Yet in this video we see that the accordion can sound beautiful when handled by a master.

This brings me to something I hear a lot of people say – “I don’t like my job, I want a new one.”  What does this have anything to do with an accordion?  Well, just like the accordion a lot of us have hate our jobs.  We think that if we just had the “right” job we’d be happy.  If only we had the right job, then we’d have that elusive joy.

But would we?

I believe that if you want to have meaning in your work, that meaning has to come from you, not your job.  In short you must bring your own meaning to work.  If you look for work to provide you with meaning you’re going to be disappointed for a long long time.

In other words, we’re asking the wrong questions.  We shouldn’t be saying, “how can I find my perfect job?”  We should be saying, “how can I make this job right for me?”

This brings us back to the accordion video.  Instead of looking at getting the “right” instrument, we should focus on becoming masters.  By focusing on becoming experts in what we do, we change the situation.  The more we excel at whatever our task, the more we take something wonderful and awe inspiring.

It’s easy to play the accordion poorly.  It takes real talent to make it sound amazing.  Are our jobs really any different?

image provided by flickr user rochelle et al

Why do I do all that?

Recognition.

When you find rare armor, beat a difficult boss, or get the top score on solitaire you get recognized.  It’s no different than trying to get the best marathon time, beat a personal record for cycling, or maintain that 240 bowling average.  We push for these things because we get recognition for those achievements.

Recognition has always been important.  But it’s becoming more important in our highly specialized, service oriented, possibly failing – recovering – failing economy.  Most of us are create on demand professionals (people who make stuff out of nothing for a living, by a deadline) it can be difficult to have a sense of accomplishment.  You don’t always get to pick up a tool or piece of food that you’ve helped create and say, “I did that”.

But recognition can fill that void.  When we recognize our employees, we validate their efforts.  And we find that they actually want to work harder, because they know someone cares.

We are all like that.

We all want someone to care about what we do.

If you are a boss, or even part of a team, you can help people grow just by recognizing what they do in a meaningful way.  And when people feel recognized they will engage in ways you never thought possible.  And isn’t that what we really want our employees to do?

photo provided by flickr user oskay

For most of my life I’ve loved technology.  I remember walking to elementary school during the summer with my Dad to play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIgs.  I remember fondly hacking my old x386 Windows 3.1 computer.  I’ve tweaked programs, downloaded software, and written code from my XP machine (which I even built myself.)

But these days something has changed.  I’m just not interested in doing all of those things.  I still love the idea, but these days I just want things to “work.”  I’ve become one of THOSE people!  I don’t have the patience, and more importantly, time to trouble shoot all of my problems.

Frankly, I find this a little depressing.

I’ve been a PC advocate for my entire life.  I love the open nature of the platform.  The freedom to do what I want to do.  And the flexibility to have choices.  But these days I find myself actually wanting a Mac.  I like my Android phone, but I’m not thrilled at how I need to micromanage certain applications.  The design of the iPhone is so much better even if the iPhone 3GS isn’t nearly as powerful as my Nexus One.

At some point efficiency has become the rallying cry of my life.

While this conversation is about phones and computers, it can easily be applied to work.  Employee goals are changing, but companies aren’t recognizing this.  How we are motivated, how we want to work, and even how we choose to work is changing.  No longer do we want to work 9-5 in a cubicle (did we ever really?).  We want flexibility and freedom.

Apple has been successful because it’s recognized the change in the customer base.  Apple sees that people are overwhelmed by the information that comes there way, and they create designs that simplify our lives.  That’s why they are successful.  Maybe it’s time your company took that same approach.  Because if you don’t, you’re likely to lose out on the best employees.

photo provided by everystockphoto

Most of us spend our lives searching for how to make our lives more meaningful.  We hop from job to job hoping that the next one will make our lives more meaningful.  But the truth is, no job brings meaning to our work.

A friend of mine went to work for a non-profit.  He had worked as a marketer at a big marketing firm and over time grew disillusioned with trying to “trick” (his word) people into buying a product.  He saw this new opportunity as a way to break free from that feeling.  So he joined the non-profit.  After a few weeks I asked him what he thought.  He paused for a moment and shrugged, “it feels like a job” he said.

While he loves his work at the non-profit, it’s still a job.  It still requires us to get up out of bed when we’d rather be sleeping in and to work on weekends we’d rather be sitting outside.  Jobs don’t provide meaning, they provide us with a way to make money.

No job will ever give you meaning.

However….

…If you take your meaning to work with you, then you’ve got an entirely new conversation.  While it’s still a job, your meaning provides context to those long hours at the office.  The meaning you bring to work makes the headaches that come with working with others, more bearable because you know why you’re there.  You see where you’re supposed to go.  What you’re supposed to be doing.

As a society we have it all wrong.  We don’t get meaning from work.  We have to take our meaning to work.

And that, my friends, is what this site is all about.

There I said it.  Now I can enroll in Learner’s Anonymous.

Why is this a problem?  Because learning isn’t the same as doing.  And it’s in the doing that greatness happens.   Go ahead and pick anything you want.  A thought, a belief, an opinion.  But I can tell you it didn’t matter until someone did something about it.  You might have a great idea for a new TV product, but it won’t matter until you do it.  Do you have the next Great American Novel?  That’s awesome, but it doesn’t count until you write it.

All of that takes action, and that’s where I can get bogged down.  Even as a kid I loved thinking.  I even loved school.  In fact I would give just about anything to be paid to go to school forever.  Which, I suppose, is why I once applied for a job as a Text Book study guide writer.  (I can feel most of you falling asleep even as I type the job title!)

Learning is important.  But so is doing.  Because in the end, without doing, it’s as if you didn’t learn anything.

image provided by flickr user ckhamken

Practice is part of that.

Many of us don’t practice because we figure “why bother?”  That type of mentality says, it’s not the practice that matters it’s luck, or natural skill or some other random variable.  While those things are important, they don’t replace practice.

Just look at the NFL or the NBA.

Usually the top athletes are the ones known for spending hours in the gym.  Especially when everyone else has gone home.  That’s dedication.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from reading an e-book by Chris Guillebeau, author of the blog, The Art of Nonconformity.  In that book he said that as a writer his minimum goal is to write 1000 words per day.   If he doesn’t hit that number he doesn’t feel like it was a good day.

That got me thinking – I fancy myself a writer, what should my writing patterns look like?

Frankly they weren’t up to snuff. I might write 500 words every other day.  But a thousand a day? Nowhere close. Since then I decided to make changes.  If I wanted to improve as a writer I needed to practice.  And practice meant writing more.  Now I make sure to write close to that thousand word mark. I don’t always get there.   And I’m okay with that.  It’s not the number I care about, it’s the attitude.  But between Meaning to Work and a blog I write around living a life of faith, along with several other writing projects, I come very close to that number every day.  That’s a huge improvement.   That’s something measurable.

And you know what? It has helped.   My writing has improved.  My productivity has improved.  And unexpectedly, my confidence in my writing ability has improved.

Practice may never make perfect. But it makes things a lot better.

photo provided by flickr user laffy4k

The argument against working from home tends to revolve around “building relationships” and “being seen” at the office.  Both of these are good things, and work-from-home proponents tend to gloss over how important they are.  But a lot of times the underlying current of work-from-home-is-evil is an issue of control.

The organization wants to know what their employees are doing at all times.  It doesn’t surprise me that as we install more and more cameras in buildings and on roads we find we are less trusting of our employees.

While issues of trust run deep and can’t be solved in a 300 word post, let me propose a question: is it better to mistrust your employees so that they don’t get any work done while in your building?  Or should you give them the benefit of the doubt and let them work?

In a world driven by intrinsic motivation, external sources of motivation become less and less effective.    When your job is to create something out of nothing, how does having your boss stand over your shoulder improve your productivity?  Does punching into a time clock make you more effective?

Of course it doesn’t!  In fact, it actually undermines our productivity.

Times have changed, yet how we are “motivated” in the workplace remains the same.  Almost all of us work on a “project” basis.  But we are still judged for hours worked and not quality worked.

As we move into the next decade of work (one where the news repeatedly says we won’t recover all the jobs lost in this current recession), companies are going to need to look at getting more productivity out of less people.  While this will be a challenge for organizations and workers alike, I can guarantee you one way to destroy productivity is to prevent people from working at home.

At some point we need to learn to trust our employees.  Because if you can’t trust your employees to work from home, you probably can’t trust them to work at the office.  And if you have so little trust in your employees, that tells me one of two things:  You either have the wrong people working for you.  Or your management style is destroying their productivity in the first place.

photo provided by flickr user wetsun

The problem was, he wasn’t skilled.  At least not in bed side manner.

He knew all of the ins and outs of the dental profession, but lacked the skill to treat patients.

Now this isn’t a knock on him.  We all have to start out somewhere.  And we almost always know more than we are skilled.  In time his skill will grow to match his dental knowledge – but not yet.

So when you are picking out a subject matter expert to lead a project, don’t consider just knowledge.  Consider skill as well.

image provided by flickr user dbking

But if you want a more sophisticated answer it’s have an attitude of “it’s not my job.”

I get paid to bring change to organizations.  That’s my job.  And I love it.  There are very few drawbacks to that line of work.  But one of the biggest is the fact that I can’t read a story about something without noticing organizational culture at work.

Such was the case with a post written by the Mailchimp Blog talking about a Twitter-based promotion of free T-shirts.  Apparently their office manager ran into a problem with the post office not allowing her to mail more than 15 packages at a time.  This meant that as she mailed out a 1000 packages, she had to mail 15, get back in line, and repeat the whole process.

Or as Mailchimp says, “The real hero in all of this is our office manager April. She developed what you might call a rather special relationship with the employees at the post office down the block.  Apparently they have a rarely enforced rule that you can only mail fifteen parcels at a time.  And since April was a “chronic offender,” she had to endure dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”

In one, throw away sentence, Mailchimp captured the typical customer experience at the post office.  “dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”

Who among us doesn’t have a story like that about the Post Office?  Is it any wonder they are hemorrhaging money?

Even my individual mail carrier has gotten into the act.  After delivering mail they dislodge the locking mechanism on my (apartment controlled) mailbox.  I didn’t notice this for two days and when I checked my mail I received an angry note from the mail carrier demanding that I keep my mailbox locked at all times.  Because, you know, I always like to keep my mail accessible to random people.

Everything about the Post Office epitomizes the “not my job” attitude.  It wasn’t the Post Offices job to help April deliver Mailchimp products (1000 packages is a lot of money for a company losing billions).  After all, it’s not like she was buying 16 first class stamps.  And it wasn’t  the “job” of my mail carrier to shut and lock the mailbox – but it was his / her job to leave me an angry note apparently.

If we spent less time being angry and giving dirty looks, we’d find our organizations would run more smoothly.  But that, my friends, is a post for another day.

photo provided by flickr user dbking

If you haven’t heard, the Apple / Google wars heat up.  Both of these companies are poised to become huge players in the emerging “super phone” market.  Which means that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are at stake.  This is why Apple’s lobbing of legal grenades is so important.  With filings targeted at Google’s phones (specifically the HTC models), Apple is saying they won’t take iPhone encroachment lightly.

This isn’t new.

Apple and Microsoft used to be at war.  Google and Microsoft used to be at war.  Microsoft and Sony are still at war.  Every major company seems to go to war with its competitors.

Of course the people who get hurt in these wars are you and I, the consumers.

So why do it?

Because companies are afraid.  They are afraid of the economy.  Of losing market share.  Of not making money.  And when we are afraid, we demand more control. This is especially true when we are the “big player” in the conversation.

Apple is no longer the underdog.  They are what Microsoft was in the 1990’s: the dominant market player.

But this isn’t a knock on Steve Jobs (Apple CEO).  We all fight the temptation to power up out of fear.  When something is uncertain we try and grab a hold of as much as we can.  We figure the more we can control, the better we will be.  When your kids start acting out what do you do?  You put them in time out or ground them from TV.  When new technology is introduced into the workplace, how do companies respond?  By banning employees from using Facebook or locking down the internet.

But what if that’s the wrong strategy?  What if the way to unleash your real potential – the way to get out of trouble – is to let people have the freedom to do what they do best?  What if instead of micromanaging we allowed our employees to innovate?  What if instead of trying to manipulate the market we just own up to a bad product and redouble our efforts to build a better product?

Of course that takes work.  And there isn’t an immediate satisfaction of “getting even.”

The best and brightest don’t want to live in a climate of fear and control.  Microsoft discovered that in the 90’s as a lot of the best and brightest left and went to work for Google and Apple.  You know who stays behind in a climate of fear and control?  The people who can’t find jobs elsewhere.

So the next time you find yourself wanting to power up, ask yourself, am I seeking control or my own destruction?

photo provided by flickr