Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Take Control of Your Career Today

Don’t you love it when the fates align? At the same time that I was writing a New York Times op-ed on the rise of the independent workforce, I had the opportunity to meet Nacie Carson, a twenty-something author and steadfast proponent of training people in her generation to be prepared for a world of temporary, contract work.

In her new book, The Finch Effect, Nacie warns professionals that instead of waiting for a recovery in the job market that is never going to come, we must take our careers into our own hands. Using a set of five strategies, which Nacie calls “the Finch Effect” (in honor of survival of the fittest Darwin’s avian inspirations), we can evolve productively in the years to come.

For Nacie's advice on taking your career into your own hands today, check out my post on the Fast Track blog.

Be the Idea Man (or Woman)

I blog several times a week, and have been writing in the career advice and leadership development space for almost eight years.  How many ideas have I had to brainstorm to write about?  You do the math.  It’s a lot.

Some days I’m feeling especially creative and can generate insights from all sorts of places, but other days it’s a struggle to put forth a single interesting thought.   To generate new ideas when the well is dry, I’ve developed some helpful strategies.  Check out these six ideas on the Fast Track blog and let me know if you have others.  I welcome any and all suggestions!

 

Burned Out and Biding Your Time?

A burned-out reader recently got in touch with us at Fast Track:

I’ve been at my job for two years, and I’m getting bored. The things I’m working on are repetitive, and I’m starting to get increasingly annoyed with day-to-day nuisances. I’m essentially having to restrain myself from biting my coworkers. About a year ago, my direct manager left, and was never replaced– instead, they removed his position and shuffled his responsibilities to me and a coworker. In addition, over the last year, the product I work on has grown a lot: we’ve had some success, which is good, but it comes with a lot more work and responsibility. I’m the only one working on that project, and things keep getting dumped on me, from big tasks to administrative details that someone else really should handle, but which end up on my plate as “I’m the only one who knows this project.”

My boss meanwhile seems to want us to keep growing, and wants more results, faster, with tighter deadlines and more elements. I’m starting to feel a bit burned out. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even really manage to take a sick day properly — there’s too much to do, and all the eggs are in my basket, and can’t be left unattended even for a minute. Most troubling, I’m bored with the work I’m doing: so more’s expected of me, but I’m feeling pressured and lethargic about producing the same stuff over and over again.



As I’ve felt the burnout approaching, I’ve tried to halt it: I’ve spoken to my boss about getting some help and she’s made sympathetic noises, but nothing has come of it, other than to actually add more work to my plate. I’ve tried to find ways to get excited about my tasks again, trying new things and new ideas, but they all tend to fizzle in this general funk of gloom. So, I think the time is coming for me to move on. . . only I can’t. I’m planning to go to grad school next year, to help get me to the next level of my career which will excite me again. In this economy, I can’t imagine finding another job that pays as well as my current position, and I wouldn’t want to take a job for the nine months between now and school, only to leave so quickly.



Any advice about not hating my job as much as getting through till May? I’d really like to get there without stabbing a coworker with a pen or crying in my shower on a daily basis.

For my take as well as terrific advice from three other career and workplace experts, check out the full post on the Fast Track blog.

 

Dilbert Has Come to Your Office

A few years ago, I consulted for a Fortune 500 company on young professional development. The CEO publicly proclaimed that this incoming talent represented the future of the organization, and that nurturing it was his top priority. He put his money where his mouth was. That company spent millions of dollars creating a young professional training program that was the envy of its competitors.

The fancy training program may have impressed the young professionals when they walked through the door, but it was another story once they started their jobs and had a chance to experience the company’s culture day in and day out. The young employees complained bitterly about languishing in dead-end positions with minimal guidance for years on end. The initial bells and whistles weren’t enough to hold them. Bored and frustrated, many resigned.

This scenario pinpoints what Deloitte University executives call the Dilbert Paradox.  For a full discussion of what this means and what we do about it, check out my full post on the AMEX Open Forum.

Is Stress Affecting You More Than You Think?

Stress, a response that has evolved in humans over hundreds of thousands of years, is something we working professionals tend to take for granted.  We have to wake up in the morning – every morning – commute to an office, accomplish any number of tasks while proving our overall value to the organization, contend with a multitude of factors that are beyond our control, and arrive home in time to eek out some semblance of a personal life in between smartphone checks.  How could this not be stressful?

What’s more surprising, though, are the ways stress wrecks havoc on our lives in ways we don’t expect, such as undiagosed illness and memory loss.  For more on this insidious epidemic, check out my full post on the Fast Track blog.

Do Companies Honestly Care About Their People?

A few years ago, I consulted for a Fortune 500 company on young professional development. The CEO publicly proclaimed that this incoming talent represented the future of the organization, and that nurturing it was his top priority. He put his money where his mouth was. That company spent millions of dollars creating a young professional training program that was the envy of its competitors.

The fancy training program may have impressed the young professionals when they walked through the door, but it was another story once they started their jobs and had a chance to experience the company’s culture day in and day out. The young employees complained bitterly about languishing in dead-end positions with minimal guidance for years on end. The initial bells and whistles weren’t enough to hold them. Bored and frustrated, many resigned.

Earlier in the summer, I attended the Deloitte University OnTalent Roundtable with a group of top HR executives, and John Seely Brown put his finger on exactly what I’d witnessed in that Fortune 500 company. He called it the Dilbert Paradox.  For more on this unfortunate phenomenon and what we can do about it, check out my Culture Beat column on the AMEX Open Forum.

How to Be Happier at Home (and Work)

Gretchen Rubin has been a friend of mine since the early days of our blogs.  Her first book, The Happiness Project, became an international bestseller, and I was excited to read her latest effort, Happier at Home.  The new book focuses on ways we can make our homes places of greater simplicity, comfort, and love.

Since I specialize in careers and work, I naturally zeroed in on the part of the book that focuses on work/life balance.  Managing your time well is critical, because, as Gretchen points out, it only passes faster as we get older.  She cites poet Robert Southy, who explained:

“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.  They appear so while they are passing, they seem to have been so when we look back on them, and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”

Since we don’t “notice” life as much once we’re in our twenties, thirties, and beyond, it’s especially important that we make an effort to be mentally present in each moment.  Happier at Home has dozens of recommendations to this effect, but here are a few that directly apply to the subject of work:

• Do you have kids?  Even though taking care of them can sometimes be boring, resist the urge to check your phone in their presence.  In fact, put the phone away, as it’s admittedly hard to resist.

 

• Don’t check e-mail at bedtime.  The stimulation of reading certain messages will energize you and you’ll have trouble falling asleep.

 

• Don’t type away on your smartphone when traveling from one place to another.  Instead of forcing yourself to use this time productively, leave yourself open to new thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

 

• Do understand when you are most efficient at doing different tasks, and work around that.  I, for example, get better quality writing done if I respect that my mental focus is sharpest in the late afternoon.

 

Is a Staycation Day at Work Totally Unappealing?

When I posted on the Fast Track blog about taking a staycation day (i.e. mini sabbatical) at work in order to rejuventate one's career, I received quite a bit of pushback.  It seems that many people object for a variety of reasons.  So I wanted to pose the question to this community:

Would you ever take a staycation day at work?  Why or why not?

Please check out the post and let me know what you think!

Should CEOs Be Hard Asses?

A few years ago, a friend's successful startup was bought by a Fortune 500 company. I will never forget the conversation I had with him when he was well into his tenure as a top executive in the new organization.

"I'm making more money than I ever dreamed," he said. "And yet the things I see every day, they're wrong. With every decision I make, my morals get a little looser. I just don't know if this life is for me."

Here was a perfectly average guy thrust into a position of power, at the moment of realization that maybe he wasn't enough of a jerk to run a large company.

For those who read Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, this issue may sound familiar. By anyone's definition, Jobs was one of the technology world's greatest success stories, taking product innovation and creativity to an entirely new level. But, and this is a big but, he was also a hard-hearted narcissist who treated loyal employees like garbage. Was Jobs' harsh approach necessary and would Apple have done as well without it?

For both sides of the debate, have a look at my column at the AMEX Open Forum.

Is Negativity Causing Turnover in Your Office?

Negativity is the worst infectious disease that can threaten a culture. Pervasive negativity is one of the leading reasons people leave organizations in droves, and as you know, mass turnover is really expensive.

According to Ross Blake in his article "Employee Retention: What Employee Turnover Really Costs Your Company," talent replacement costs an organization between 30 and 50 percent of the annual salary of entry-level employees, 150 percent of middle-level employees, and up to 400 percent for specialized, high-level employees.

Of course, the best way to combat negativity is to uncover its root cause, which likely has something to do with dysfunctional culture. You’d be surprised how addressing issues here can make a difference.

Nevertheless, even in a positive culture, some employee negativity is inevitable. How do you keep it in check? For five anecdotes to try with the individuals on your team who are bringing everyone down, check out my post at the AMEX Open Forum.