Ok, so now I get into a thicker section of this. Combining the things from Lifebook and Be Extraordinary with my own thinking. The 6 LDQ. I need to pick a Life Domain and answer a few questions about it. Go deep.
Ok, so let’s just go down the line. 1st Life Domain I’ve selected for myself is Career. This question is ‘What do I currently believe about this Life Domain of Career?’
I look at career as the way I sustain a living. It’s a way I make an impact on my world, my community. If I divide life up by time, this takes up let’s say 40-50 hours / week of my 110-120 hours / week that I’m awake. It’s about one-half to one-third of my awake time. So how I choose to allocate it is one of the most important decisions I can make.
People view it as a Work-Life balance but those aren’t the 2 things you’re trying to balance. And even if it was, why is work first in that relationship?
My career is simply a way for me to grow as an individual. If I’m not learning anything about myself when I’m spending half of my life doing it, then what’s the point? It has to mean something to me that I get up every day and want to go to work. I have to feel that motivation and energy to own what I won. To do what I own. That’s basically, when applied to a group or organization, the definition we’ve come to of morale.
Is the way I’m investing my energy providing even more value for the output of that? For example with 2U, we saved people over 1 million hours of doing laundry in 2019. That I’d say is value when let’s say I spend 45 hours / week * 52 weeks = 2340 hours / year doing my portion of that. Now with LaundroLab, we’re providing lifestyles, retirement incomes, generational wealth for franchise owners along with a necessary service, smiles, and a safe space for customers. Then with the explicit community impact through organizations like LaundryCares, I’m able to leverage my time for more disproportionate impact. Then add scale into it with being in dozens of cities across the country being able to make an impact to customers’ lives in Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Boston, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, and more. That’s the impact that gets me excited to get up every morning and go to work.
Another aspect to this is making the mundane appealing. Doing laundry at best is relaxing, in the middle as a chore, and at worst a day-to-day scarcity that we take for granted. Being involved in 2U has changed my belief that I can get excited about the mission of what we’re trying to achieve.
In addition to the ‘what’, the ‘who’ also matters, potentially more. For now I think it’s equal parts who, what, why, how, where and when. Or at least some breakdown of all them.
I realized the ‘who’ was fine at Capgemini but it was people that I didn’t resonate with for the most part. They were fine colleagues but nothing much else outside of that. Did I take the effort to get to know them better? Definitely not as much as I could have. But maybe that reflected my thoughts and feelings that most people there were temporary in my life. With 2U though, I feel like many of my colleagues I will be friends with forever now. Even if there are years in between meeting up (after the company successfully exits), I feel like I would be able to seamlessly pick back up. The who is why I say I bought into joining 2U. The model was nothing to write home about in terms of industry, but making me feel like I belonged to a group of people who had a shared mission. The ‘who’ makes me energized to come to work.
In addition to the pull factors of who I would be working with, there were also push factors of who I didn’t want to be working with. It wasn’t necessarily anyone within my immediate team, but the overall culture was average. They say that the people who are within 2 levels of your position really define your experience at your job. I really see that. But the direction set by those who are above those 2 levels also matters. Who is leading to the extent that you have visibility. Like at Capgemini I didn’t have visibility with the CEO. It was the VP of North America of whatever department. And people lateral to them. And their direction and energy can make or break your experience also.
Obviously, there is the aspect of your direct supervisor. That relationship has to be an open, trusting, growing relationship if I want to continue to grow. They have to be a partner in my growth. They can’t take a passive role. They have to take an active role and interest in who you’re becoming. There has to be that trust that you can talk to them about anything really. I definitely feel that with Dan. We can talk for hours and hours about anything in the world. And it doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. I have to not just have a good working relationship but I think some level of friendship beyond work if I want to truly make the most of that supervisor-supervisee relationship.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
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