What winning at work should look like
The definition of work success typically focuses on what we gain from our jobs. But have you ever considered defining winning at work by starting with what losing at work might look like? What would losing at life look like? How can you expand your concepts of winning at both life and work to include having more of the things that it would kill you to lose?
What does winning, and more specifically, what does winning at work mean?
If you think of winning in the traditional, one-size-fits-all way, winning looks or sounds like:
An important title or highly visible status or position
A large amount of money, or higher-than-average salary
A larger-than-average home
Ability to purchase as many brand name or high-dollar consumables - food, car, clothes, vacations - as you want
Power and influence over others
But, I ask you to consider the concept of ‘winning’ from a different perspective - by considering what it would mean for you to lose.
What do you have in your life right now that you’d be absolutely gutted if you lost? Like, so messed up about this thing or part of your life being gone that you might not ever get over it?
Close your eyes for a few moments and let yourself imagine what that thing is and how it might feel to lose it.
Got it?
That thing - whether it was a relationship, your home, your health, or whatever you imagined…
I now want you to ask yourself this:
Is my job helping me keep this or have more of this?
Or,
is my job helping me lose this or have less of this?
Is your job adding to or taking away from what you want most?
If you answered that your job is adding more of this to your life, Congrats!
This is likely your reward for being conscious enough of your values to find the right fit job or workplace for you.
Now, for the rest of us...
If your job isn’t helping you to have more of the things in your life that you don’t want to lose, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your job is bad. But more than likely, you’ve never really stopped to ask yourself this question about your job and what it could be causing you to lose or put at risk. Maybe you didn’t know that you could or should? Maybe you didn’t even feel like you had the right to ask this question.
The truth is: almost all of us think that winning in life and winning at work is like winning a race: The first to the finish with the most medals gets to the stand highest on the podium at the end, with the whole crowd cheering from the stands.
But if life really is a race, there’s only one place that race ends, and we are all guaranteed to make it there.
It’s death.
And, if death is the finish line, why would anyone want to be first? And why are we all trying to bring along so much stuff?
When you die, even if you had a lot of stuff, a lot of really nice stuff, that stuff is not what’s going be ‘on program’ at your funeral
The people you cared for, shared with, created with, grew with, experienced triumph, tragedy and laughter with, those you helped and those who helped you will be.
And when those people go to the podium to speak, they will tell stories. They will not list off accomplishments or titles or bank account balances, (what a terrible funeral that would be!) but stories.
Have you ever listened to a friend tell a really good story about you?
Here’s a clip from one of my favorite movies, ‘Death Proof’ (total coincidence, I promise), where Rosario Dawson’s character Abernathy is telling a story about Zoe Bell, aka, ‘Zoe the Cat’. (Warning: Language)
Hearing yourself as the main character in a story told by someone who likes you and gets you, is pretty cool. You get to see yourself from a different perspective. You get to see what people value most about you. You get a look at yourself in an accurate mirror.
I think we can agree by now that accomplishments and stuff alone aren’t enough to consider yourself a winner at life or at work.
So, if your work is giving you the chance to collect lots of stuff, but isn’t also giving you the chance to have more of what you value most, nor is it giving you the chance to create or hear the stories you want to hear about yourself... then what is it there for? And how can you move from just accomplishing or amassing to actually winning?
Covid chronicles: The Digital workplace in the time of a pandemic
It should go without saying that as a member of Coca-Cola’s Digital Workplace team, my work life has immediately grown more hectic.
It should go without saying that as a member of Coca-Cola’s Digital Workplace team, my work life has immediately grown more hectic. Over the past few weeks, we’ve suddenly become the hottest ticket in the organization.
The Digital Workplace team owns and manages all of the web-based tools that allow employees to get work done in non-physical spaces. These tools include everything from the company intranet site, to email, to the videoconferencing system. But most importantly, it includes our collaboration and community-building platforms: Microsoft Teams and Yammer.
Enabling a global organization of knowledge workers to keep working while unable to leave their homes is a big ask, and many of our tools are brand spanking new. Plus, we’re a small team, so all of us are now wearing many hats, while dealing with a ton of new needs that we have to respond to quickly. In a way, it’s been kind of exciting. We’ve shifted from a slow-moving corporate department to a more scrappy, start-up like team. A welcome change for me with my unconventional career background.
Some of the ways I’ve seen the digital workplace change or be changed since the coronavirus pandemic began:
Metrics matter now more than ever.
I run the metrics and reporting function for Coke’s Digital Workplace team. Since the company mandated working from home, the demand for data, metrics and reports from my team has skyrocketed. Stakeholders in HR, IT, Public Affairs and the executive suite are keen to understand how employees are using our digital workplace tools, how much cross-functional collaboration is happening, are official messages reaching the right audiences? What are employees talking about and searching for? What’s the general sentiment at this time?
Innovation and experimentation are at an all time high.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. I’ve been amazed at the creative ways workers around the globe are using the existing digital workplace tools. The past month has seen us host the first company-wide town hall via Yammer livestream, create an internal classifieds tool to help identify and fill critical and shifting talent needs, create new client intake and feedback solutions….. People are using the digital workplace tools in new ways because they have to.
Team structures are more fluid. There’s less of the rigid organizational hierarchy and organizational politics at play. Priorities have shifted almost overnight, leaving some previously top-of-mind projects overstaffed, while other teams are struggling to keep up with new demands. The digital workplace infrastructure enables previously un-connected teams to quickly and easily create blended teams to meet these demands. Individual workers are proactively seeking out other teams and projects they can lend their talents to. Tools like chat, video calls, Sharepoint knowledge repositories, and digital whiteboards make the re-tooling and re-teaming frictionless and has eliminated many of the artificial barriers that have kept teams from collaborating more often.
The potential for message overwhelm is high.
Coke already sends out several employee surveys and lots of official announcements to the employee community on a regular basis. The surveying and messaging has probably doubled since the coronavirus pandemic started. While I think it’s always better to communicate more than less, it can be overwhelming for employees who are also dealing with anxiety, uncertainty and possible increased workloads. Where do I look for what? Where was that one message I saw that one day? The proliferation of 1:1 chats and meetings also adds to the communications overload some employees are experiencing right now.
Authentic storytelling is becoming more commonplace.
In a time when people really need to share and express more than just data and facts about their work, the digital workplace tools provide the media for this expression to happen. Sharing a peek into their non-work lives - anything from a funny meme, to a story about an elderly family member who contracted coronavirus and pulled through, to celebrating what small feat they’re most proud of accomplishing this week (and yes, getting dressed everyday counts!) - is helping employees mete out a little psychological comfort to themselves and their colleagues. This humanizes the experience of work - especially in uncertain times.
Kisha Solomon is an Atlanta-based writer, knowledge worker and serial expat. She writes witty, poignant stories about the lessons she’s learned from her life, work and travels. She deals with the sometimes frustrating and often humorous side effects of being black, female and nerdy. When she’s not writing working or travelling, you can find her in deep conversation with herself or her four-legged familiar, Taurus the Cat. www.lifeworktravels.com
Covid Chronicles: Oh So You Thought You Were Just Gonna Work From Home?
As a single person with no kids, my work-from-home adjustment hasn’t been the same as my coworkers’, but it has come with its own challenges.
Look. I don’t have any kids. I don’t have a spouse or a live-in significant other or even a roommate. I have earned the right to be free of such encumbrances.
“This is a total change to our lives. It’s surreal.”
So all I know about the experiences that working parents with kids are having during the Covid-19 shutdown is through first- and second-hand accounts from my coworkers and friends.
One of my coworkers confessed today:
“Everyone at my house is stressed.” She doesn’t trust her two boys to go off on their own because they don’t get along and they have the shaky reasoning and judgment of pre-pubescent males. Her husband is getting irritated, even though he agreed to cover the kids while she attends to her work day. “This is not just working from home,”she laments. “This is a total change to our lives. It’s surreal.”
Things are slower. Priorities are different. You have been impacted.
On a regular work day, you’re focused on a variety of relationships - with your colleagues, your boss, your staff, the lady in the lunchroom. Your spouse and kids are in the background. They wait until you get home. You carve out space for them at the end of your work day, to make sure you give them the time and energy they deserve.
source: The New Yorker
Now that you are at home, this all has to shift. Your coworkers and all of those interactions are in the background. Your family and housemates are in the foreground. The people at your job may not only need to recognize that you are human, but that they are too.
Hell, you may even be having a hard time coming to that realization.
“The shape of work is changing… and it won’t be coming back.”
Another of my coworkers who has a toddler, has a block of time on her calendar titled, ‘toddler time’ (she uses her baby’s name instead). Not only has she prioritized and protected that precious time, now, when I look at her calendar, I’m aware of what’s really important to her, or at least, of what she needs to do to make her day work for her and the people she lives with.
As a single person with no kids, my work-from-home adjustment hasn’t been the same as my coworkers’, but it has come with its own challenges. Yes - all my snacks are my own to eat; No - I don’t have to worry about somebody doing or saying something weird in the background of a work call I’m on, nor do I have to feed, educate or entertain anyone in my household.
But, I am the only pair of hands in my house. Which means all of the extra work of work - the 9-to-5 days that are now more like 8-to-10, plus all the extra work of home - cooking multiple meals a day, doing dishes, grocery shopping, laundry, grooming, yardwork - are now mine and only mine to do.
Adjustments have definitely been made.
Kisha Solomon is an Atlanta-based writer, knowledge worker and serial expat. She writes witty, poignant stories about the lessons she’s learned from her life, work and travels. She deals with the sometimes frustrating and often humorous side effects of being black, female and nerdy. When she’s not writing working or travelling, you can find her in deep conversation with herself or her four-legged familiar, Taurus the Cat. www.lifeworktravels.com
Celebrate Your Own Damned Season - A Different Way Of Celebrating For A Different Kind Of Growth
Each of the past year’s losses came with a gift inside. A jewel of learning and of becoming that calls for a different kind of celebrating.
A younger coworker was doing her best to convince me to go to the company holiday party. I smiled at each of her reasons for why I should go, but was not moved in my decision. Another coworker closer to my age who had been observing our exchange joined in... “You’re just not there right now. You’re not in that space.” She said it with such knowing, such easy acceptance that I was not only grateful for but comforted by her understanding.
End of year is usually a time for celebrating. Celebrating what you achieved, what you survived, what you learned, how you grew. I’m usually the first to call out to my group of friends: “Who’s hosting?” Or, “Who wants to come over for...?” during the holiday season.
But this year... 2019 has been a different kind of year for me. And I feel the need for a different kind of celebrating. This year was one of many losses for me and for several people close to me. The losses themselves were a shock, emotional bombshells each one. But each loss came with a gift inside. A jewel of learning and of becoming that the loss necessitated. There was gain and growth this year as well, but not the flashy growth and gain of here-and-gone spring annuals, but the unfurling of a few leaves and a slow, upward stretching and outward thickening of a central trunk - the decidedly unshowy growth of evergreens and perennials.
Celebrating that kind of growth looks a little different. It looks like more intimate gatherings with smaller groups of friends - people who appreciate leaves as much as they do flowers. It looks like quiet time alone to reflect and sigh and smile and cry. It looks like notebooks filled with lessons learned from moments of confusion and hurt. It looks like opting out of the company party to go to a neighborhood gathering where the conversations will be more authentic, the hugs inappropriately long, the food cooked by hands I know.
When I look back and recall the ways i chose to celebrate the end of this year, this decade... I believe i’ll be glad that I consciously chose to not just celebrate the season as dictated by calendar or custom, but as dictated by my own life’s season.
Today, another coworker sent a text, “You missed out on a great party...”
I replied: “I didn’t miss out. I chose.”
.
Does your job define you? 4 Questions to ask yourself.
One of my colleagues pulled me aside a few days before my first corporate exit and gave me a good word: ‘This place didn’t make you who you are.’
I seem to have made a habit of leaving good jobs.
The first good job I left was 15+ years ago. It was my first job out of college, and it had taught me everything I knew about business in the real world. One of my then-colleagues, a member of the group I’d secretly dubbed my SOWs (Successful Older Women), pulled me aside a few days before my exit and gave me a good word: ‘This place didn’t make you who you are.’
It was perhaps the best parting gift I could have received.
Jobs take up a huge part of our lives. When people ask who we are, we often respond with an answer that describes what we do to make money. It is very easy, then, to begin to associate your worth, value, degree of success, your you-ness with the job you have. Especially when others around you continually re-affirm that by saying things like,
About your decision to leave: “Why would you ever leave that good job?”
About your working a non-traditional job or freelancing: “You’re not working a real job now, so you must have tons of free time.”
About your side project or self-imposed time off: “That sounds great, but when are you going to get back to work?”
For some, having a job that defines them is a perfectly acceptable state of affairs. But, if you have a worry or growing fear that you’ve lost yourself in your job and want to change that, ask yourself these questions to start:
What are you doing for yourself outside of what’s required for your job to help you learn, grow, and be of service to those around you?
How are you investing in yourself in ways that are not solely tied to how you can be a better worker or employee?
What personal goals and desires are you postponing because they interfere or conflict with your job?
What other social circles or communities do you belong to that represent who you are and offer a place for you to contribute?
The work of understanding yourself, defining yourself for yourself and finding ways to express yourself and improve upon how you engage with the world is continual. It’s this work that has helped me realize both my innate value and my very specific uniqueness. Armed with this self-awareness, I’m less hesitant to leave a so-called good job, and less receptive to questions from those who question why I would.
Once you make the commitment to work on yourself as your primary work… you come to realize 2 very important facts:
No job or title can give or take away the value you bring to the table.
You. Are the secret formula.
Practical Lessons for Thriving in Corporate America
Using the geisha as metaphor, I share lessons from my 20+ year career as a management consultant in a series of poignant and insightful essays.
The experienced corporate worker will relate to these narrative slices of consulting and corporate life. Those new to corporate life will find indispensable jewels of wisdom to help propel their careers to the next level.
work is play – what I learned from kickball
When I get the opportunity to work with larger, corporate clients I often hesitate, even cringe. My main reason for deciding to pursue a non-traditional career was because most corporate cultures are just too dysfunctional for my tastes. Bad behavior, internal politics, and power plays are often rampant in corporate environments, and no matter how long I usually succeed in avoiding them, I eventually either get pulled into them or fed up with them. Besides, I have my health to consider. Even though corporate gigs tend to pay well and offer more perqs, what good is it if I’m increasing my stress and blood pressure in the process? In short, I’m not dying to work.
Which is why I often prefer to work as an independent contractor (aka, freelancer). As an independent, I’m essentially a company of one, so any dysfunction is all my own. I can deal with that. But the downside is that, as a freelancer, I usually work alone. In my home office. With no one else for company other than the voices in my head.
As entertaining as those voices are, I like working with other people. Especially if they’re smart and talented. There’s something very motivating, inspiring, and well… fun about working on a common objective with people who have the talent and the drive to make it happen with you. I guess you could say, I like working with people who take their work seriously but don’t take themselves seriously.
That’s the basis of my primary philosophy about work: ‘work is play’.
I tend to view work very similar to the way I viewed recess in elementary and middle school. Back then, the playground game of choice for me and my classmates was kickball. We’d play every day without fail. It was less a game, and more like a recurring chapter in the ongoing daily saga of our pre-teen lives. Two people would be appointed team captains, and the captains would choose teams, making sure each team had a couple of really good kickers, a pitcher, at least 1 person with a good throwing arm, and some really, really fast runners. Once the teams were decided, the rules of play were agreed to – no bunting; you have to tag somebody out, not hit them with the ball; the foul zone was between the edge of the pavement and the monkey bars. Eventually, play would begin. Each game had its high points and low points, conflicts and petty arguments. There would be hilarious moments when something ridiculously funny would happen, and when recess ended, we’d recount the game’s highlights long after that day’s winner and loser had been decided.
Reflecting on those playground sessions has helped me realize some important facts about work and working that I consider fundamental principles of my ‘work is play’ philosophy. Namely:
The best teams have a diverse mix of people.
If everyone on the team were the same type of player, it wouldn’t be much of a team. The teams that I’ve had the most fun with and learned the most from were those that were made up of people with backgrounds, cultures, and interests quite different from my own. Besides, it makes water cooler conversations a treat, to say the least.
Be clear about the rules can you live with / without.
In kickball, some of the rules were standard for the game itself, others evolved as we played the game repeatedly. It’s only by playing a few games that you get a feel for which rules you prefer and which ones you absolutely have to have. I tend to prefer working in situations where the rules of play aren’t as rigid as most. Flexible work hours, casual attire, a short commute – these are some ‘rules’ I prefer, but aren’t absolute deal-breakers. But frequent travel, lack of autonomy, and weekends in the office are work rules that just don’t work for me.
It’s just a game.
Play stops being fun when games are taken too seriously. The game is a part of life. It isn’t life itself. You are not a great person because you are a great kickball player, anymore than you are a great person because you are a high-level executive. The position you hold in the game is not the source of your power or strength or worth. It is the qualities and traits that you bring to the position. If and when the game ends, you will still possess the qualities and traits that make you who you are. In short, the game should neither consume nor define you.
The game can go on without you.
You don’t always have to be in the game. I remember a period during middle school when, instead of playing during recess, I would sit by myself and read or write in my journal. This went on for months. Then one day, I decided I’d had enough and went back to play. Not much had changed with the game since the last time I’d played, and I returned to the daily routine as if I’d never left. It’s okay to sit out a few rounds, if you need and want to. Take time away from the game to do something for yourself, with yourself, or by yourself – especially if it’s something that will make you a better player when you return to the team. Not only can the game go on without you, but you can go on without the game.
After-game reflection is almost as important as the game itself.
Conflict was an inevitable part of almost every playground kickball game. Occasionally, tempers would flare so high that there would still be tension after recess was over. Fortunately, the class immediately following recess was one in which our teacher would take time to help us work through any unresolved issues. Because our class was so small and close-knit, it was important that our relationships remained intact. Our teacher (a truly wise woman), gently forced us to reflect on our own behavior and that of our classmates, so we could grow in our understanding of each other, and ultimately go back to play another day. Taking time to reflect after every job or project is essential. It gives me the chance to assess how well I performed, what I might do differently next time, and what lessons I learned from any conflicts or issues that arose during play. After-game reflection is the #1 way to get better each time you play.
When I think back on those childhood kickball games, I realize that all of those playground maneuverings, all of the wins and the losses, and the occasional accidental injuries were teaching us how to work together, how to navigate relationships, and how to achieve a common goal with a group of not-so-common people. For me, work serves the same purpose – it’s the ‘playground’ where I show up to contribute my talents, to learn something, and to have fun in the process.
Once you’re able to approach your work with the mindset of play, you open up the potential for some serious learning experiences, simply by not taking everything so seriously. In work as on the playground, you have the ultimate say in what game you’re playing and what rules you play by.