When you think about your job, how do you feel?
Truly think about it—write something down even.
Are you fulfilled? Frustrated? Overwhelmed, engaged, proud, bored, thankful, unchallenged?
If you’re feeling unchallenged and frustrated in your work, then something needs to change—and soon. Because it’s likely you will realize, or already have realized, that your position no longer creates value.
It’s unfortunate, but a lot of jobs are dead-end jobs, those which no longer create new value or allow you to learn anything new. For both the success of the organization and your personal satisfaction, you need to be creating new value. If you are no longer valuable, customers will take their business elsewhere—and you will likely dread going into work every day.
The truth is, you can create the job you want with innovation. But you must be proactive and consistent to add value over time.
Think about what you would change about your role if you could. What aspects do you need in your work to make it meaningful and valuable to you?
For me, learning is the top priority. I am a lifelong learner. I believe that the only way I can leave a mark on this world is by expanding my own knowledge and by helping others to do the same. If I do not have these things, the work is unsustainable.
When I graduated from university, I went to work for a global company in research and development. I was so proud of this new opportunity. I couldn’t wait to get started.
Within the first three days, I was looking for growth opportunities. I was a chemist at that point, but had been hired as a researcher. I was ready to learn—about what the company was doing, about how I could contribute, about how I could expand my own knowledge. I went to my boss and asked if he could provide me with a list of courses and manuals, anything to study, and expected to receive a thousand or more pages of new materials or the key to the library.
But my boss said, “You aren’t ready—you need to be on the job for six months before you begin learning anything new.”
Well, if you know me, you know what that means. I was ready to leave, then and there.
One month later, I learned from a colleague that I could access the materials I had been looking for and study what I wanted. So while everyone was going home at 6 p.m., I was going around my boss to go to the library! I would spend as many as four to six hours every day just ingesting all of this content.
That’s when I began innovating my job.
Even today, I can feel that initial frustration of not being allowed to learn and expand my thinking, of being expected to wait to contribute. For months, I learned everything I could, and at the six-month mark, I quit.
On the way out, I told HR that only those who learn can expand the culture and knowledge of the organization as a whole. And now, unfortunately, that company is on its knees trying to survive. Growing organizations need people who can innovate their jobs.
I learned a lot in those six months that you can use to innovate your job, whether it’s the one you currently have or the job you want in the future.
Start by keeping three categories in mind: activities, relationships, and results. What activities could you add or change to create more value? What relationships could you create, foster, or dismiss to add value? What results do you need to reach personal fulfillment?
Think of them like the corners of a triangle: you must keep them even. The category that outweighs the others is the one that becomes a risk to fulfillment, an imbalance that affects your results. Consider what you need to add, remove, or combine to keep your triangle balanced.
Next, complete these four steps to create the job you want to maximize individual and organizational results.
1. Identify the challenges and limitations in your current job. Make a list of the problems you face that could be opportunities to innovate.
2. Consider how those limitations impact you and the results you are trying to achieve. For example, I always start too many projects and struggle to delegate them, and many end up either half-finished or delayed. This affects my results, my fulfillment, and even my health because I often wake up at 3 a.m. having remembered a missed deadline. It becomes unnecessary stress in the moment and looking back I see that I could have had so much more impact and success if I had been more proactive and less reactive. Be candid with yourself and direct your actions based on the results you want.
3. Pinpoint what exactly needs to be improved or changed to make your job fulfilling. Think deeper than simply, “I want to have meaningful work.” What does “meaningful” mean to you? If you are content now, will you be in three years? This allows you to create your dream and ideate for the future.
4. Determine how much control and impact you can have towards the job you want. People often get stuck at, “I want this, but I can never get there.” Be clear with yourself about what you can and cannot control.
To return to the story of my first job out of university, I essentially used these steps to innovate my job—to create the job I actually wanted. I could not control my boss and I had a lot of knowledge that I couldn’t implement because of my boss’s six-month rule. What I could control was leaving a company and a position that did not create value and give me personal fulfillment. And from there, I actually ended up in the best job I ever had in corporate America.
Many of us don’t want to jump from one job to another—and that’s okay! Most of us can work to innovate the jobs we have and create more value for both ourselves and our organizations with these four steps.
Remember: the best job is the one you create, the one that affords you the opportunity to innovate around the job. And in consistently asking yourself these questions, you will one day be able to look back and say, “Wow. I had the best job ever.”
Header Photo by Laura Davidson on Unsplash.
