The “meaning” of work

Did you ever wonder if all your hard work is meaningless? Its ok to ask this fundamental work life question. Hey! if we wonder about the meaning of life in general, why not about the meaning of work?

I don’t claim to know the answer to the meaning of life question, but I do have an answer for the meaning of work question.

You work to earn a living. (i.e. feed, clothe and shelter yourself and maybe your family) and if you are very, very lucky you work to have fun.

I count myself among the lucky ones. I rarely worked a day in my adult life when I wasn’t earning well and having fun. Having fun  by learning something new each day (I am by nature curious) and interacting in a positive way with those around me. (Was I perfect, no but I think I was at least a 90% er, 90% useful and positive)

If you want to decide on a career change. Ask yourself two questions.

1. Do I satisfy my physical needs through this work? If the answer is yes then you best analyze any “need” to change careers (or employers)
2. If you answered yes and are having fun each day, why worry? If you answered yes to the first question ad no to having fun, just chalk that up to bad luck and put your head down and get back to work.

The take away, in today's economic reality,  a job is a gift and should be considered as much, as the present conditions continue. (I don’t subscribe to the latest industry views on limited or no employer obligations to workers and worker loyalty, but that is another posting). If you are having fun, count yourself very lucky indeed.

You don’t need to be loved just respected.

I have been reading a lot of PM discussion boards, blogs, comments and individual recommendations lately, and it seems to me that lots of individuals want to love and admire their managers and leaders. I guess they expect a perfect work world. Maybe that’s a need to replace our messy social, personal and community lives with one of perfect order. Lots of these commenter's were looking for a perfect “holy’ person to look up to. A manager who they would follow to the death.

Sorry folks! you should expect an imperfect human for a manager, and if you are lucky, he or she will act as professionally as possible for the greater part of their working lives. They will make mistakes, and they will sometimes make you angry or upset. If you are lucky you will get a 90% plus perfect manager.

It is difficult for us to set aside the bad things and look at the positive. We want to live and work in a perfect world, and when we have time on our hands we often focus on bad rather than positive. We expect positive, so bad sticks out.

I never wanted to be loved as a manager, just respected. Respected for what I was able to accomplish not who I was. Who I am, is for my personal life. I had employees for ten years of more who didn’t believe I was married when then finally met my spouse. I gave 110% to my job, but I never gave my wife to my job.

I suspect that I was at least a 90% er. I made some whopping errors in judgment, and had character lapses (I still do) over my career and I am sure that I made individual employees, vendors and even clients uncomfortable at times, but I am certain that I tried hard and mostly acted in a positive manner.

The take away:

Don’t expect your boss to be perfect, look for the over arching trend.

Don’t expect to be perfect yourself,try and be at least a 90% er.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark!

A federal government study found that after 15% of the project duration and the project is in a ditch, there is very little if any possibility of bringing it back. You might get it in on time, but not on budget, or you might get it to budget, but not on time. The quality might be degraded, or the scope reduced. Something has to give.

To avoid having to call Project 911, do the right things in planning a project. Before you take any actions on a project, ensure that the measurable deliverables are agreed to by stakeholders and build a detailed plan, especially for the start of the project.

In the development and construction world, where I spent most of my career, things rarely went south when we were painting the walls, or moving in the furniture. Bad projects, went south during the buying of the sub-vendors or digging the hole to start. I  am sure that in bad IT projects there is an analogous southward trip.

Projects go bad at the start, and we have evidence if they are not corrected early they rarely recover.

The time to call Project 911 is early, before the 15% deadline, but put them on hold.

I always used the strategy of significantly engaging clients early in the project. They were there when things were turning and they could see for themselves where they could help. (I did have had a couple of rare occasions where the client did not want the project to succeed.)

If its early and the client can be engaged in the rescue, don’t be embarrassed to ask for their help. You  might loose the client in the future, but it sure will be a little less stressful, than having a bad project and loosing the client anyway.

On two occasions, for significant international clients, I was called by the client to help the team recover the project. I was not the designer or the builder, nor even selling consulting services at the time. The client saw the project going south and brought help to for the team, my task: set realistic deliverables and help the team begin to  meet them.  Take direction from this ancient Chinese proverb, and always spend largest effort in the front end of a project.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark

Look around your office, if you have one.

I got an email from my wife the other day with a list of things that are disappearing form our daily lives.  Younger folks don’t miss them, they are already irrelevant to their lives.

As a good way to predict what your work life will be in a few years, look around your office (if you still have one) and try and think of the work as it was, or must have been like just three decades ago. (When the old grey haired guy down the hall started work here, or some simulation of what he or she might look like had they survived.)

The 1980 PM office

• Single line telephones with no speakerphones or wireless.
• No fax machines (They are already going extinct after only 25 years or so)
• Black chalk boards (if one at all) Maybe a cork tack board.
• A Rolodex (some of you won’t even know what that is)
• Carbon copies (then carbonless copies)
• Adding machines pretending to be “computers”
• Coat hooks.
• Book cases, with books.
• File cabinets with files rather than obsolete computing  junk.
• Real wood desks.
• Uncomfortable desk chairs.
• Pink phone message pads.
• Sticky pads (invented by 3M in the mid 1970’s)
• A real live receptionist.
• A typing pool.
• A hard square briefcase (not a messenger or laptop bag)
• A light table to overlay drawings and tracings.
• Green accountants tablets. (for writing not medicating).
• A mainframe computer that was slower than a pencil.
• Yellow pencils and erasers.
• Liquid-paper, white out in the white bottle with the black label.
• Copy machines almost as they are today, and I don’t know why?
• Maybe even a mimeograph machine.

Write down everything you see in and around your office, and try and figure out when and how it will become obsolete. Then invest in the replacement product companies.

My bets:

• Assigned offices, hell why even have a headquarters building.
• Desk top PC’s will be gone within 5 years replaced by netbooks, ipads, and/or thin client servers.
• Mice and keyboards of any kind.
• Remote controls, garage door openers and keys replaced by iphone type devices.
• The desk top telephone as you see it now. Why we have them is a mystery to me already!
• Paper, but we though that it would be gone a generation ago, but we make more now than ever. Paper must be in our souls.

This might be a good team building exercise next time you start a meeting!