perspective on yourself and your organisation.

3.       Take advantage of every development opportunity.  When I think of all of the corporate training I skipped because of some urgent deadline (and what I now pay for out of my own pocket), I feel a little sick.  You know those programs that you don’t think count as ‘real work’?  Well if you would go along with an open mind, you just might learn something useful.  Better yet, how about those continuing education credits where your company puts money towards a degree?  There are tons of resources and interesting programs out there to support your growth.  What are you waiting for? 

4.       Change jobs more often.  Job and role loyalty is great to a point, but you aren’t doing yourself or your employer any favours staying in a job too long.  Movement is good for both of you.  The temporary discomfort it creates leads to perspective and new ideas. 

5.       Network.  Your network is part of your resume.  It’s an asset you carry with you.  Care for it.

It’s time to expand your job description.  Instead of just adding to your employers’ business value, spend some time developing your own.   The 2 activities don’t need to be mutually exclusive.  Done right, you can both win.

Several years ago I met a University Professor who gave great advice to his graduate students.  He said:  “You have to decide whether you want to be in research or adminstration.”

I have been repeating that advice to IT professionals ever since, but mine goes like this:

“You have to decide if you want to be the ‘doer’ or the ‘manager’.  Do you want to work on your technical skills or your management skills?

Here is a news flash for you…the grass is not greener on the management side of the fence.  Taking the management path might mean leaving behind some of the things you like best about your work – those things that caused you to get into technology in the first place.  Managers don’t get to play with the latest technologies, or tinker, or problem solve.  Managers delegate.  They match people with business needs.  They ensure projects stay on budget.  They write performance reviews and career plans to help technical people become better technical people.

What?  You say that doesn’t sound like management in your company?  Then maybe you are working for an IT company managed by technicians.  It’s a classic syndrome in IT – a superstar programmer or implementer emerges from the team and what do we do?  We promote her.  We take her away from doing the things she was best at and put her in management (and probably with very little support).  We end up with IT companies managed by technicians.  Some technical people make very good managers.  But others struggle to let go of their ‘technical expert’ personas.  (Hint – these ones are easy to spot…they are the ones who are too busy solving customer problems and writing lines of code to get their business initiatives done on time).

If your organisation is struggling with the roles of technician and manager, here are a few things you might try…

1.       Assess your current situation.  Who are the managers and what are their backgrounds?  What do they say are their strengths and weaknesses?  What do others say?  There are plenty of assessment tools you can use to help.

2.       Consider your company’s roles of manager and technician.  Are they equally rewarded and respected?  Are changes needed here?

3.       Start career planning.  Sometimes people choose a management path because it’s the only path they can see.  Good managers (the ones who aren’t buried in fire-fighting) recognise employee strengths and help the employee build on those.  These conversations take time and listening skills.  Do you need to strengthen these in your organisation?

4.       Look to the top.  Is your top management prepared to lead by example?  If not, return to step 2. 

Whenever I see a spike in LinkedIn invitations, I know something is up.  Unfortunately, it seems that most of my new contacts this month are former colleagues who have been laid off (mainly in the US).  Finding themselves out of work, these newly unemployed begin activating their networks of contacts.

It’s too bad these employees weren’t doing that networking when times were good.  Imagine the contacts they could have built up by now.  Imagine the broadened view of how their profession intertwines with others, imagine the insights they could have gained both for themselves and their employer.

Yet, employers don’t seem to see it that way.  Other than the sales force and maybe some product managers, I rarely see employers encouraging the staff to look outside the walls of their company.  It doesn’t count as ‘work’ if it can’t be attributed to a project or a customer. It is too bad, because it’s a lost opportunity to increase relationships between companies and stretch brand awareness into new networks of friends and associations.

So here is a call to action to professionals everywhere:  Start treating your network like the valuable asset it is.  You carry it with you throughout your life.   Take care of it.  Why not start now?

1.        If you don’t have one already, get your own email address and mobile phone number.  Don’t rely on your employer for either.

2.       Join at least 1 online professional networking site (sorry, Facebook doesn’t count for this purpose).  I am talking about LinkedIn or Plaxo or similar.  It’s like Facebook for professionals, and it’s free – it’s your online rolodex.

3.       Spend some time developing a profile that accurately represents all facets of you that are worth mentioning.  This is like your online resume.  I often look online before I go to a meeting with someone to get a sense of who they are.  Recruiters do this, too.  Does your profile show your strengths?

4.       Set aside an hour or 2 each week to build your network.  Look online for people you know.   Look at their connections to find people you have in common.  What are your hobbies?  In which clubs do you participate?  Do you know what those people do for a living?  Look for them online.  Does your profession have an association?  Consider joining it. 

Before you know it, you will find yourself with a network of people you can refer to and draw from when you need them.  And, you never know when you will need them, so why not start building now?

Setting goals directs our attention to something  in a positive way, as if to shine some light on it and say ‘I would like this to be different’. Our attention, awareness and actions are directed there – where the light is shining. 

I had a chance to see this in action last week.  I was invited back to a company to repeat some skills training for their sales team.  Before we started this training,  I worked with the team members for about an hour to clarify their personal goals around selling – not about what they wanted to get from the training, but what they wanted to achieve in their selling in the next 6 months.  For the rest of the day, I conducted the training.

Guess what?  The students reported that the content was significantly more valuable to them than it had been the first time around.  Guess what else?  The content was the same.  The difference was them.   Setting goals before the training had made the content more valuable to them. 

I love it when something is both simple and powerful.  How might that apply to your own work and life experiences?  Could those experiences improve by linking them to one of your own goals or resolutions?  Why not give it a try?

*Locke, E.A. (1996).  Motivation through conscious goal setting.  Applied & Preventitive Psychology, 5(2).  117-124.

There are many reasons people procrastinate.  Psychologists suggest 4:

1.       Avoidance of something we perceive to be unpleasant

2.       Indecision over what to do

3.       Arousal (thrill of working under pressure)

4.       Fear of failure (not leaving enough time provides an excuse for poor performance)

For me, I usually know when my procrastination devil is in the room.  I catch myself not doing the one thing I knew I needed to do today.  Instead, I go searching for distractions – smh.com, twitter, email, and food are excellent sources of distraction.  When that happens, I have to stop and try to figure out what is going on.  Psychologist, Timothy A. Pychyl has created a formula to help determine the utility (desirability) of a task:

Utility = (E * V) / (P * D)

Numerators:  E = Expectancy to succeed – if I don’t expect to succeed, why would I start at all? V = Value of task – if I don’t value the task or the expected outcome, why would I do it?  (more on this below)

Denominators:  P = Personal tendency to delay (self control, impulsivity) – how well do I keep my personal derailers in check? D = Delay (time) until reward or punishment

There are lots of tricks for avoiding procrastination around strengthening the denominator – self control, time management, etc.  But, here is my challenge to you…What about the Expectancy and Value?  If there are lots of tasks on your list that you aren’t excited about, why are they there?  Why are you choosing to focus on things that aren’t important to you?  According to Pychyl “procrastination is about not having projects in your life that really reflect your goals”.  Is this you?  If so, what is it that you would get excited about?  Maybe it’s time to set some goals around that. 

According to Wilson, thrisis is not just an early mid-life crisis because it is about looking forward. It might come when we reach success in our mid-30’s and realise that these ambitions we have been chasing were not our own. We stop and re-design a future for ourselves that is about more than a vicious cycle of making money to spend more money.

Sound familiar? It sure does to me.

So, what should you do if you find yourself in this situation? Here are some thingsyou might want to consider:

1. Take stock. Take some time to try and understand what parts of your life are and are not working for you, and why. The worst thing would be to throw your life into chaos, only to find that you’ve created ‘same stuff…different wallpaper’ – a new situation, but the same old problems are still there.
2. Create some thinking time. Taking time for regular reflection might be a skill someone forgot to teach you along the way. If your inner voice has been stifled by work and family obligations for several years, it might take some practise to hear it again.
3. Get ready for change. Think about how you feel about change and uncertainty. These times of transition are great opportunities, but they can also be disruptive. Changing one thing can set in motion a number of other changes you hadn’t counted on.

Wilson closes her article with a quote from John F. Kennedy “The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is composed of 2 characters: One represents danger and the other opportunity.”

Do you find that this is harder than it sounds? The urge is strong. Do you interject personal stories and experiences to show that you understand what the person is saying?

You might be asking yourself…So, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that reflective listening? Well, sort of. But, in my conversation, there was a subtle and importance difference between saying…

“So, it sounds like what you are saying is that it might be helpful to talk about the different sales models that are available and which would be best for your organisation.”

“I just finished a similar project for another client where we did a day of sales training for the team followed by a workshop to discuss the best way to implement the changes.”

Do you see the difference? The first statement is about him and where he is at in his thought process. The second statement is about me and another company. It has nothing to do with him. And, as it turned out, it wasn’t what he felt he needed at all.

I have just been studying Cloninger’s (1993)* seven factor model of personality. He suggests that of the 7 personality factors (Harm-avoidant, Novelty-seeking, Reward-dependent, Persistent, Self-directedness, Cooperativeness, and Self-transcendence), only the last 3 are a result of learning. The first 4 are biologically determined and represent the way a person is likely to interpret and respond to the world. It is unlikely that in any conversation, I will be talking to someone who interprets the world like I do. More importantly, talking to them from my view of the world is unlikely to bring them to my way of thinking – this is the stuff they were born with and nothing I could say will change that. If I want to work effectively with my clients, I have to approach things from their point of view and stop talking about me. It’s not about me, it’s about them. (repeat)

*Cloninger, C.R., Svrakic, D., & Przybeck, T. (1993). A Psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry. 50, 975-990.