Why They Call It Work

I’m off to Accenture this week on their Sampler Scheme so my mind has been turning once again to the World of Work, an exciting ride that Thorpe Park (see previous post) has yet to add to incorporate into their fun park.

Dutifully, I’ve therefore been catching up on my reading, as the flooding of my del.icio.us testifies, and worryingly came across this article in HBR: Why They Call It Work by E.L. Kersten [HBR, Vol. 84 Issue 2 (Feb 2006), p66-67]. It describes surveys that point to dropping job satisfaction in both the UK and US. “Robotic” seems to be an understandable descriptor.

Where the article is strangely insightful is the ‘innovative’ analysis of the reason for this decline: it can’t be that workplaces have degenerated so much in recent years (although, at least in the UK, the rise of soulless customer service centres must have had some effect on morale). Instead, Prof. Kersten suggests, it may be because employees have been taught to expect too much from their jobs. This seems to ring ridiculously true (so much that I hope it’s ironic) with Prince Charles’s ambition remarks about people having ‘ideas above their station’.

People may often have exaggerated ideas of their own achievements and worth, as mentioned in the excellent article on bounded awareness in the previous issue [M.H. Bazerman and D. Chugh, Vol. 84 Issue 1 (Jan 2006), p88-6] — ideas that I will admit on catching myself entertaining occasionally — and I believe that this may play at part in people expecting too much from their careers. We can’t all be brilliant analysts, communicators, leaders, etc. and it’s maybe only natural that we tend to more readily recognise our strengths and others’ weaknesses. And, yes, this may lead to dissatisfaction with our jobs, but I think that, managed successfully, this can be a wonderful force for the good.

If I’m happy with my job what is really striving me onwards through gruelling self-development to better myself? Is happiness — or rather ’satisfaction’ — just a manifestation of a lack of creativity and ambition?

For me that’s key: I think I can be happy in a job while being totally disatisfied, and long may I always be…

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p.s. When I just hit ‘publish’ and the title of this blog appeared on the screen, it finally dawned on me: who is the ultimate example of satisfaction? Grossmith’s Charles Pooter. He may do his job very competantly, but the book doesn’t describe any way in which he is singularly helping the company except when his son is fired, he worries about his own future, and he is really driven to extraordinary lengths to secure the custom of Mr Huttle’s American never-named friend.