Research

About fifteen years into our consulting business we also started to feel disengaged. Our industry appeared to be hyperfocusing on tools and putting different labels on the same tools, processes and methodologies.  We were looking to mature beyond a tools focus so we started to talk to senior colleagues in and outside of our industry and take the time to reflect to have some down time away from work projects. 

We presented and facilitated workshop to inform the question of how we can “Make Meaningful Work” in the following locations globally including and in no particular order Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Melbourne, Sydney, Bangalore, Ottawa, Seattle, Atlanta, Portland, Wellington, Auckland, Hobart, Vercelli, Milan, San Francisco, New York etc and this also included a range of domains and industries including financial services, education, media, logistics, ecommerce, insurance, utilities and hotels to name few.

During this time whilst reviewing past projects we identified that although we had done good work, the real impact of the projects as a whole was not that significant or meaningful to ourselves, the team, the customers, the business and the planet as a whole. These common statements during feedback sessions were universal and disheartening:

• I feel busy all the time
• I don’t have time to think or reflect
• I feel stressed, tired and fatigued
• I’m not healthy 
• I lack energy 
• I don’t make time for learning
• I fake it until I make it 
• I don’t feel connected to the organization's mission and values
• I keep focusing on the wrong thing

• I work at a high pace just to work at a high pace
• I don’t trust my colleagues
• I feel stuck 
• I don’t care about the quality of outcomes. I just want to get it done
• I don’t have impact 
• I don't’ know why I am doing what I am doing
• People around here just focus on themselves, not the collective good
• Noone recognises the good work that I have done
• I feel I need to justify decisions with numbers and short term thinking

As we listened to people share stories globally we came to the conclusion that work is broken and that people at work:

• Don’t have meaningful interactions or relationships with coworkers 
• Work unnecessarily long hours 
• Are not well both mentally and physically
• Are not connected to their own sense of meaning in their work and in a greater meaning beyond their role
• Not connected to the organisational values, purpose, mission and vision
• Not aware or explicitly calling for healthy practices needed for work today

• Not adapting healthy practices or deeply practicing those practices in a regular and rigorous manner

• Not taking the time to stop and reflect in their work by stepping away from their transactional work
• Not explicitly sharing stories about work 
• Have no structured way to record and learn from their experiences
• Not tracking potential and improvement through the use of the healthy practices.

These common statements during feedback sessions were universal and disheartening.

Our Findings

Typical solutions to “Fix Work” have not been successful

The solutions, tools, process, training etc that was provided to organisations we worked with in order to address these problems and “fix work” proved to be either fleeting, a luxury, too hard or not immediately applicable in their day to day work. Ultimately, they were not sustainable. Today’s solutions often include:

• Placing more processes on top of existing processes with the idea that the whole thing will either breakdown or result in a breakthrough
• KPIs that do not directly connect to the person’s job or the larger organisational vision and add complexity beyond existing skill sets
• Performance review systems that are disconnected from daily activities with no support in place for them to improve 
• Heavily reliance on implicit practices that are not easily taught or transferred to new team members.

• Training on hard skills
• Yearly retreats are often a case of “too little too late” which result at best in a temporary boost of morale and forming more personal bonds with colleagues which do not translate to better work practices
• Wellness programs bolted on rather than embedded in the organisational culture 
• Change management programs that focus on process while ignoring the systemic patterns
• Restructuring exercises that amount to “moving the furniture around”

There are numerous studies aimed at finding how to make work more meaningful and how different workers find meaning at work, however they do not provide a process for doing so consistently across different personalities, industries and job types, which has been our goal and obsession in developing the “Making Meaningful Work” Program. 

Extreme thinking

In some modern education systems there is too much focus on getting the right answers. We have a mindset of right or wrong, good or bad. We tend to use this thinking model in many of the decisions we make. We try to fit the complexity of the world around us into a binary way of thinking, resulting in extreme mindsets, attitudes and behaviours that create unnecessary problems, conflicts, waste and damage between people, time, place and nature.  

Obsession with delivery

Everyone sometimes gets lost in the noise, speed, and deliverables of day-to-day work. We might even forget why we’re working on a project in the first place. This results in feeling purposeless, stressed and unhealthy.

People use words such as culture, values, or beliefs, which may have little meaning to the people working on projects and delivering on requirements. Delivery can become a matter of delivering only your part of the project, without considering how it connects to the overall outcome and failing to consider the role you play and what you’re delivering.

Performance and reward systems

Reward systems of individuals and teams are usually disconnected from the values, mission and vision of the company. People are rewarded or remunerated to simply finish their tasks on time and on budget and rarely have the opportunity to consider the impact on the people they work with, the impact of what they produce on society and on the planet. Hence it’s no surprise that people do not always consider the long term impact of their practices and habits. While many performance systems are trying to add this “softer side” to the assessment criteria they are often disconnected from the daily work tasks and activities performed by individuals and teams.

Lack of recognition

People prefer to work in places where they feel valued, appreciated and recognised. And without appreciation there’s certainly every likelihood that you will have a lack of meaning at work and in life outside of work. 

Biases, blind spots and perspectives

Everyone has biases and we develop our blind spots over time and this can lead to limiting our perspectives. So if we can be more aware of our biases and blind spots, we can counteract them and not allow them to hold us back. 

To help us gain perspectives to see more widely and deeply and help us reduce biases and blind spots we can:

To help us gain perspectives to see more widely and deeply and help us reduce biases and blind spots we can:

• Listen to other people’s perspectives
• Probe to see what we may not immediately see
• Zoom out to gain greater perspective
• Zoom in on the details within the bigger picture

Then, we can share and clarify our perspectives by:

• Confronting the issues to help solve problems
• Connecting the dots to gain focus

Finally, we can iterate on the meaningful actions we need to take based on our perspectives by:

• Knowing what we need to work on and why
• Prioritizing what work to focus on now
• Focusing on that work and its meaning

Tangible and intangible waste

Tangible and intangible waste plays out right in front of our eyes and exists in work and life. Examples of tangible waste we see and create include unnecessary cables for computers, mobile phone upgrades, replacing short lived home appliances, furniture that breaks too easily, fashion that changes every season and not caring where the products end up when the life of the products finish. 

This illustrates that people not working meaningfully together, lacking constructive conversations, ability to connect the dots, self initiated leadership and the courage to point out that people are behaving badly and causing negative outcomes.

The lack of these implicit practices results in unnecessary politics, lack of empathy, stress, financial costs, resulting in damage to people’s health and waste of energy that could be used for more constructive, positive and meaningful pursuits.  This aggregates and results in a collective waste of resources that can be used in a more constructive way to minimise our damage to people and other living organisms on our planet.