Robert Not Bob

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the transcript of a conversation she had recently with her nine year old daughter:

Daughter: “Mom, what kind of job do you want me to have when I grow up?”

Mom: “I want you to have a job that makes you happy and makes you feel like you want to get out of bed and go do every day.”

Daughter: “good, I’m gonna work at Baskin Robbins!”

The way in which this young girl processed that great advice on the fly was awesome. She very quickly put together that:

1) She liked ice cream (and who doesn’t);

2) Ice cream made her happy;

3) She should be happy at her job;

4) If you did some crazy algebra, you could end up with Job = Ice Cream and if Ice Cream = Baskin Robbins, then Job = Baskin Robbins.

That logic is hard to argue with on so many levels.

The timing of her post and my reading of this mother-daughter exchange coincided with my preparation for presenting the final ‘habit” from the Infoworld article 12 Effective Habits of Indispensable IT Pros – Ditch the Slackers, Take on Dirty Work, Do it with Data written by Dan Tynan. If you recall the article was the impetus for me starting this blog. You may also recall from two of my other posts, that after reading the article I decided to share each of the twelve habits with my team and provide some “Robert Not Bob” wisdom to go along with each.

The twelfth and final habit presented was: Know When to Fire Yourself

Sometimes the best way to become indispensible as an IT pro is to step away from a stifling career path, even if that means branching out on your own.

“I boosted my career by starting my own company,” says Lowe, of Innovator LLC. “I doubled my take-home pay immediately, set my own hours, and got to work on really interesting things with highly motivated people.”

The notion that a “successful career” implies a steady progression of higher-paying jobs within a company or industry just doesn’t apply any more, he adds.

“A successful career today is a journey on which you discover and do what you love,” he says. “If that happens to be offering businesses innovative ways of changing their work flow to achieve new levels of productivity and efficiency, that’s great. If that happens to be giving guided tours of canyons in Utah (instead of applying the advanced math degree you earned at university), that’s also great.”

When you’re out on your own, being indispensable means solving problems and letting others reap the rewards, Lowe says. “That’s pretty much the essence of my consulting career. I innovate, they prosper, we both win. The next time the client has a challenge, they call me first.”

My Commentary: Assuming you sleep 7 hours a night and work an average of 50 hours a week with another hour each day traveling to/from work, many of you spend close 50% of the hours you are awake each week working. That being the case, you better enjoy your work – otherwise you are spending half your life doing something you don’t like. Life is just too short for that to be the case.

If you are not happy and motivated to be at work, then more than likely the performance you turn in every day is not at a high level either, which means your unhappiness negatively impacts your co-workers and your company. I have seen all too often that a unhappy employee drags down others around them, creating a negative environment that begins to jade entire departments. I often think that unhappiness in the work place is contagious.

As a manager you hope that each and every employee enjoys his/her job even if at times it is a little challenging or frustrating. But in reality I know that is not the case, especially in larger organizations where there is more than likely at least one person that just can’t stand coming to work each day no matter what. While you can attempt to coach people up, inspire them and make the workplace “fun” there are some people that will just hate what they are doing and nothing will change that fact.

While not everyone is cut out to be their own boss and go out on their own as suggested by the author in the above referenced article; people do, even in our challenging economy, have choices about what they do each day. My advice to everyone is:

If for some reason you are completely miserable with your current job, go find something to do that makes you happy. It may take weeks, months or even years to find it, but don’t give up finding your work passion. Life is too short to spend half your waking hours being miserable.

If a nine year old girl can come to grips with that within seconds of hearing words of wisdom from her mother, surely we grown adults can figure it out as well. If only we could all go work at Baskin Robbins…..