21 Century Worklife

This is part one of a two-part series detailing our perspective on the massive shifts in the job market, economy and world in greater detail. The second article is ‘Emerging from the Aftershocks‘.

Keep the job that is killing you and start to do some deep work figuring out your true gifts and passions. Keep shooting off resumes into the cold reaches of cyberspace and cultivate your Calling Card. Stay in the job you’ve had for twenty years and start to think more entrepreneurially about your professional development. Entrepreneurism doesn’t just mean ‘risk taker’, it also means ‘innovator’ and ‘passion-driven individual’.

(By Cathy Wasserman & Steven Joiner)

Remember that REM song, “It’s the end of the world as we know it (And I feel fine)”? Well, in key ways, it is the end of the world as we know it, but you probably don’t feel fine.

The song begins: ”It starts with an earthquake” and right now, we’re in the middle of an economic, political, technological, social, and scientific earthquake that is crumbling once seemingly unshakeable systems–re-shaping everything from Wall St. to Main St.–right down to the very ways we live and work.

No one ever said earthquakes were pleasant and this one is no exception. You probably feel some combination of frustration, confusion, anxiety, and some days, even panic. Maybe you’re wondering where your next paycheck will be coming from, if you‘ll be fired at the next stock market drop, or if your home value and 401K will ever be enough for retirement. You feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you by forces over which you have no control.

It has. But ignoring it won’t make it go away.

What You’ve Been Told

For decades, you were told that if you work hard enough and long enough, pay your dues, follow the rules, and give yourself over to a Career Caretaker—an organization, company, or some other entity—your reward will be a good salary, job security, upward mobility, and endless golfing during retirement. In essence, you were taught that if you give some of yourself away to ‘the company’, you’ll get security and resources to build the future life you want outside of the workplace. Today, this is a Faustian bargain; your ‘security’ is now a line item to be cut from the budget.

You’ve been told that you’re supposed to hunt for jobs and sell yourself as a product in resumes, cover letters, elevator speeches, and interviews.

You’ve been told that you’re one person when your looking for a job, a different person when you have a job, and yet another person when your “living your life” outside of work.

The truth is that there is very little reality left to much of what you’ve been told. Somewhere inside, you know that. Look around:

• The golf course went bankrupt, your retirement funds are dangerously low, your house is worth half what you paid for it, and your job was just out-sourced.

• The traditional job hunt, resume, cover letter, elevator speech, and interview as performance art are all on life support. Trust us, we’re also recruiters.

• The Mason-Dixon line between work and life–who you are personally and professionally–is now an irrelevant divide.

It’s time to acknowledge that these symptoms are signs of a deeper issue. There is a whole new worklife paradigm emerging, one where you need to control your own professional trajectory…. whether you work for yourself or for a huge company or somewhere in between. And an improved economy or more job prospects aren’t going to bring back the Career Caretaker.

This is Actually (mostly) Good News

Uncertainty and change are always scary. After all, we’re dealing with the birth of a new way of life… but there’s a silver lining to what is happening.

You don’t have to sell yourself anymore, force yourself to fit into jobs and organizations, or be three different people: you on the job, you at home, and you looking for a job. Imagine all of the time and energy you’ll be freeing up by not doing work and life “costume changes” day after day.

Instead, put your energy into getting to know the depth and breadth of who you are and figure out how you can contribute in a meaningful way each day. Continuously clarifying your ever-evolving Calling Card—the one-of-a-kind combination of  what ‘calls’ you… your passions, values, goals, talents, ideas, curiosities, mission/vision, experience, knowledge, accomplishments, working style, Mutual Radar Society (formerly known as networking), and more—will provide you with a whole new set of personalized coordinates to navigate the emerging worklife map.

While you’re definitely losing a certain kind of security and control (the Career Caretaker), you’re gaining another. Now you get to be in the driver’s seat of your worklife; in fact you have to be, even if you’re working at an organization where the old model is still in play, it won’t always be. So instead of waiting for another earthquake, create your own worklife security right now by being entrepreneurial and connecting with a wide array of people, organizations, and resources that, together, comprise your personalized HR and worklife ‘insurance’ policy.

Give Me a Break… I Sure Deserve It

We can see the bubbles over your heads saying, “Are they kidding? Who has the time to navel gaze? I need a new/better/more fulfilling job. Yesterday.”

Exactly the point. Without tapping deeply into yourself, it’s extremely difficult to find a good job or ensure you keep the job you have in this brave new world. The competition is just too stiff and the problems and opportunities are too complex to bring anything less than your full self to the table. Outsourcing your own career management is no longer a viable option.

Here come the next crop of bubbles over your head:

“I need to keep my job (that is killing me) so I can have health insurance.”

“My profession isn’t one that you can do as a freelancer.”

“I don’t want to be an entrepreneur.”

“I don’t have the time for all this fluffy stuff.”

Hey, we’re not pie-in-the-sky thinkers. We’re not saying that you should quit your job today, throw away your resume, become an entrepreneur, or even stop your ‘job hunt’.

We acknowledge that you still have to play by the old rules while you create the new. The reality is that the policies and systems in place in most workplaces still reward the Career Caretaker model (for example, your inability to take your health insurance and 401Ks with you when you leave), there is more than just your satisfaction and happiness intertwined with your dead-end job, and not everyone is ready to walk the worklife tightrope without a safety net.

But we are saying that it’s time to admit that the choices are not ‘either/or’; they are ‘both/and’.

Keep the job that is killing you and start to do some deep work figuring out your true gifts and passions. Keep shooting off resumes into the cold reaches of cyberspace and cultivate your Calling Card. Stay in the job you’ve had for twenty years and start to think more entrepreneurially about your professional development. Entrepreneurism doesn’t just mean ‘risk taker’, it also means ‘innovator’ and ‘passion-driven individual’.

If you don’t nurture the-impossible-is-possible, uncertainty-is-the-realm-of-creativity part of you, it will wither up and die… or at least be crushed by a crappy job.

Getting Started

The first step was acknowledging the earthquake. Congrats, you’re already on your way. The next step is to start managing the anxiety and Resistance you’re feeling even as you read these words and transform them into action and focus. Get support while everything is still shaking.

Start asking yourself:

“How do you see the earthquake operating in your day-to-day life, both positively and negatively?”

“What is the voice of fear, anxiety, and denial whispering (or, on a bad day, shouting) in your ear? What is the voice of reason saying?”

“What kind of worklife do you really want to have?”

Let us know what you discover!