The World of 9–5 is Changing. Are You?
Forget about being the victim of a mean, tyrannical workplace. That’s old hat.
If you think that work satisfaction and success will come to you from the hours you work or the people you suck up to — think again.
It’s time to recognise the new way work is being done in today’s world, and to stop putting your nose to the grindstone in an effort to please a boss who just doesn’t give a damn.
Training in hard and soft skills, focusing on output, and trying to fit in don’t cut it anymore.
So what does cut it?
The new world of work
It doesn’t matter how many hours you work, how well you get on with your team, or how many degrees you have. If you’re not giving measurable value to your organisation every day, you are deadwood.
And to give that value, you need to look at yourself in three completely new ways. You need:
- New mindsets
- New skills
- New personas
When you do adapt to this new world, you will find that the workplace becomes a space where you can find all the satisfaction and success you have been complaining about not getting so far. That’s because, rather than relying on the nature of your work or the goodwill of other people to give you what you need, all of your happiness and achievement will come from within you.
Let me explain.
New mindsets
In the old world, we expected the organisation or the boss to give us what we needed: training courses, regular feedback, critical information, team camaraderie, and a sense of purpose.
In today’s world this mindset of dependence will destroy your happiness as you wait and wait for someone to say or do something to help you move forward.
Your new mindset in today’s workplace is ‘responsibility’. For everything.
Think of yourself as an independent player in an ever-fluctuating game of work. You look after acquiring the knowledge and skills you need to get ahead — never mind what HR thinks. You look after gathering the information and knowledge you need to produce value and understand how well you are performing. And you give yourself your own sense of purpose, brought about by your own, personal deep diving into your needs.
When you know and accept that everything that happens to you is down to your own thinking and actions, you feel an enormous power over your life. And this feeling of personal power is the source of much of your satisfaction with your career.
New skills
We used to think that being good at the technical aspects of our job, plus good communication skills, was about all we needed to succeed.
But these are both aspects of our outer self. And our outer self is driven by our inner self.
When our inner self is well-managed, we will have the power to become autonomous, independent actors. We will be able to speak our truth, instead of saying what we think ‘they’ want to hear. We will be able to negotiate our day when we know what our strengths are. And we will be able to stand out as a someone who questions the status quo and makes suggestions on how things should be improved.
This independent approach will allow us to adapt to changes in reality in the fast-moving, uncertain space that we now call work.
Thus, the new skills we need to become creative, flexible, independent actors are inner skills: self-awareness, thinking about our thinking, and state management.
When we have no self-awareness, we are unable to track our behaviour and results back to the way we were thinking and feeling. We work on auto-pilot, unaware of how we are affecting others and unable to adjust our thinking to help us perform better.
Whereas before, our lack of awareness didn’t really affect our productivity (because we usually did routine work that didn’t require us to think much), today our need to be innovative and creative every day means we need to be on top of our thoughts, decisions and ideas. We cannot give value if we are unable to notice how we are thinking about things.
So our ability to notice what we are thinking, and then think about that critically, is the way to manage ourselves so as to work at our peak in terms of productivity, creativity and connection.
State management is another skill that has come into its own in the new world.
When we are 100% responsible for our value-creation, unable to lean on others, we need to be able to put ourselves in a resourceful state at the drop of a hat. No longer can we use the excuse that ‘I just didn’t feel ready’.
Our emotions drive our behaviour, our motivation and our relationships, so state management is a critical skill for all aspects of our performance. We simply cannot deal with tough clients and teams if we are not emotionally sound.
State management also helps us to be prepared for any challenge we may face, enabling us to stay positive and resilient whatever missiles are flying around us. This skill is critical to preventing us having a melt down or just slight anxiety at crucial moments.
New personas
We can and should change our persona. We are never stuck as one type of person, with a fixed identity, unchanging behaviours and a few habitual emotions.
The new persona for the new world of work is like a computer game star. He is super alert to incoming challenges, and has the ability to adapt his response to meet each challenge exactly where it lands.
He is fast, practical and positive. He is sensitive to opportunities as they come forward, and moves quickly to take advantage.
She has no time for ‘the way it’s always been done’ and ‘wait for permission’. She has a strong belief in herself and isn’t afraid to show the workplace who she is and what is important to her. She’s not interested in being someone whom other people ‘like’ if it goes against her true self.
In other words, she’s different from the compliant executive of before. She doesn’t wait for the information to be given to her, for the boss to let her know when she’s doing well, for the right situation to come along that lets her shine, or to be chosen to move up the ranks.
Instead, she’s all proactive — going out and getting whatever she needs to help her give that measurable value.
She gets whatever information she needs right away. She gives herself the feedback she needs to help her perform at her peak. She creates the right situation to shine in. And she creates her special place in the organisation that no one can take away from her.
No more misery
So don’t despair.
The future on a salary is bright — and it belongs to you today more than it ever did in the past.
But if you’re really going to take advantage of the transformation of work, you’re going to need to make some changes.
And the first and most important is to turn inside and think differently. And when you do, all the rest will fall into place as if by magic: your emotions, your actions, your relationships, your performance and your progress.
So don’t quit just yet.
Instead, try out self-awareness, thinking about your thinking, and state management — and see how you can find happiness as well as success without all the heavy lifting.
