The run-up to the future of work

What is work for you? Is it the money to pay bills? Is it a way to sleep sound and plan for the future? Or is it a matter of self-expression? Does it forge and reinforce your identity? Is it a means to achieve social status and feel proud in front of others?

A STORY OF CRISIS

All of these dimensions resonated with me and, in most ways, I felt good about them. I considered myself blessed with a well respected position, a generous salary, a reassuring amount of stability and an inebriating feeling of autonomy, in an economy, that looked far from vibrating.

And yet, one morning I decided to give everything up. I resigned from my role, gave my badge and Mercedes Benz back, said financial security goodbye and forgot the possibility of becoming owner in one of the biggest consulting companies in the world.

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

A choice some of my colleagues couldn’t quite understand:

• Why renouncing to something I had spent so many years chasing and that was right there for me to catch?
• Why starting from scratch and jumping into uncertainty at 41 (and a half)?
• What was entitling me to even believe I had enough value to survive on the market?

Frankly speaking, the same questions were spinning in my head. I had never despised fat pay-checks and, on the other side, often sneered at colleagues working for themselves, once the failed startup post-graduation dreams were over.

Still I couldn’t find myself at ease in the golden cage of big consulting companies. Along the years and across multiple jobs, work had become an endless stratification of behaviours, trade-offs and dynamics I simply couldn’t bear any longer:

• The value for the client wasn’t often the main driver. Revenues and margins for the firm were.
• Advancing knowledge and seeking excellence seemed an afterthought. Selling more, bigger work to a larger number of clients was the ultimate achievement.
• Caring for colleagues, treating them with respect and fairness and supporting their growth looked like a taboo. Human beings were just the means to meet the numbers and secure an even greater amount of power for executives.
• Honesty and transparency were a drag. Taking advantage of what others didn’t know was customary, as the most secure way to pull-off a promotion.
• For how senior you may have been, you had to fit and there was always someone above telling you what to do or not to do.
• Learning how to oil the machine was deemed more beneficial than getting work done. Most of the time went into bureaucracy, internal politics and managing up.

The net effect of all this? Disenfranchised colleagues, unhappy customers, a lack of meaning in my working life.

THE NEED FOR REINVENTION

Ninety percent of adults spend half of their waking lives doing things they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be — Barry Schwartz

And yet I was sure more could have been done. I deeply believed work shouldn’t have been a soul-crushing experience. I wanted to see people blossom and grow. I was convinced consulting (or any other business for what mattered) had the responsibility and opportunity to add, not extract, value from society. I aspired to a personal journey of enrichment, impact and serenity in a warm, friendly work environment.

Should I have felt weird or unique in any way? Were I asking too much?

Judging from the faces of many friends and colleagues on Monday mornings, my experience was dreadfully common. From our conversations, work had become more a place of suffering than fulfilment. Desiring something different was the standard. Still we were all stuck into a daily condition of despair, disengagement and dissatisfaction. In the same manner, I perceived millions of individuals were gifting their very own breath of life to entities unable to honour it. What a humongous amount of waste!

Photo by Jimmy Ofisia on Unsplash

Why was it even the case?

Think about it: how many organisations can you think of that drastically put human beings at the center of a fair, transparent, lean system of autonomous value creation from which everybody can benefit? I’m not referring to what is advertised on the website but to places where such behaviours are the norm. I’m sure there are a few. So take those and filter them down on the basis of how many also have the capacity to offer at least some of the psychological security, sense of belonging and shared identity traditional companies bring. What is left? Not much, I’m afraid.

A good part of the reason for so much suffering started to appear obviously simple: there were virtually no alternatives. Wherever I looked, I found more of the same. Different names, sizes, countries but always the same dynamics in a big polarisation between unhealthy organisations blackmailing you in exchange of a salary or freedom in a condition of total uncertainty and loneliness. I had spent months benchmarking the market, scrolling across thousands of personal contacts, thinking outside the box or even releasing criteria with no effect.

THE BIG FEAR

To be sincere, there was more to it. Everyone knows rationality is not enough when a relationship enters a phase of crisis. All the right reasons and arguments may be in line and still you may spend months or years coming to terms with what you don’t want to accept.

Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash

I guess multiple factors were at play in my case:

• Uncertainty. Consciously deciding to get out from a comfort zone to throw yourself into the unknown is never easy. It is even less so when what you are leaving behind took a long investment to build.
• Identity. Any big change has more to do with who you are than with what you lose. Some jobs are status. They define how you introduce yourself at parties. They significantly contribute to what you see when looking at the mirror. They convince you to need them in order to feel respected and appreciated.
• Belonging. Given the amount of daily time we spend at the office or interacting with peers online, a stable work position also means fitting in, become part of the lives of other human beings, building relationships, feeling immersed in a family. Beyond the usual promises of staying in touch, it’s clear most links will be severed once you walk out the door.
• Losing it. Maybe the worst fear of them all is thinking you will never again achieve what you already had. Think about the age, changing market conditions, the need to reinvent competencies, being luck, whatever.. the question is “Will I ever be able to do well again, if I give all this up?” and even in that case, “How long will that take?”.

These and other scaring feelings were pushing me back every time I seriously considered making the jump.

TIME FOR HOPE

The secret, Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. It’s then, only then, that you’ll find Wonderland — The Mad Hatter

That is when I met Cocoon Pro. While you can read much more about her here (yes we refer to Cocoon as a lady), what matters for this post is how she decided to stand up for me and for what I believe is becoming a universal need in the world of work: liberation strategies.

It was the nudge I needed. Through a collective, transparent decision making process, of which I had been both participant and object, the community Cocoon is made of offered to welcome and support me along this transition.

The light had been turned on. I could suddenly see a very concrete and promising way forward. I felt reassured about the viability of what I was attempting to explore. There was hope. Hope for building something new. Hope for doing it with the right people, within the right context.

Photo by Kristine Weilert on Unsplash

How not to be grateful for it? It had been a heart-melting move, a starting point I surely didn’t expect. Yet it was just the beginning. Only now, after six months, I can attest how much has happened since then:

• I’ve realised I wasn’t alone. My passions and interests were shared by others. The way I felt about humans in organisations was not unique. We had the same vision of what should have been done.
• I’ve experienced a different way to live work. An ohana of relationships, not just colleagues and not only tasks or revenues.
• I’ve started learning and exploring again. Beyond the traditional consulting landscape, there is an entire universe of knowledgeable practitioners that keep generously pushing the envelope for new edgy thinking, approaches, tools and ideas. Being immersed in a network is such a huge booster.
• Do what you preach. I naturally tend to beware of organisations in which behaviours, exposed values and beliefs are not in tune. In the only way it could have happened, I first found out about Cocoon Pro because of how she functioned internally, not because of her marketing.

More than this, I discovered how much of that dissatisfaction and fear was due to me.

At the time of Cocoon’s decision, I promised myself to suspend judgement and try to embrace what would have come. In others words, I wanted to take the opportunity to focus on my own evolution. Like when entering a dark room your eyes need time to adjust, it took me a bit to appreciate subtle nuances in expectations, words and attitudes that nonetheless revealed a worldview that was quite far from what I had experienced before:

• Fear is fine. I always felt the urge to stay in control, to plan, to avoid surprises, to protect myself. While this is probably a trait I will hardly get over, I commenced to appreciate the other perspective: uncertainty is also possibility. It is getting more than what you expected. It is having the chance to explore alternative and potentially more generative directions. Fear is ok.
• It’s true that people can take ownership without being told so or being overseen. This one never stops to amaze me.
• Some redundancy and trust in emergence are mandatory to sustain diversity, innovation and resilience. Easier said than done when you are used to years of planning, efficiency and control.
• Reputation has to be earned. Reputation doesn’t fall down from a hierarchy or comes with a suit. It is operational and it requires patience, humility, attention to details. It’s an entirely different game than using positional power as a proxy for influence.
• Not in all environments colleagues are just waiting to stab you. While hardly visible at the beginning, culture and unspoken rules have a wide effect in how individuals behave. Most organisations pay a hefty price when it is too late to go back.
• Feedback can be hard to accept but it is nonetheless needed for individuals and teams to get better. I’ve observed how deeply my mood, thinking and presumptions were influencing how I received criticism.
• Speed is not always the top priority and you can find room to breath. Taking a pause may mean less, not more time is spent. Ok, I confess I still have to work on this one :).

WHY SHOULD THIS MATTER TO YOU?

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return — Leonardo da Vinci

You may not be interested in joining Cocoon at all but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make here. Your role in the world is.

I wrote this post to share what I’ve learned in the last 6 months, because research talks about millions of employees going through the same uncertain, discomforting, apparently hopeless path and I have a message for you: you are not alone and you can do it.

It is perfectly fine to reject how most managers treat their colleagues. It is plain humane to seek a sense of belonging. There is no reason for feeling weird if you expect fairness, growth, respect, transparency, autonomy or authenticity.

It is also ok if fear prevents you from moving ahead. Take your time. Breath. Let it sink. Accept your feelings as they are speaking to you and trying to keep you safe. Embrace the lack of clarity, the inability to rethink yourself, even the resistance your body may demonstrate but don’t stop there. Consider your emotions as a door to explore real beliefs, most fundamental assumptions, the view of the world and of who you are underpinning them. Be open to discover whatever it may emerge and to question it. This will tell you if you are ready or not.

Together with it, keep believing there is more, as a new breed of organisations is finally waking up to bring purpose, multi-stakeholder value, agility, empowerment, collaboration, self-motivation, equivalence, wholeness and mastery to work. Even if transition strategies for people to safely switch careers, explore new directions, join different communities and eventually find more meaning are not yet institutionalised, my story gives hope. It shows how it is definitely possible. It shows it will take time, a bit of courage and craziness.

And as it happened to me before, I’m now available for you, should you desire to talk, learn about how better organisations are here already, compare notes or just feel some warmth while taking the run-up for your big jump.

Please reach out and become part of this ohana!