So, I'm curious.
How many people out there have ever felt that pit
of dread and anxiety in your stomach on Sunday night
when you're getting ready to get back to work on Monday?
A show of hands.
And has anyone here ever had a job
that you actually hated?
A show of hands.
I can relate.
I remember a job that I had
where the cubicle where I worked in the office building
looked out over a marina.
I was a training specialist for a large cellular company
on the shores of Lake Washington,
and on sunny days,
people would often wander about the docks
on a break or on a day off.
I would sometimes pull myself away from my work
and watch them.
I made up stories about them in my head.
I imagined where they lived -
I know it's kind of odd -
their families, and most of all, their work situation.
I would project onto their happy faces
the kinds of work that happy people did.
I imagined them with bosses that they respected,
colleagues whom they trusted,
and doing work that mattered.
Eventually, I'd have to pull my eyes away
from the bucolic scene in front of me, back to my work.
And I would often notice
the big white wall clock above,
and I would watch the minute hand slowly
tick forward towards quitting time.
I was very unhappy at that job.
And the contrast between what I imagined
the people at the marina's lives to be and what my life had actually become
was stark and vast.
I was very unhappy at that job.
I think my work was probably shoddy,
and I spent a lot of time in hiding that I'd be caught out as a slacker.
That job might have been perfect for someone else,
but it was making me miserable.
I was completely and totally mis-fit.
I'm an organizational development consultant,
which means that I study people in systems, mostly work,
and I've often asked myself the question:
What would be possible if everyone,
and I do mean everyone, in every job around the globe,
actually loved their work?
The answer to that question, with any luck at all,
might permanently alter the relationship between employer and employee.
In the past 30 years, I have heard story after story of job misery.
People like Mischa who said,
"It hurt to start a job with such hope and optimism
only to find myself feeling undermined, unsupported,
and feeling corrected at every turn."
Or Hank who said,
"Hating your job sucks, and it consumes you."
When we're simply getting by at work,
our goodness and our gifts stay completely hidden.
Work matters to us in so many ways beyond our paycheck.
It impacts our identity, our physical and emotional wellbeing,
our family relationships,
even our ability to interact with our community in a healthy way.
And it's not just individuals who suffer when we're mis-fit.
Undermotivated, unconnected and unengaged employees
cost companies globally billions of dollars in accidents,
errors, rework, and lost productivity.
Our global economy demands that organizations grow
and sustain themselves over time, and those that don't will fail.
The companies in every sector that make it
need people who come to work there every day alive.
Nonetheless, despite our collective knowing
that we as human beings simply do better
when we're happy and thriving at work,
workers today are really not feeling it.
For example, a recent Towers Perrin study of 35,000 employees
showed that just a mere 17% felt actively engaged in their jobs.
Gallup's most recent data revealed that 90% of people they surveyed -
that's 9 out of 10 people -
said they were either disengaged or actively disengaged with their work.
And millennials were the least engaged of all.
The Energy Project's recent Quality of Life survey
revealed that 50% of the people they spoke with
felt emotionally depleted,
physically drained,
mentally distracted, and lacking in meaning and purpose.
We can do better, and it's time.
In the 1700s, Scotsman Adam Smith,
considered by many to be the founder of modern industrial economics,
professed that most of us as people
were motivated mostly out of self-interest.
But I disagree.
I think as human beings
there's so much more that motivates us than our pay.
Of course, we need to be compensated.
But I like the way Barry Schwartz said it in his book "Why we work":
"Most of all, we want work that's meaningful -
that makes a difference to other people and ennobles us
at least in some small way."
It's important to remember that most of the time
we don't receive any training for how to find a great work-fit.
I mean, we're taught how to write a resumé
or how to do networking, but oftentimes -
I don't know about you, but when I receive a job offer,
I just breathe a sigh of relief at being wanted,
quickly check the offer, and set a start date.
Even though often when we take a job, we think of it as lasting a lifetime,
that's not really how it works.
The needs we have for work-fit change significantly
over the course of our lives.
What matters in our 20s is vastly different
than what matters to us in our work in our 50s.
What if we started thinking about our work experience
as more of a dynamic journey to multiple destinations,
rather than a Mecca that we visit only once?
In fact, most of our children and grandchildren
aren't going to have one or two cornerstone careers,
they're going to have 12 or 15 or more job opportunities.
The imperative for being able to assess work-fit,
a place that brings out our absolute best,
has never been higher.
But happiness at work is not the magical result of getting lucky,
although that is often how it feels when we find a job we love.
Our research has shown two key elements to finding work-fit,
and the first one is you.
Self-awareness.
The second ingredient to work-fit is your ability to assess a workplace
as being one that's right for you.
It seems straightforward, right?
These two things, self-awareness
and the ability to assess an organization from the outside,
is what adds up to a great work-fit.
So, let's start by looking at you.
Self-awareness.
This sounds easier than it actually is.
To deeply know ourselves,
we have to examine our strengths and our brutal weaknesses.
We have to look at our motivations and our fears.
It takes vulnerability, it takes courage, and it takes time.
I remember a blinding newsflash moment in my own life, of self-awareness.
I was in university, I was studying to be a journalist,
I wanted nothing more than to work for a daily periodical.
And I got a job for the school newspaper,
and with my Steno pad in hand I started scooping stories.
I wrote well, and the feedback I got was very positive.
The problem I had was the whole deadline thing.
(Laughter)
I'm kind of hardwired to be a procrastinator,
and I have a serious case of FOMO most of the time.
So a great story idea for me on Friday, by Monday often was boring.
My editor was always writing me about deadlines.
Despite how painful it was to let go of a dream I had
for a number of years of working for a daily paper,
I had to admit that a deadline-sensitive career,
where deadlines ruled,
was probably not going to be the best place for me.
That critical moment really helped me make some better decisions at a young age.
It was a self-awareness moment.
Remember that when we're mis-fit at work, it's not that we're broken.
Although it often feels that way.
What's often happening is simply that the alchemy
between us, or you, and your workplace, is mis-fit.
Remember that just because a job works really well
at Google or Apple for someone
doesn't mean that you're going to find a great fit there.
So let's look at part two of finding a great work-fit:
the ability to assess a workplace from the outside.
Our research has identified six elements
that matter to most of us when it comes to work-fit,
and we'll look at them one at a time.
These elements aren't presented in any particular order,
and even in the course of my life,
the elements have shifted very much in terms of priority.
You'll probably recognize that depending on what age group you represent.
The first element we have discovered is the element of work-fit
that we call meaning.
Meaning has to do with the extent to which you feel
that what you do matters to someone or something.
Job fit is the extent to which your skills and experience
are well-matched to the job responsibilities that you have
and to your background.
Culture fit happens when our values and beliefs
really sync up with the professed and practiced values and beliefs
of the organization where we work.
The fourth is relationship fit, which is when we actually like
and respect the people that we work for and with.
Lifestyle fit is that magical thing that happens
when the way we dream of our life being
actually is supported by the policies and practices of our employer.
And finally, financial fit is when we feel we're paid fairly,
and we can make ends meet.
When I graduated from college, the two elements we talked about the most
were job fit and financial fit.
If you could find a job that paid, that was a good thing.
But in the past 30 or more years, the currencies have really shifted,
with culture, meaning, relationship, and lifestyle elevating in importance.
Let's look at a couple of examples of how these elements might interplay
during a different stage of life.
Early in my career, I worked for Christine.
She was well-renowned in our field, and I respected her greatly.
At first, our relationship was a match made in heaven -
I was eager to please and she liked the output.
But over time, cracks appeared in our relationship.
Her perfectionism created a culture of fear.
Even newbie mistakes that I made, she was harshly critical of.
It was just a matter of time before I noticed I was scanning the want ads
on Sundays - it's how we did it back then -
to find a different job.
In that situation, that job met my financial needs in my early 20s.
It had a lot of meaning for me.
I was a drug and alcohol counselor, and that mattered.
And the lifestyle perfectly suited the stage of life I was in.
The problem was my relationship with Christine,
which became broken and fragmented,
that ultimately meant I had to leave.
Let's look at one more example.
In mid-career, I worked for an organization
that professed to have very strong family values.
But when I came back from the birth of my first child,
the long work hours, inflexibility around start and end times,
and a virtual desert of storytelling about parents that had succeeded there,
left me feeling very self-conscious
and mis-fit.
My son's first illness required heartbreaking compromises
to the kind of mother that I wanted to be.
I had felt very fit there before I was a parent
and completely mis-fit, culturally, after.
That job was perfectly suited to my experience and my education,
I loved and respected my boss and my colleagues,
and the financial fit was very high.
But ultimately, the culture of that organization
did not match the kinds of needs that I had
and what mattered to me at that stage of my life as a young mother.
Think about your assessment of an organization from the outside
as like a detective exercise.
It's a sleuth-like effort to figure out,
can my gifts actually show up here?
Pay attention to how they do things at that organization,
talk to everyone you can.
Notice how they do things,
and if you think - against those six elements -
your best would be activated there.
Pay attention as if your life depended on it
because, after all, the quality of your life actually does.
I continue to be amazed at how many people,
when I tell them what I'm working on with work-fit,
are eager to tell me their story,
often of mis-fit but sometimes of fit.
I love hearing the success stories.
Take John, for example.
John was a professional athlete,
and he also worked in high-tech in California.
Imagine his delight when he was able to negotiate with his boss
a way to flex his schedule so that he could train in the mornings
and work in his field in the afternoons and evenings,
still supporting his family.
Or take Joanne as an example.
After 25 years in the field of accounting, working for a big firm,
she was laid off due to downsizing.
It was a devastating blow.
It precipitated a couple of months of painful self-reflection.
But ultimately, Joanne was able to find a job for a local nonprofit,
still in financial services,
but they had a mission that she could really get behind.
She did have to take a small cut in pay,
but it was the perfect career-capping move for her.
Here's the thing.
Organizations are what they are, and they're going to do what they do.
In fact, most of them organically evolve over time.
What makes one company versus another
a great place for you to work is all about the extent to which
they facilitate you bringing your absolute best every day.
Now, imagine.
Instead of hustling to prove to an employer that we're worthy,
that we elevate the importance of work-fit
so that we can thrive rather than just survive,
I'd invite you to think about then, what would actually be possible
if every worker, from front-line to mid-management to senior executive,
actually woke up every day loving their work?
As Kahlil Gibran once said, "Work is love made visible."
Let's get to work.
(Applause)