#184 - “The bee came to sip the honey, but its feet got stuck to the honey pot...”
When the employee looks at the job strictly as a tool (Part 1 of 2 on employee-employer relationships)
A measure of how much something means to us is the price we’re willing to pay for it. If we say we’re committed to a cause, it follows that we understand the full outlay involved in supporting the cause and we’re willing to bear it. Except it doesn’t happen very often. More commonly, the cost and value relationship changes over time and we’re unaware of the change.
Understanding how this happens is revealing across many areas of life and business. In two parts, I will study employer-employee relationships through the lens of this framework. Part 1 looks at how some employees approach their jobs, particularly in the early phases, as a means to an end.
Planner Sheila: when the employee looks at the employer strictly as a tool
Sheila has planned her career meticulously. She’s picked for herself just the right job after a careful evaluation of her options. This job brings a great brand (highly reputed in the market), a great org (variety of challenges), a great team (with a manager and some peers from the B-school she wants to go to in the future), and so on. She imagines this stint will have her work on interesting projects, her CV will catch the eye of future recruiters, and she will be able to build a good network for the future. It’s a great place, planner Sheila believes, to launch her career from.
I’ve seen several young people, especially the smart ones, approach their careers like Sheila. They are highly driven, plan every detail, and, above all–even though they may not be able to explain it—are looking for control. They have made up their minds about how any job’s going to pan out. This type is obsessed with the outcome and sees every job as a tool, an instrument, a means to carve out a bigger end.
I may be painting it in darker strokes. In reality, yes, they’re looking to work every last drop of their job to their advantage but talk to them and you’ll hear innocuous language. You may hear them say things like “What’s the right next move for me?” or “I think a project like this will give me just the right experience at this stage of my career.”
When you’re fixated on the outcome and believe only a specific path will get them there, it often happens that you forget to enjoy the ride. You forget to take in all the sights and sounds along the way.
Sheila’s planner type is too busy calculating if they’re getting the right projects, getting enough facetime with the bosses, getting access to the power centers. Their approach comes at an escalating cost, which is often hard to spot.
They don’t see emergent opportunities because they’ve a fixed idea of what their path should be based on some arbitrarily chosen model (something they have heard others say, perhaps); among co-workers and seniors, word gets around: so-and-so is someone who is looking to work everyone for themselves; they work hard only with the clear expectation of being noticed and recognized.
As they see things turning out differently than planned, they find themselves in a state of mild-to-extreme anxiety. To use a metaphor used by Swami Vivekanda in 1900 is a talk titled Work and its Secret:
The bee came to sip the honey, but its feet [got] stuck to the honey-pot and it could not get away.
At first the job felt like a steal: high value, low cost. As she works her way, she realizes things are complicated. The price she has to pay for what she wants may be more than what she had anticipated. There’s a lot more fluidity, a lot more uncertainty, there’s a lot more work. With time, the cost to her continues to increase and the value of her dream job becomes increasingly questionable. She’s caught in a pickle: should she try and course-correct at her current job or look to change somewhere else? Time’s running out. Planner Sheila’s anxiety comes from not accepting the situation for what it is.
All-in Sheila
But let’s say Sheila takes a different approach. She ditches her (borrowed) formula for career perfection. Instead of trying to get everything absolutely right according to a specific plan, she approaches her work with curiosity. She notices that certain things come easy to her that others struggle with; she hones those aspects. She focuses on building her skill stack. She pays attention to what matters to her boss and adds value in whatever way she can. Most of all, she leaves enough room for chance and circumstance.
Here are the graphs for both Sheilas:
How can Planner Sheila switch to All-in Sheila?
How can Sheila switch from a fixed plan to an open mind, from outcome to curiosity? She can make the shift once she sees where she’s stuck. That’s the hard part—no one sees their blind spots. How can anyone when they’ve bet everything on their plan? So, Sheila must try and make herself see her situation for what it is. She does so by observing herself and by asking questions.
Observe and iterate
Sheila can observe how her energy shifts as she goes about her day at work. She keeps a log. Across a few weeks, she can see a pattern in what gives her energy, what she is drawn to. She can do the same for what drains her. Once she knows what experience she wants more of and what she wants less of—it is important to use the language of “more” and “less” and not “want” and “don’t want” to give herself room to continue to iterate; she shouldn’t become too attached to getting it right quickly—she can then figure out how to do that.
A foundational idea she can keep in mind as she does this: Many good ideas look bad at first.
To observe and iterate is a process of continuous discovery. It can feel like a lot of work at first. It is helpful to pair it with a deeper awareness about the need to do it. To convince oneself that it is worth doing.
Note: I didn’t realize this until recently but, with some coaching experience, it is clear to me that Planner Sheila is an archetype. It is clear because outside of work too there are people like Sheila. They believe the more they can control things the less they’ll be disappointed in life. Such behavior has a pattern: attachment to the outcome.
Awareness Question #1
Sheila has a lot of stories for why things haven’t turned out as planned. What she needs is someone to cut through the stories and give her a reality check. A good coach or an honest friend would be able to cut through her garbage and ask “What is true right now?”
Awareness Question #2
In the shoes of Planner Sheila, people often cannot but stay fixated on the ideal outcome. They have already imagined the benefits, so it may help for them to consider the (escalating) costs of getting their outcome. A question to ask yourself if even after having planned for every situation your job continues to surprise you in a not-so-pleasant way is, “What is it costing me to stick to my current plan?”
It probably is the topic for another post that Gen Z’s, saddled with choice every step of the way, may be a little more prone to agonizing over their chosen plans than millennials.
But, Gen Z or millennial, the world is a lot more open than you think, if you are open to it. It is a lot more closed than you think, if you are convinced you’ve got the key to it.
👋Hi, I’m Satyajit. Thank you for your time. I’m a decision-making trainer and coach. I write about better thinking at the intersection of business, career, and life.