work-life integrated success

Integrating personal and career success

Edward Chalk

Integrating personal and career success

Getting a job and earning money do not always guarantee that you will enjoy a life of satisfaction and happiness.

‘The paradox of prosperity’ (1999), a paper prepared for the Salvation Army by the Henley Centre, argues that although material prosperity is increasing in western society, the chances of a fulfilling life are decreasing. By 2010 more people will experience life stress, fewer people will find satisfying relationships, fewer people will feel secure and ‘safe’ and fewer people will be able to meet the conditions for self-actualisation.

BTEC National Health Studies, page 302

https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=0435455192

This is odd, as it would seem that if you are financially successful and earning money that you can spend on the things that are important to you, then your earning power will automatically strengthen your personal life. Are career involvement and success in your personal life fundamentally incompatible, or is it just a question of finding the right balance?

High-energy and low-energy states

The way that we feel and think at home is very different to the way that we feel and think at work. At home we are in a relaxed, low energy mode. Our office mindset, on the other hand, is high energy and focussed. Over the course of 24 hours, we oscillate from our serene low-energy home mindset to the high-energy office mentality, and then back to our low-energy state when we go home.

The journey to work is not only a physical transportation, but also a psychological transformation from the home persona to the work persona. In her book Home and Work (1996), Christena Nippert-Eng described how people go through a set of rituals to move from their home mentality to their work mentality. The separation between home and workplace is not just a spatial one; the two environments correspond to two social identities. Nippert-Eng’s respondents had elaborate techniques and habits to shed their home mentality in the work and get into the work mentality, and then leave the professional mode behind them in the evening to resume their private persona at home. These practices could be as simple as putting on specific clothes for each environment, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee or having beer at the end of the day.

Digital Anthropology, edited by Heather A. Horst, Daniel Miller, page 133
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0857852922

This constant change is healthy and refreshing. On the way to work we psyche ourselves up into the high-energy office mentality. When we get back home, we unwind, tell over amusing anecdotes from the workplace and  laugh at office frustrations. Our down time at home rejuvenates us for another day on the office and our energetic work life provides the impetus for us to progress with our personal lives.

Is there something that can disrupt this healthy cycle; so we become unable to bring our relaxed home mood to the office, or we become unable to bring our work energy back home?

Uneven energy

By nature, we are complex beings and display the different facets of our personalities in different situations. For example, sometimes we enjoy having fun, sometimes we engage in intellectually stimulating activities and sometimes we enjoy providing guidance to others and helping people out.

All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts

As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII – William Shakespeare

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/you-it-act-ii-scene-vii-all-worlds-stage

However, the high energy attitude we assume at work may positively exclude us from involving all aspects of our personalities in our jobs. For example:

  • The manager who is trying to explain his point of view at a board meeting is probably not thinking about finding oneness with nature.

 

  • The share trader who is trying to determine the market direction is probably not thinking about playing with their kids.

 

  • The tour guide who is happily displaying local history is probably not thinking about how they will pay off their mortgage.

Subsequently, in the course of going about our work, we may encounter the following circumstances.

  • Our job only involves specific aspects of our personalities.

and

  • We move into a high-energy frame of mind in order to meet the challenges of doing our jobs.

so that

  • We become unevenly energised; the parts of our personalities that we activate at work, become stronger. But the parts of our personalities that we do not need at work, are forgotten and left behind.

Becoming trapped in your work mindset

The healthy oscillation between your low-energy home mindset and your high-energy frame of mind, depends on your ability to reset back to your old, natural self, when you go back home.

However, if only one aspect of your personality is involved in your work, then work pressures may push you to consistently think and feel in a particular way.

If this happens, then even when you go home to relax, your thoughts and feelings will tend to follow along the same lines that you are used to at work. Subsequently, you will be unable to escape from your work mentality, as your personality will start to become centred around the feelings and thoughts that you experience at work.

Conclusion

Due to the increasing role specialisation of the modern workplace, it is likely that your job will place pressure on you to adopt a particular attitude and act in a particular way at work. However, this does not necessarily mean that you want to become “that type of person”.

If you are objectively aware of the persona that you project at work, you will be able to ensure that when you return home, you can take off the “work clothes” that you wore during the day, and reset to your simple, natural self.

knowledge creation strategy

Knowledge creation strategy – creating an intense learning environment

Edward Chalk

Knowledge creation strategy

Theory of the Firm and knowledge creation strategy

When devising a strategy for the future growth of a firm, it is initially necessary to decide how to view the current state of the firm. The Theory of the Firm provides various perspectives that firms can be analysed from.
For example, the Product Based View of the Firm states that the products that a company produces are its primary differentiator. In this case, strategy consists of dominating specific product markets.

The strategic objective in the PBV (product based view) is to dominate in a product or service market. Firms are able to dominate when they have the best understanding of the industry, particularly the opportunities and threats that are emerging.
… The PBV (product based view) of strategy asks what it is that the firm must do to dominate in its selected industry. Pursuit of these answers is expected to generate the most desirable internal configuration.
Governing Transformative Technological Innovation: Who’s in Charge?
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1781951004

On the other hand, the Resource Based View of the Firm states that a firm’s capabilities are its primary differentiator. Therefore strategy consists of applying the firm’s capabilities in the most effective manner possible.

Resource based theory sees the firm as a collection of assets, or capabilities… The success of corporations is based on those of their capabilities that are distinctive…

Business strategy involves identifying a firm’s capabilities: putting together a collection of complementary assets and capabilities, and maximising and defending the economic rents which result…
https://www.createadvantage.com/glossary/resource-based-view

Knowledge Based View of the Firm

The Knowledge Based View of the Firm (KBV) is a specialisation of the Resource Based View, which posits that the primary competitive advantage of a company lies in its knowledge. This perspective is particularly relevant to companies that rely predominantly on human capital and know-how, such as financial services and high-tech companies.
The knowledge-based view of the firm argues that the products and services produced by tangible resources depend on how they are combined and applied, which is a function of the firm’s know-how. This knowledge is embedded in and carried through individual employees as well as entities such as organization culture and identity, routines, policies, systems, and documents.

The knowledge-based view of the firm posits that these knowledge assets may produce long-term sustainable competitive advantage for the organization because knowledge-based resources are socially complex to understand and difficult to imitate by another organization (Alavi & Leidner, 2001).

Strategic Knowledge Management Technology, page 55
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1591403367

However, assuming that knowledge is the primary differentiator of a company can make it difficult to identify a future growth strategy. There does not seem to be any way to guarantee the invention of commercially useful knowledge within a company and there is nothing to prevent the smallest company from making a discovery that is crucial to the entire industry.
In other words, how can a company position itself to be the repository of knowledge that does not yet exist?

Due to this problem, some researchers have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to create a strategic growth plan that is based specifically on the Knowledge Based View of the Firm.

Given the current theoretical perspectives on knowledge, KBV (knowledge based value) is not yet a theory of strategy (i.e., a theory that links independent variables to a specific conception of firm performance) that goes beyond the insights provided by the resource-based view and the related dynamic capabilities approach.
…Similarly, the empirical literature suggests that it is unlikely that we have a new theory of organization, given that internal and external knowledge transfer processes are not appreciably different (i.e. there is no way of localising knowledge creation within the firm).

Knowledge-Based View: A New Theory of Strategy?
www.uhu.es/alfonso_vargas/archivos/Eisenhardt%20y%20Santos-2001.pdf

Hence the question arises, is it possible to determine a company structure that is optimised for the creation and application of new knowledge?
The following are some ideas for encouraging creativity and retaining inventive talent.

Emotional complexity

Due to the need for social crystallisation and operational predictability, corporations often encourage an emotionally simple and homogenous environment.

Corporate homogeneity – All business verticals and functional components can achieve a homogeneous ambition and approach if their aspirations and perceptions are well guided. A vision document provides the required homogeneity. All stakeholders can perform with better zeal if they connect to a common purpose provided by the organization’s vision.
Strategic Planning, Execution, and Measurement (SPEM): A Powerful Tool for CEOs, page 8
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1466567465

However, predictability is the antithesis of innovation. People with a predictable work-habit are likely to think predictably as well. The passion of intellectual accomplishment can only be cultured in an emotionally complex environment that does not scale down diversity, variety and expressiveness.

Creation lies at the edge between order and chaos. Requisite variety helps a knowledge-creating organisation to maintain the balance between order and chaos. An organisation’s internal diversity has to match the variety and complexity of the environment in order to deal with challenges posed by that environment.
SECI, Ba and Leadership: a Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation, page 28
https://www.ai.wu.ac.at/~kaiser/literatur/nonaka-seci-ba-leadership.pdf

Intellectual excitement

Foment an atmosphere of intellectual excitement that incorporates mind, body and spirit. All of these are required input for new knowledge creation.

Knowledge is created in the spiral that goes through two seemingly antithetical concepts such as order and chaos, micro and macro, part and whole, mind and body, tacit and explicit, self and other, deduction and induction, and creativity and control.

SECI, Ba and Leadership: a Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation
https://www.ai.wu.ac.at/~kaiser/literatur/nonaka-seci-ba-leadership.pdf

Knowledge-outcome ownership

Encourage people to feel ownership of the outcome of their knowledge.

The Mac team had a complicated set of motivations, but the most unique ingredient was a strong dose of artistic values. First and foremost, Steve Jobs thought of himself as an artist, and he encouraged the design team to think of ourselves that way, too. The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money; it was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater…
Since the Macintosh team were artists, it was only appropriate that we sign our work. Steve came up with the awesome idea of having each team member’s signature engraved on the hard tool that molded the plastic case, so our signatures would appear inside the case of every Mac that rolled off the production line…
We held a special signing party after one of our weekly meetings on February 10, 1982. Jerry Mannock, the manager of the industrial design team, spread out a large piece of drafting paper on the table to capture our signatures. Steve gave a little speech about artists signing their work, and then cake and champagne were served as he called each team member to step forward and sign their name for posterity… Steve waited until last, when he picked a spot near the upper center and signed his name with a flourish.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt

Societal improvement

The “I did something really great” feeling, can only be experienced if people realise that they are doing something which is genuinely useful for society.

It was no use appealing to the ‘organization’ to produce new products in a miracle time. Everything had to be done on a person-to-person basis and cutting across all the lines of red-tape…

I summarize the qualifications for this sort of operation:

1. Money capitalism has to give way to motives of human capitalism both as to public sentiment (‘fighting for our lives’) or the breaking of red tape (‘You can do the paper work later’). It is a sense of vital urgency.

2. One has to work with back-room boys who are both self-starters and ingenious and who enjoy the sense of vital urgency. For once, the back-room boys feel they are doing something useful.

Innovation and Employment, page 143
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1483165485

In summary

Creative minds are attracted to interesting environments. Compulsory homogeneity is the first warning sign that ingenuity and originality are on their way out. A true learning environment can only be led by someone who relishes the personal growth of constant learning themselves.

The Black Board drawings of Rudolf Steiner

Why do I hate my job? – Looking for variety in your life

Edward Chalk

Why do I hate my job?

According to Google, “Why do I hate my job?” is a question that is being asked pretty often.

Google search - Why do I hate my job

Obviously though, you would not take have taken your job initially unless you thought you were going to like it.

What changes between the initial thrill of getting a job and the conclusion that you have emotionally parted company with your former dream?

Buffy : An Adventure Story by Bob Graham

Bob Graham describes one of the reasons people feel their job is not a good fit in a poignant children’s book about a multi-talented dog called Buffy.

Buffy - An adventure story

To cut a short story even shorter, the plot of the book goes like this:

  • Buffy is a stage assistant to Brillo the magician, however Brillo finds that the audience cheers louder for Buffy than for himself, so he fires Buffy.

“OUT! and never come back,” cried Brillo.

  • With his last coins, Buffy buys a tin of dog food and a tin opener in a supermarket and then jumps aboard a moving freight train heading out into the countryside.

And while he slept, the train continued its rhythm:
OUT, OUT…
and never come back.
OUT, OUT…
and never come back.

  • In the morning, Buffy jumps off the train and then goes to try and find a job, however no-one will give Buffy a job because he does not fit into a slot.

Nobody wanted a dancing sheep dog.
Nobody wanted a tiny rope-throwing cattle dog.
Nobody wanted a plate-juggling kitchen dog.
Nobody wanted a guard dog who played the harmonica.

  • Eventually Buffy stops in front of a statue, the words on which read “I am me. No more. No less”. Buffy decides that since he does not fit into a “job slot”, the world will have to accept him for who he is.

“Then one day Buffy stopped. He put down his bag, wiped his brow and looked around him.
“I can go no further,” he said.
“I’m not a sheep dog, a cattle dog, a kitchen dog or a guard dog. So what sort of dog am I?”
“I am Buffy! And I will do what I do. And this time, the world shall come to me.”

The world shall come to me

  • Buffy starts busking, and meets Mary Kelly and the musical Kelly family, who acknowledge his unique talents and adopt him.

Now, each night after dinner, the music starts and each night the floorboards shake. Mary’s and Buffy’s feet beat to the rhythm of the jigs and the reels.
And Buffy lives up there, on the hill, to this day.

Mary Kelly and Buffy

“Filling a role” versus “Who you are”

As Buffy found out, every job requires a very specific skill set to be applied predictably day after day.

Furthermore, the larger a company is, the more precise each process has to be. Every employee has to become expert in the role and responsibility that has been assigned to them, in order that their function will fit into the operations of the company as a whole. This sort of employment does not leave you with a lot of leeway to develop your personality or to apply the multitude of skills that you were born with.

Subsequently, the answer to “Why do I hate my job?”, is probably because the job is not you!

  • You are multi-talented – but your job requires that you focus and refine one specific skill.
  • You are innovative – but your job requires that you do exactly the same thing every day
  • You like relating to people in different ways – but your job requires that you should always be predictable.

 

Thinking out of the square

It is perfectly possible, that you will not find a job on a job board that will resonate with the unique skills and the unique personality that identify who you really are. Because of this, some people are leaving standard careers to look for greater versatility.

Rather than define their lives and self-worth in terms of a preordained, often constraining, career track, workers are creating their own patchworks of job experiences to suit their lives.

The Opt-out Revolt: Why People Are Leaving Companies to Create Kaleidoscope Careers

It is also possible, however, that the risks of breaking with a standard career path do not fit the predictable life that you would really like to have. If so, how can you both find predictability at work, but also fulfillment in your life?

According to the Harvard Business Review, the answer is; “If you want to be happy at work, have a life outside it.”

The bottom line: Satisfaction at work is influenced by factors such as benefits, pay, relationships, and commute length. But all of this boils down to two things being important, regardless of your circumstances: (1) having a life outside of work, and (2) having the money to afford it. If you have a job that grants you both of these, you might be happier than you realize.

https://hbr.org/2017/03/if-you-want-to-be-happy-at-work-have-a-life-outside-of-it

If you do have a life outside of work, you will be able to develop and apply the parts of your personality and skills that are not relevant in your job.  Leading a full life will enable you to reap the benefits of being happy at work together with financial stability in your non-working life.

The Kelly family

 

Personal growth is a natural process

What is the importance of personal growth and development?

Edward Chalk 1 Comment

What is the importance of personal growth and development?

If you google “What is personal growth”, you will get the following search result:

In fact, though, it is unlikely that personal growth has anything to do with reaching your goals by maximizing your potential. This is equivalent to saying, “To make this rose more beautiful, let me find out what I can use it for.”

When we look at somebody and say, “That is a wonderful person,”  what we are seeing is a person who has gone through a process of personal growth that makes their personality shine. This person has become a beam of sunlight to the people around them. We are not looking at somebody who has optimized the functional aspect of their existence.

True personal growth does not depend on external circumstances. Getting ahead in your career, making money, succeeding in sports and gaining academic qualifications all depend on external circumstances that are not in your ability to control. The athletic and academic abilities that you were born with and the earning capacity you have access to are external to your inner personality.

How can we grow and become beautiful human beings that other people will look to for cues on setting their own emotional clock?

Here are 10 personal growth strategies that depend simply and purely on your willpower to become a greater person.

Autonomy

It is only possible for you to experience personal growth if you are your own person. Don’t be swept along with other people’s ideas and feelings. Come to our own conclusions about the way things are, and decide how you feel about the people and things about you.

Autonomy is the ability to use your own mind and to determine your thoughts and actions in your own way. It is the ability to be master of your own life and of your own thoughts and actions. It means being able to decide and choose for yourself. You are not the object of other people’s decisions and choices, and you do not accept opinions, standards of behaviour and established ways of life just because someone tells you to accept them. You accept them only because you have convinced yourself to accept them, because you have your own reasons to do so, and because you know that you can always reject them. You shape your own life.

Homo-Democraticus: On the Universal Desirability and the Not So Universal Possibility of Democracy and Human Rights ,page 403
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1904303269

 

Awareness

Be aware of your natural surroundings, don’t get caught up in what you are doing to the extent that you forget about the world you live in.

Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. A good illustration… is driving to work in the morning in a hurry. The decisive question is: ‘Where is the mind when the body is here? and there are three common cases…

The fourth case is the person who is aware, and who will not hurry because he is living in the present moment with the environment which is here: the sky and the trees as well as the feeling of motion. To hurry is to neglect that environment and to be conscious only of something that is still out of sight down the road…

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, Chapter 16
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0141938366

Balance

Maintain balance in your life; When you look for personal growth, you will find opportunities in many areas. Each endeavor you go for will have its own focus, but none of these areas should clash with each other or take over your life.

We cannot become so obsessed by a beneficial habit that we lose sight of other important areas of life.

Zen and the Art of Wholeness, page 216
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=0595339204

Face yourself

Change self-defeating patterns of behaviour; Identify your weak points, what are you scared of, what is holding you back? Create a plan for resolving this inner conflict.

To identify your weaknesses, ask yourself these questions: What do you keep doing that you can’t seem to master? What do you least enjoy doing? What are the aspects of your personality that hold you back? What do other people identify as a weakness for you? …don’t feel compelled to list every weakness you can think of. Limit yourself to the ones that can have a negative impact on the achievement of your dream.

It’s Do-Able!: Power To Unleash Your Dream, Canaan Mashonganyika

 

Give

Become a giver, not a taker. Get into the habit of giving to something each day which you do not personally benefit from.

How much love can you give? How good a friend can you be? The rewards you will gain by becoming a GIVER will reap for you true peace and a feeling of beautiful wholeness.

Walking on Sunshine, Suzy Harrison Ward

Happiness

Find inner happiness; Your happiness should be spontaneous, you should be able to walk down the street and just be happy for absolutely no reason. Your happiness should not be dependent on any external stimulation.

‘Take a look,’ I said. ‘If you want to find inner happiness, go outside on a nice day with lots of sun and blue sky. Even if you stand at a window and look out over the city at the cloudless sky, like we’re doing now, you’ll eventually find happiness.

Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex, Anne Frank

Harmony

Live in harmony; How can you increase the overall balance of good and beauty in the world?

The white man calls us “Wild Indians.” We were never wild, we were just natural. Traditional people, in harmony with the world around us. We do not isolate ourselves from other living things, nor consider one creature superior to another… [The Indians are not a primitive people,] they are a traditional people, that is, a “first” or “original” people… the inheritors of a profound and exquisite wisdom distilled by long ages on this earth. The Indian concept of earth and spirit has been patronizingly dismissed as simplehearted “naturalism” or “animism,” when in fact it derives from a holistic vision known to all mystics and great teachers of the most venerated religions of the world.

Two Black Bears: Chief of Navajos, Charles D. Taylor

Integrate your personality

Different parts of you naturally want to head off in different directions. Become aware of everything that motivates you, and of all the different directions your ambitions drag you in, then find inner unity.

Without [inner unity] we are likely to live fragmented lives, never quite fulfilling the unique gift to human history each of us is privileged to carry.

Empowering Leaders, David A. Ramey

Self-awareness

To find out who you really are, step outside yourself and observe how you live and how you interact with other people.

Step outside yourself. Watch yourself going through your day as if you were the star of your own television show. You can make it a comedy or a drama. Hospitals are suited to both. Try playing a laugh track in your head when something preposterous happens — as it often does. The show also keeps you company as your colleagues go home and you’re left alone in the hospital. It turns the clerks, nurses, residents from other services, and even patients into a colorful supporting cast for your lead.

Hospital Survival: Lessons Learned in Medical Training, Grant Cooper

Sensitivity

Tune into other people’s feelings, even if other people hide what bothers them, they will still appreciate if you identify with their concerns.

As we develop our capacity for empathy, we must shift from tuning in to our thinking to tuning in to another person’s perspective. As we begin this shift, many of us will struggle with socialized thinking habits that maintain our self-focused thinking…

When we start to tune in to other people’s perspectives, these old habits may cause us to experience some interference. Often we first struggle with the assumption that everyone thinks and feels as we do. This assumption occurs as we struggle to apply other people’s life experiences to the situation. First we must consider the other person’s life and then extend that consideration to the current situation. If we can extend our perspective in this way, we may discover that the individual’s experience is very different.

Developing Practice Competencies: A Foundation for Generalist Practice, D. Mark Ragg

You can cycle through some of these ideas, to see which ones work best for your own personal growth.

Finding inspiration when things go wrong

Finding inspiration when things go wrong (as they sometimes will)

Edward Chalk

Finding inspiration when things go wrong

There are two ways you can find inspiration

  • You can be inspired by the positivity you find when things go right.
  • You can be inspired when things go wrong, because you know you don’t want to carry on living that way.

The Zohar says that negative inspiration is more powerful than positive inspiration.

דלית נהורא אלא ההוא דנפיק מגו חשוכא

There is no light other than that which emanates from within darkness.

https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/זוהר_חלק_יז

  • Why are you in a better position to change and grow when things go wrong, than when things go right?
  • Why does the Zohar say that light emanates from darkness, which implies that the darkness itself is the source of light?

 

 

A quote often attributed to Einstein is, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Although this seems obvious, what is not obvious is we fool ourselves into thinking we are doing something different now. In fact we are doing exactly now as the time things went wrong, just in a different time and place.

How can we know when we have actually changed?

 

 

The Zohar offers the following clue.

דהא ודאי אמר קהלת (קהלת א’ ט’) “אין כל חדש תחת השמש” אבל למעלה מן השמש יש לו

“It is true that ‘There is nothing new under the sun’, but beyond the sun there is.”

https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/זהר_פרשת_משפטים

Most people are not good at everything. We are born with natural tendencies, and we develop these tendencies into our own way of doing things. There are things we are really good at, but there are weak areas which drag us down in challenging situations.

To change, we need to identify the areas in which we’re not strong, and then find someone brilliant in this area. We need to connect with and learn from someone who conquered in their own lives what we are struggling with. By doing this, we rise above the natural level of “under the sun” existence that we were granted at birth.

Positive inspiration can make your life shine, but negative inspiration has a more powerful potential for change. The realisation that we need to live on a higher plane forces us to rise above our natural operating level. Through seeing the need for change we incorporate the light from other people into our natural way of doing things.

When disappointment shows that life can be better, inspiration forces us to grow beyond our natural selves. In retrospect, the obstacles that made us to think out of our mindset were the source of our progress.

So the darkness itself, is the source of light.

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