The Model

THE MISERABLE JOB

A miserable job is not the same as a bad one.

As with beauty, the definition of a bad job lies in the eye of the beholder. Some people consider a job bad because it is physically demanding or exhausting, involving long hours in the hot sun. Others see it as one that doesn’t pay well. Still others call a job bad because it requires a long commute or a great deal of time sitting behind a desk. It really depends on who you are and what you value and enjoy.

However, everyone knows what a miserable job is.

It’s the one you dread going to and can’t wait to leave. It’s the one that saps your energy even when you’re not busy. It’s the one that makes you go home at the end of the day with less enthusiasm and more cynicism than you had when you left in the morning.

Miserable jobs are found everywhere—consulting firms, television stations, banks, schools, churches, software companies, professional football teams, amusement parks. And they exist at all levels, from the executive suite to the reception desk to the mail room.

It’s important to understand that being miserable has nothing to do with the actual work a job involves. A professional basketball player can be miserable in his job while the janitor cleaning the locker room behind him finds fulfillment in his work. A marketing executive can be miserable making a quarter of a million dollars a year while the waitress who serves her lunch derives meaning and satisfaction from her job.

That’s the thing about misery at work. It makes little sense and knows no bounds. No one is immune.

THE COST OF MISERY

It would be impossible to accurately measure the amount of misery in the workforce, but my experience tells me this: more people out there are miserable in their jobs than fulfilled by them. And the cost of this, in both economic and human terms, is staggering.

Economically, productivity suffers greatly when employees are unfulfilled. The effects on a company’s bottom line or a nation’s economy are undeniable. But it’s the social cost of misery at work that seems particularly overwhelming, because it has such a broad ripple effect.

A miserable employee goes home at the end of the day frustrated, cynical, and weary and spreads that frustration, cynicism, and weariness to others—spouses, children, friends, strangers on the bus. Even the most emotionally mature, self-aware people cannot help but let work misery leak into the rest of their lives.

What is the result of this leakage? In some cases it is extra family stress and tension, and the inability to appreciate the blessings in life. As amorphous as that may seem, over time it impacts people’s emotional and psychological health in profound and potentially irreversible ways. In some situations, though, job misery leads to even more immediate and tangible problems, like drug and alcohol abuse, or violence.

It’s difficult to accurately estimate the magnitude of the problems caused by miserable jobs. And while no job will ever be perfect, and no society will be without its economic and social problems related to work, if there were a meaningful way to reduce job misery, without cost, wouldn’t that be worth doing?

I think so too. The first step lies in understanding the root causes of a miserable job.

THE THREE SIGNS

Three underlying factors will make a job miserable, and they can apply to virtually all jobs regardless of the nature of the work being done. The three signs are at first glance obvious and seemingly easy to resolve. And yet they remain largely unaddressed in most organizations.

ANONYMITY

People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority. As much as this may sound like an aphorism from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, it is undeniably true. People who see themselves as invisible, generic, or anonymous cannot love their jobs, no matter what they are doing.

IRRELEVANCE

Everyone needs to know that their job matters, to someone. Anyone. Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment. Even the most cynical employees need to know that their work matters to someone, even if it’s just the boss.

IMMEASUREMENT

Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions or whims of another person, no matter how benevolent that person may be. Without a tangible means for assessing success or failure, motivation eventually deteriorates as people see themselves as unable to control their own fate.

Simple? Absolutely.

Obvious? Perhaps.

But if so, then why in the world do so many managers—dare I say, most managers—fail to provide their people with these basics of a meaningful job?

Maybe because it is too obvious. Well-educated people often have a hard time getting their hands around simple solutions. Or perhaps the eighteenth-century author Samuel Johnson is right, and they just need to be reminded a lot. Or maybe they’re just not sure about how to get started.

Whatever the case, the following sections provide a deeper understanding of the three signs of a miserable job, the benefits of addressing them, and what is needed to make any job more fulfilling.

THE BENEFITS AND OBSTACLES OF MANAGING FOR JOB FULFILLMENT

BENEFITS

The benefits to an organization that can build a culture of job fulfillment—and the issues that prevent us from realizing those benefits—are worth exploring before outlining a job fulfillment program: increased productivity, greater retention and lower costs, and cultural differentiation.

Increased Productivity

Employees who find fulfillment in their jobs are going to work with more enthusiasm, passion, and attention to quality than their counterparts who do not, mostly because they develop a sense of ownership and pride in what they are doing. That means they’ll arrive earlier, stay later, pitch in outside their areas of responsibility, and look for ways to improve their performance, all without being asked.

Greater Retention and Lower Costs

Simply stated, employees hang onto fulfilling jobs as long as they can, mostly because they know that their chances of finding another are relatively slim. What is more, fulfilled employees tend to attract other good employees to an organization, either by actively recruiting them or merely by telling friends about their enthusiasm for their work. The result of all this for an organization is significantly lower costs related to recruiting, hiring, retraining, and termination.

Sustainable Cultural Differentiation

The opportunity for differentiation from competitors by building a culture of job fulfillment cannot be overstated. In a world of ubiquitous technology and rapid dissemination of information, it is harder and harder to establish sustainable competitive advantage through strategic and tactical decision making. Cultural differentiation, however, is more valuable than it’s ever been, because it requires courage and discipline more than creativity or intelligence.

Along these lines, managers who work to reduce the three signs in their organizations discover an unexpected side effect. Employees themselves begin to take a greater interest in their colleagues, help them find meaning and relevance in their work, and find better ways to gauge their own success, and they do all of this without specific direction from their bosses. In essence, they take some responsibility for keeping the three signs of a miserable job at bay. Ironically, this gives them yet a greater sense of meaning while creating a sustainable cultural advantage that competitors will envy but find difficult to duplicate.

OBSTACLES

So what are the obstacles that prevent so many employees and managers, and the companies they work for, from tapping into this opportunity?

Employee Obstacles

Employees often fail to find fulfillment in their work because they place too much emphasis on maximizing compensation or choosing the right career. Are these irrelevant? Of course not. Even if you love what you do, if you can’t feed your family or earn a livable wage, you have a problem on your hands. And if you’re meant to be a carpenter and you find yourself sitting behind a desk doing accounting, then your ceiling on job fulfillment is going to be low.

However, even people who are relatively well paid for doing what they love (such as professional athletes, executives, and actors) are often miserable if they feel anonymous, their job is irrelevant, or their work is not objectively measurable. Consider that the world is full of advice on how to make more money and how to choose the right career, and yet people remain miserable. And even people who aren’t doing their dream job and making a ton of money in the process will usually find satisfaction if their managers are reducing anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurement in their jobs.

Organizational Obstacles

When it comes to managers and the companies where they work, the obstacles to eliminating misery are different. Too often, they are slow to recognize that they have an employee satisfaction issue, and then when they finally do, their attempts to address it focus on the wrong issues.

Many companies only come to terms with the fact that they have a job fulfillment problem when employees start to leave. Unfortunately, during exit interviews, people tend to report that they are leaving because their next employer is going to pay them more money. This provokes human resources professionals—and the executives who listen to them—to raise salaries and other forms of compensation in spite of the fact that the last time they did so resulted in no lasting or sustainable improvements in employee retention, satisfaction, or productivity.

The problem, of course, is that departing employees rarely tell the whole story. By the time people decide to leave an organization, they have little incentive to tell their soon-to-be-former employer the truth—that they are leaving because their supervisor didn’t really manage them, and without a good manager, their jobs eventually became miserable. What companies should be doing is asking a different question, and far sooner than an exit interview: What is making you even consider leaving in the first place?

Even in those instances when executives are able to discern that poor management is the real source of employee dissatisfaction, their response, though well-intentioned, is rarely effective. That response usually takes the form of more management training, which often includes mandatory classes on setting goals, writing performance evaluations, and giving feedback. And while those are certainly topics worthy of attention, the impact of these kinds of classes is almost never immediate, and is all too often negligible.

That’s partly because goals cannot be set, reviews cannot be written, and even feedback cannot easily be given immediately after a training class ends. Organizations have cycles and schedules and calendars that indicate when these things need to be done. And by the time those dates roll around, managers who attended the classes have either forgotten about the skills they learned or been distracted by some other overriding priority from the top. Or most likely, both.

What managers need is something that is both less mechanical and more emotionally, fundamentally, and immediately tied to the job satisfaction of employees. And that is where the elimination of anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurement comes into play.

The Emotional Obstacle

Even when managers understand and appreciate the importance of addressing the three signs, they very often struggle to do so because of a natural behavioral shortcoming of their own. This is a critical point to understand

In order to be the kind of leader who demonstrates genuine interest in employees and who can help people discover the relevance of their work, a person must have a level of personal confidence and emotional vulnerability. Without it, managers will often feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed, about having such simple, behavioral conversations with their employees. They’ll mistakenly feel like kindergarten teachers or little league coaches delivering a simplistic pep talk, even though their employees—at all levels—are yearning for just such a conversation.

EXPLORING AND ADDRESSING THE CAUSES OF JOB MISERY

ANONYMITY

It is immensely more difficult to decide to leave an organization or a team (or a family for that matter) when you feel that others on the team know and understand you as an individual. And the person who can have the greatest influence by taking a personal interest in anyone on the job is the manager. Yes, even more than a CEO or an executive three levels higher in the food chain, a direct supervisor needs to take a genuine, personal interest in an employee in order to increase that employee’s satisfaction and fulfillment.

What exactly does it mean to take a personal interest in someone? I’ve heard management training people advise supervisors to listen to the music that their employees listen to and watch the television shows that they watch. Though I suppose that could be helpful in some situations, it doesn’t seem to be a terribly useful first step.

First, it could come across as disingenuous and silly when a fifty-year-old plant manager starts talking about listening to hip hop and watching MTV Cribs (which, for the record, I’ve never watched). Employees can smell a false attempt at “employee bonding” from a mile away. The other problem with cultural mirroring (if there is such a thing) is that it is general and stereotypical in nature and often reinforces to employees that they are seen as somewhat generic.

A better way to remove any sense of anonymity or invisibility from employees’ situation at work is simply to get to know them. Take time to sit down with each of them and ask them what’s going on in their lives. Some managers reflexively avoid this because they’ve been taught that it is illegal to ask that kind of question during job interviews. Somehow they forget that what may be illegal when selecting a candidate is actually a basic form of human kindness once someone has been hired.

But it can’t be fake. When I say that a manager needs to take an interest in an employee, I’m talking about taking a genuine interest. To manage another human being effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind, and how you can contribute to them becoming a better person.

And taking a personal interest in an employee is not a one-time thing either, something to be checked off on a list of to-dos. It needs to be reinforced and demonstrated again and again. It’s one thing to know that an employee’s daughter likes dancing. It’s quite another to ask how Friday’s dance recital went. And it’s fine to know that a subordinate lives with his parents. It’s another thing entirely to know their names and ask about them when they’re sick.

Okay, if any of this sounds hokey, consider whether you have appreciated it when your manager took an interest, a real one, in you and your life. And if you’re rolling your eyes at this point, wondering what any of this has to do with software development or factory line assembly or accounting, put up with me as I remind you that no one gets out of bed in the morning to program software or assemble furniture or do whatever it is that accountants do. They get out of bed to live their lives, and their work tasks are only a part of their lives. People want to be managed as people, not as mere workers.

If you’re still not convinced that this makes sense or that it applies to you, this would be a good time to consider resigning your position as a manager and finding a role as an individual contributor. But if you’re on board, there are two more fundamental dragons that need to be slain.

IRRELEVANCE

People wonder why so many athletes, rock stars, and actors live such erratic, unsatisfied lives. It’s easy to point to drugs and alcohol and materialism as the culprits, but I think those are mere symptoms of the root cause: a subtle fear of irrelevance.

I mention this because it’s hard to fathom how someone who earns more money than most people can count by doing something they love, and who gets constant attention and adulation from admiring fans, can be unhappy. And how a nurse in a home for the elderly, or a receptionist at a church, or a high-school volleyball coach can be happy in spite of the fact they make a fraction of what a rock star or athlete makes. I think the answer has everything to do with being needed. Having an impact on the lives of others.

Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.

When people lose sight of their impact on other people’s lives, or worse yet, when they come to the realization that they have no impact at all, they begin to die emotionally. The fact is, God didn’t create people to serve themselves. Everyone ultimately wants and needs to help others, and when they cannot, misery ensues.

Some will say that rock stars and athletes and actors do indeed have an impact on other people’s lives, and I would agree that they certainly can. However, they often lose sight of that impact or fail to take advantage of their opportunity to do so. They see their jobs as a series of self-involved activities with no clear connection to the daily lives of others.

All employees, whether they are rock stars, software engineers, or teachers, must answer two questions in order to establish relevance in their jobs. And it is the manager’s responsibility to help them do this.

Who?

The first question people have to answer is, Who am I helping? The most obvious place to start looking is among customers. For flight attendants, fast-food cashiers, teachers, priests, doctors, waiters, and salespeople, this is an easy choice. But for many employees outside the service businesses, from the CEO to the accounting clerk to the head of IT, interaction with customers is a relatively rare occurrence.

For those people, the answer is often “internal customers,” other employees or departments within the organization. Some may hear this and say “everyone within our company should be serving customers,” and I would agree. But that doesn’t mean that customers are the primary people whose lives everyone can count on affecting on a daily basis, or that people are going to derive satisfaction from having an impact on someone they rarely if ever encounter.

For a CEO, the answer to the question of “whose life do you impact” will certainly include “the executive team.” For the accountants, it will probably be the head of finance, or whatever department within the company they support. And for many—brace yourself—the answer will often be their boss.

That’s right. Seemingly contrary to everything we’ve learned having to do with servant leadership (a concept I love, by the way), sometimes managers must help their employees understand that their work has a meaningful impact on them. This is a hard concept to swallow because it conjures up images of self-serving supervisors sending their employees on personal errands and keeping them at their beck and call. And so managers often downplay the very real impact that the work their employees do has on their own satisfaction and career development.

And this is its own tragedy because, unless they already believe that their manager is a cretin, employees get a great deal of satisfaction and energy when their supervisor thanks them for what they’ve done and explains to them what a difference they’ve made for them personally.

Think about this one again. It is our fear of coming across as self-serving that prevents us from giving our employees the satisfaction of knowing that they’ve helped us. Ironically, the result is that they feel that we are taking them for granted.

Managers would be much better off being frank with employees. “The report you put together for my presentation to the executive team was terrific. They were all impressed, and wanted me to tell you that you did a nice job. And I want to tell you that you’ve made me, and the entire department, stand out in the eyes of the CEO. Thanks.” That’s a far cry from “you made me look like a champ today, and I won’t forget the little people like you when I become rich and famous.” And it’s certainly better than the generic, “you did a great job.”

When managers pretend that they don’t appreciate the impact of their people’s work on their own career and job satisfaction—even when they do it out of humility!—they deprive people of the feeling that they’ve made a difference.

How?

The next question that managers need to help employees answer is “how am I helping?” And the answer to this question is not always obvious.

When a room service attendant at the Embassy Suites next to the airport brings breakfast to a guest, he’s not just delivering food. He’s helping a weary traveler feel a little better about having to be on the road, which can have a significant impact on their outlook on life that day.

And when a clerk in the billing department at a doctor’s office helps a patient find a receipt for an appointment six months earlier, she’s not merely providing them with information. She’s giving them peace of mind so that they can be a little less stressed about managing their family’s health care, something that causes its own health problems.

Some managers will wince at all this. They’ll say, “Come on, the room service guy is carrying breakfast and the billing clerk is doing paperwork.” Which leads us to the central point here. If managers cannot see beyond what their employees are doing and help them understand who they are helping and how they are making a difference, then those jobs are bound to be miserable.

Keep in mind that employees at Southwest Airlines are doing largely the same job as employees at any other large airline, and yet there are far fewer miserable jobs at Southwest. And high school kids at In-N-Out Burger and Chick-fil-A are doing largely the same job that kids at any other fast-food restaurant are doing, and yet there are a lot fewer miserable jobs at In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A.

The difference is not the job itself. It is the management. And one of the most important things that managers must do is help employees see why their work matters to someone. Even if this sounds touchy-feely to some, it is a fundamental part of human nature.

IMMEASUREMENT

First, let me say that immeasurement isn’t a word you’ll find in the dictionary. I’ve used it to describe this, the third sign of a miserable job, because there was no real synonym for it. Immeasurement essentially is an employee’s lack of a clear means of assessing his or her progress or success on the job. This creates ambiguity and a feeling of dependence on a manager to subjectively judge the employee’s daily or weekly or monthly achievement.

The problem is, great employees don’t want their success to depend on the subjective views or opinions of another human being. That’s because this often forces them to engage in politics and posturing, which is distasteful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the loss of control over one’s destiny. Employees who can measure their own progress or contribution are going to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility and satisfaction than those who cannot.

The key to establishing effective measures for a job lies in identifying those areas that an employee can directly influence, and then ensuring that the specific measurements are connected to the person or people they are meant to serve. This point is worth repeating. Failing to link measurement to relevance is illogical and creates confusion among employees, who are left wondering why they aren’t measuring the most important parts of their jobs.

Too often, an executive will try to rally employees by giving them some macro objective (for example, hitting a corporate revenue number, cutting company expenses, or driving up the stock price).

The problem here is that most employees have no direct impact on these things, certainly not on a daily basis. When they realize that there is no clear, observable link between their daily job responsibilities and the metric they are going to be measured against, they lose interest and feel unable to control their own destiny. And while many managers will then be tempted to accuse them of being lazy or ignoring the well-being of the company, those managers are failing to understand that what their employees are looking for is a measure that is more closely tied to their actual jobs.

That’s why so many salespeople enjoy their jobs. They don’t depend on others to tell them whether they’ve succeeded or failed. At the end of the day—or better yet, the quarter—a salesperson knows the score and feels responsible for it.

Sports is another arena where measurables are clear (though anonymity and irrelevance are often problems). Imagine a basketball game where no score is kept, but where a winner is chosen based on the subjective criteria of judges. Sound miserable?

Or consider a pitcher coming off the mound with no statistical evidence of his own performance, but dependent on the gut feel of his coach. Unfortunately, that is all too common in the way many employees are managed and assessed.

Unlike sports, business measurements need not be completely quantitative to be effective. In many cases, trying to overquantify measurables by assigning strictly numerical metrics makes them irrelevant because the metric is artificial. The most effective and appropriate measurements are often behavioral in nature and might simply call for an informal survey of customers, or even merely an observation of behavior that indicates satisfaction.

Ironically, a measurable need not be tied to compensation to be effective. In fact, psychological research would indicate that connecting it to pay can sometimes actually decrease incentive. Whether or not that is true in a given situation, the point is that people want measurables so that they can get an intrinsic sense of accomplishment. Great athletes don’t get excited about scoring goals or running for touchdowns because they know it will impact their contracts—though they’re certainly not going to turn the money down. They do it because they love to compete.

Cynics may disagree with this. They might point to salespeople and accuse them of being coin-operated, motivated primarily by money. In reality, most great salespeople are motivated primarily by winning, by achieving a goal. Yes, that goal is tied to compensation, but the money itself is gravy. That’s why so many salespeople get involved in other competitive pursuits, athletic or otherwise. They love to compete and to win, whether the reward is financial or not.

CASE STUDIES

Okay, enough theory. It’s time to see what the three signs might look like when applied.

What follows are a number of examples of how managers in various industries and at all levels might go about making an employee’s job more fulfilling. Some of the illustrations are relatively straightforward and easy to figure out, while others are decidedly unique and require more creativity on the part of a manager. Whatever the case, they are all immensely doable for leaders who have the courage and boldness to be different for the sake of their employees.

EXAMPLE 1: THE VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING

Nancy is the head of marketing at a medium-sized software company. She reports to the CEO and oversees everything from branding and advertising to product marketing and the design of the company’s Web site. Why might she be miserable?

Anonymity

There is a decent chance that anonymity is a factor. As is often the case among senior executives, the CEO she reports to has little time or inclination to take a personal interest in the lives of his subordinates, people he sees as needing little supervision and support. He has to remember that senior executives like Nancy have just as much need as line employees do for their manager to know and understand them as people, even if they will rarely come right out and say it. That doesn’t mean the CEO should patronize Nancy with questions about her inner child. But it does require him to develop a genuine concern for what is going on in Nancy’s life and career. As soft as that may sound, it matters to Nancy, and it will improve her performance.

Irrelevance

Many executives like Nancy eventually lose a sense of meaning in their work. Now that she is earning a comfortable living and has achieved a high degree of success in her career, she often wonders what the larger purpose of her work should be. As her manager, the CEO needs to help her connect personally to the company’s mission and its impact on customers, or to give her a sense of how she can influence the lives of her staff and make them more successful and fulfilled in their careers—or both. He also needs to help her understand how she might be making his life or career better by doing a good job.

Immeasurement

This is an area where Nancy may not be lacking too much overall, as most executives have plenty of data and often rely on quantitative analysis to do their jobs. However, it is entirely possible that many of her measurements are disconnected from the meaningful purpose of her job. The CEO should have her monitor the progress she is making with her people, in addition, of course, to measuring the overall impact of her programs.

By the way, Nancy has an administrative assistant named Jenny. . . .

EXAMPLE 2: THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Jenny’s responsibilities include scheduling, communication, and general assistance to her boss. She has virtually no interaction with the company’s customers, and she spends much of her energy protecting Nancy from people who are constantly demanding her time. Jenny feels underappreciated at times and beaten down by having to be the gatekeeper who says no to so many people every day.

Anonymity

In this case, anonymity is not the likely problem for Jenny, though it could be an issue. To eliminate this, Jenny’s manager should take an interest in her as a person, as well as any aspirations she might have. Nancy can make up for Jenny’s limited career path options by giving her personal development opportunities, and by nurturing—yes, nurturing—the special one-on-one relationship that is unique for each executive-and-assistant pairing.

Irrelevance

Nancy needs to take the time to remind Jenny how much her work impacts her own ability to serve the company as an executive. She needs to help Jenny realize the influence she has on her career, and how the decisions she makes as an assistant affect her personally as well. Of course, to avoid making Jenny feel like her success is dependent on the mood of the marketing VP, she will need to help her establish a way to measure her effectiveness as objectively as possible.

Immeasurement

The best way to go about establishing a relevant measurable is to think about assessing the various ways that Jenny impacts her boss’s work life, which in turn helps the company. That might include a weekly review of how much time is set aside for strategic planning and creative thinking, the responsiveness of communication with key constituents within the company, and the avoidance of unnecessary meetings and interruptions.

By the way, Jenny handles Nancy’s travel, and often books her in a boutique hotel that caters to businesspeople. . . .

EXAMPLE 3: THE LATE-NIGHT ROOM SERVICE ATTENDANT AT A HOTEL

Carson is the lone room service attendant during the grave-yard shift at a boutique hotel that caters to business travelers. He reports to the daytime restaurant manager, whom he rarely sees, as well as having a dotted-line relationship with the night manager. Carson’s job responsibilities include taking orders, preparing food, and delivering it to guests between midnight and six o’clock in the morning. Additionally, he assists the night manager with various clerical tasks and provides limited security and maintenance during late-night hours.

Anonymity

This is a good candidate for being a factor in Carson’s lack of job fulfillment, as he has little regular contact with other employees. That is why the daytime restaurant manager will have to go out of his way to get to know Carson, and will need to use alternate means of communication to stay in touch with him over time. He’ll also have to work with the night manager to ensure that she develops rapport with Carson and gives him a sense of belonging.

Irrelevance

This is another likely cause of job dissatisfaction. Carson’s manager will need to help him understand that on the rare occasions when guests require his services, they will almost always be in a position of unusual, even serious need. In many cases, those guests will have arrived late due to a flight delay or a red-eye trip, or they will be unable to sleep or even feeling ill. The room service attendant will be in a unique position to make a meaningful and lasting impact on that guest’s comfort, even more than his colleagues on the day shift.

In addition to the impact that Carson has on guests, he also can make a meaningful difference in the day-to-day life of the night manager, both by providing clerical assistance and by being a source of good company during a potentially lonely time.

Immeasurement

Though Carson may well receive tips and compliments from guests, better measurements are available to his manager. That’s not to say he shouldn’t track the number of comments submitted by guests who receive exemplary service from Carson. But he could also have Carson measure other things, like the time it takes to turn around orders and requests from guests. He should also check in with the night manager, who is one of Carson’s internal customers, about the quality of his work.

By the way, on Saturday mornings when Carson gets off work, he usually does his grocery shopping. . . .

EXAMPLE 4: THE BOX BOY AT THE GROCERY STORE

Andy is a sixteen-year-old high school student who works at the supermarket on weekends, bagging groceries and helping customers get them to their cars. He reports to the manager of cashiers.

Anonymity

Andy knows that he’s somewhere near the bottom of the food chain at the grocery store. Though he has a pretty good relationship with a few of the cashiers, he probably feels like he’s not high on the boss’s list of priorities. The manager needs to find a way to connect with Andy around something that matters to him. Like football. An occasional conversation about the San Francisco 49ers—or a free football magazine from the newspaper rack—might be a good first step. Eventually, he’ll want to develop a more substantive and authentic relationship that will make Andy feel more committed to the store and more enthusiastic about going above and beyond in his job.

Irrelevance

It would be easy for Andy to decide that his job was menial and unimportant, just a way to earn extra money on weekends. His manager needs to help him figure out how to make a difference in the lives of his customers, and perhaps even in the lives of the cashiers. Andy could consider doing something unique to make the check-out experience more fun for customers. That might include giving them a weather report or sports scores, asking a trivia question, or having an inspiring quote for them. Again, if this sounds silly, consider whether it would make the shopping experience better for customers, and the working experience better for Andy. Great managers, and companies, don’t let the initial appearance of silliness prevent them from doing what is ultimately meaningful and differentiating.

Immeasurement

This is a challenge in many service jobs like Andy’s. What his manager needs to do is help Andy establish a few ways to gauge his day-to-day success. Maybe it’s the number of times he makes a customer laugh. Or maybe even the cashiers. Or perhaps it is about reducing the amount of time that customers have to wait before their groceries are ready to go. Or the time it takes him to move customers through the line. Whatever measurement is used, it’s important that Andy be able to monitor his own success, and that when he leaves his shift, he knows how he performed that day.

By the way, did I mention that Andy likes football?

EXAMPLE 5: THE WIDE RECEIVER

Michael is the recently acquired star wide receiver for the local professional team. He is twenty-five years old, makes $4.2 million a year, lives in a beautiful home, travels to games in chartered jets, and stays in five-star hotels.

Anonymity

People will be surprised to learn that Michael—like many athletes in his bracket—is miserable in his job. They’ll be even more surprised to learn that anonymity is a big part of it. Though Michael is famous and receives attention and adulation from fans and the media alike, he doesn’t feel his coach knows or cares about him beyond the football field. When Michael moved to the area after being traded, the coach didn’t ask him about his personal life or his transition to a new town. That coach needs to talk to Michael about more than his injuries and his statistics. He needs to understand what Michael’s interests are off the field, and what he might want to do when his football career is over. Otherwise, Michael is going to feel like a commodity. A precious one, sure, but a commodity nonetheless.

Irrelevance

Many professional athletes like Michael either lose sight of, or never develop, a sense of how they make a difference in the lives of others. They see themselves as merely playing a game, one with no impact on real life. Michael’s coach needs to help him understand that by playing well, he actually makes people happy. There are fans who spend a considerable amount of their disposable income on tickets so they can watch their team, and when that team wins, they are more likely to have a good week. As crazy as that may seem to some people, it’s a reality and provides an incentive for Michael to play his best.

And Michael needs to realize that when he plays with determination and competitiveness and sportsmanship—and takes the time to sign an autograph and demonstrate genuine appreciation to fans—those fans are more likely to feel proud of themselves and their community.

Beyond the fans, Michael can also influence the people who work for the team. Everyone from the general manager to the head coach to the equipment assistant to the team receptionist will have greater job security and a sense of accomplishment if their team wins. That impacts their spouses and children in nontrivial ways. If Michael doesn’t realize the effect he has on the lives of fans and team employees, he and the team are losing out on a powerful source of motivation.

Immeasurement

This is one area that Michael will probably not be lacking greatly, as wins and losses are a pretty good indicator of success on the field. However, Michael doesn’t control the outcome of a game or season, and he will need to look at other measurables for his performance and behavior. Off the field, fan-related events and interaction with employees in the organization might be something he wants to monitor on a regular basis. Whatever the case, Michael needs some way of measuring how he is impacting the people that make his job relevant.

By the way, Michael is remodeling his home. . . .

EXAMPLE 6: THE CONSTRUCTION FOREMAN

Peter is one of three foremen at a residential construction firm. He has seventeen employees working on three different crews, building and remodeling high-quality homes. Peter is extremely fulfilled in his work.

Anonymity

This is not a problem for Peter as he has worked at the company for twenty-two years and has a close personal relationship with his boss and colleagues, all of whom he regards as friends. They know Peter and his wife well, and are both interested and involved in his pursuits outside of work.

Irrelevance

Peter’s job satisfaction wasn’t always high. After a number of years on the job, he began to lose some of his passion for the work he loved when he realized that many of his customers, some of whom were extremely wealthy, didn’t fully appreciate what they were getting. His boss had to remind him, again and again at first, that beyond the actual work he was overseeing, he was impacting the lives of the people he managed. Many of those people had not finished high school, or had immigrated to the United States to give their kids a better future, and Peter was going to be one of the most important people to help them in that pursuit. Eventually, Peter came to see that his role as manager and mentor was more meaningful than what he did as a project manager, though the two were inextricably connected.

Immeasurement

Measuring success is not much of an issue for Peter either. Budgets and time lines have always been good metrics, and customers are usually quick to provide information about their levels of satisfaction (though dissatisfaction provokes even quicker input). As for measuring his impact on employees, Peter prides himself on his ability to retain his people, and to watch them buy homes, send their kids to college, and save money for their future. He also has found it immensely gratifying that they seemed to enjoy coming to work.

By the way, Peter’s daughter Nancy is vice president of marketing at a medium-sized software company. . . .

TAKING ACTION

So how can you go about putting all this into action? The answer depends on who you are.

 

If you’re a manager . . .

Try taking three simple steps to make your employees less miserable and more fulfilled. The first of those is an honest self-assessment, asking a few obvious questions related to each of the three signs.

Anonymity: “Do I really know my people? Their interests? How they spend their spare time? Where they are in their lives?”

Irrelevance: “Do they know who their work impacts, and how?”

Immeasurement: “Do they know how to assess their own progress or success?”

Next, consider doing employee assessments, allowing people to provide information that will either confirm or deny the accuracy of the answers in each of the three areas.

Finally, develop a plan to shore up any inadequacies around the three signs. That could mean a series of simple one-on-one meetings, or even a team session like the one in the fable. And rather than being ambiguous or vague, which runs the risk of making employees suspect an ulterior motive, it’s a good idea to just explain the three signs and what you are trying to do.

 

If you’re an employee, job hunter, or recent college grad . . .

You can do some things to increase the odds that your job will be fulfilling. First, talk to your boss (or prospective boss) about the three signs of a miserable job, and your desire to avoid them. Most people really do want to be good managers, and if they know that they can become good at relatively low cost, they’ll often be willing to change their behavior.

But you can’t be afraid to talk to them about it. “Hey, I just read a book about how to make a job fulfilling, and I want to tell you about it. Not that you’re a bad boss. It’s just that I think I would do a better job and like working here even more if I were able to get a few things from you.”

Explain that you want them to know who you are and what your interests and aspirations are, how your job impacts someone else, and how you can better measure your success or progress. If your manager isn’t interested in providing those things, you can smile nicely and say it’s not a problem, and then go dust off your résumé and start looking for a non-miserable job.

If you’re looking for a great job, ask the hiring managers who interview you if they typically take an interest in employees, how the job they’re discussing has an impact on people inside or outside the firm, and how you will be measured. If you’re hearing answers that indicate anonymity, irrelevance, or immeasurement, know that the chances of job fulfillment are apt to be low.

 

If you’re an executive, HR professional, or consultant and you’re interested in establishing an organization-wide program around improving employee fulfillment . . .

Try a short, practical training session. This would involve teaching managers about the three signs, and then helping them put together plans for addressing them with their respective employees.

 

For products, downloadable tools, and other advice about implementing any of these suggestions, go to www.miserablejob.com.

THE MINISTRY OF MANAGEMENT

I have always thought it was a shame that more people don’t go into “giving” professions. In fact, I have occasionally felt pangs of guilt that I didn’t choose a career that was completely focused on serving others. I have deep admiration for dedicated and hard-working clergy, social workers, or missionaries, and I wonder why I haven’t abandoned my career and moved into one of those kinds of jobs.

While I have not completely abandoned the idea of one day doing that, I have come to the realization that all managers can—and really should—view their work as a ministry. A service to others.

By helping people find fulfillment in their work, and helping them succeed in whatever they’re doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families. They can also create an environment where employees do the same for their peers, giving them a sort of ministry of their own. All of which is nothing short of a gift from God.

And so I suppose that the real shame is not that more people aren’t working in positions of service to others, but that so many managers haven’t yet realized that they already are.