Strategy #8: Accept Good Work And Reject Bad Work

If you were given a binary choice between doing good work and doing bad work, you’d almost certainly go for the former. There can’t be many people who’d willingly accept a bad work situation when a good one was readily available to them. Of course, things are rarely as simple as that. Most work has got good bits and bad bits and you have to take the rough with the smooth, don’t you? Well, perhaps, but let’s unpack this good work/bad work conundrum before you get too resigned to accepting the status quo.

I think that an honest evaluation of the quality of the work you do is an essential first step when it comes to any kind of career planning. Once you’ve done that, your determination to reject bad work and accept good work should come pretty high on your list of priorities in my opinion, and I want to outline a way of doing this right now.

Over the last few strategy articles I’ve been thinking about different motivations for changing your job. In article 5 I looked at disengagement in the workplace and explained why I believe that it’s crucial to insulate yourself against this possibility. In article 6 I assessed the reasons that burn out and fade away are so serious and why you should do your utmost to avoid them. In article 7 I investigated some current work practices before suggesting ways of turning an increasingly tough employment situation in your favour.

Each of these three possible reasons are based on eliminating negatives. But what if you don’t buy into any of these arguments for changing jobs that I’ve already put forward? What if you’re not bothered about the engagement issue, you’re not concerned about how your working life stacks up compared to what might have happened back in your parents’ or grandparents’ day, and burn out or fade away haven’t encroached upon your working life just yet? And not least of all, what if you’re an upbeat, glass half-full sort of person and not a downbeat, glass half-empty type of character?

If you pride yourself on being buoyant at all times, perhaps we need to turn things around, ditch the negatives and think about some positive reasons for changing the way you look for new work. If this describes you, what I’m going to talk about here will hopefully get you sitting up a little straighter in your chair so consider the following possibilities, irrespective of issues of engagement, burn out and declining work conditions.

What if you could massively improve your job satisfaction, enjoy pretty much every aspect of your day-to-day work activities, earn a lot more money than you do at the moment and benefit from virtually impregnable job security? Would you like to be one of the small group of employees who make all the difference in virtually any organisation, someone who’s pivotal in bringing solutions to an employer’s business and reaps the associated rewards of being a linchpin or a rainmaker?

How do those things appeal to you, whatever your job might be? Quite a lot, I imagine, and I’d suggest that these aspects of work should be minimum requirements for anyone who aspires to professional excellence. Expanding on this theme, what if you’re a high flyer who wants to shoot for the stars? What if you could create a vocational path that’s the stuff of your dreams, become a recognised expert or mentor within your field and occupy a prestigious work niche that’s reserved for, perhaps, the top 1% of all working people? Do any of these things hit your hot buttons? These are all great motivators for people who recognise these benefits of doing things differently and I’ll be returning to them shortly.

Whether or not you perceive the downsides of disengagement, insecure work or burn out in the way I describe them, you might be the sort of person who’s more motivated by enhancing pleasure rather than avoiding pain. You give more weight to the upsides of making a change than sticking with the downsides of what you’ve presently got. It’s that old carrot and stick idea that I’m sure you understand very well.

If you relate to what I’m saying here, setting your sights on all of the good stuff that you’ll soon be enjoying is probably a more beneficial path to explore than dwelling on eliminating the bad stuff you’re currently enduring. So, let’s think about how to do this. I’ve already spoken about the benefits of implementing my job-search strategy in previous episodes in this series but I’ll briefly summarise them here. I’ll then talk about what this will deliver in terms of career or vocation planning, depending on how high you aim. 

Eliminating competition from other job hunters, getting personally introduced to named decision makers and understanding how to construct a winning interview pitch that will knock the socks of any hiring manager are all features of my job hunting system, and the benefits should be obvious to you. But why go to the trouble of doing things this way? You’ll probably have to move outside your comfort zone, it’ll inevitably require you to learn a different way of conducting a job search and you’ll need to dedicate yourself to some focused research and contact development. Why put in all this effort?

The pay-off is that, by embracing the transformational job-search strategy that I recommend, you’re explicitly rejecting bad work and embracing good work. You’re saying to yourself that you deserve more than doing an average job for an average employer, that you recognise the exceptional value of your skills and problem-solving abilities, that you see yourself as a high-level employee and not a mediocre one, potentially at the very least. Those are some of the big-ticket benefits of accepting the lure of doing good work, but I want to get even more specific.        

Rejecting bad work and accepting good work is the sign of a confident, ambitious employee who’s determined to achieve a stellar career. It’s unquestionably the hallmark of anyone who’s got their eye on acquiring a vocational status for themselves. It’s what the elite workers of this world do, even if they’re not bothered about whether they do a job, have a career or develop a vocation. They follow this path because they won’t allow their self-worth to be dented by permitting mediocre to enter their thinking or actions.

I’m describing some of the psychological benefits of adopting my job-hunting method, but what goes on inside your head and your heart is only one aspect of the transformative job search. There are a range of specific tangibles that you get to enjoy too and here are a selection for you to consider. I’m not listing them in order of importance because I know from experience that different benefits will appeal to different people.

First of all, your job satisfaction will shoot up, on a day-to-day basis and at a global level. This is down to you taking responsibility for what job you choose to do, and according to criteria that you alone set. Being in control of your choices, decisions and actions is one of the major determiners of job satisfaction, and this is why it’s at the core of my job-search strategy. Look back at the strategy article about disengagement for more on this. Because you’re the person who’s identified the specific job you want to do, regardless of positions that the employer is openly advertising or otherwise, you’re intrinsically acquiring agency. Unless things go badly wrong, you’ll derive satisfaction from pretty much every aspect of your day-to-day work activities.

The chances are excellent that you’ll earn a lot more money than you do at the moment. You pick the job you want to do. You choose the employer you want to work for. You do this by identifying a significant business problem that you can legitimately help to solve and this plants you firmly into rainmaker or linchpin territory. Key employees who can demonstrably solve quantifiable business problems, and thereby make or save their employer money, almost always take home a bigger pay packet than average employees who can’t. I’ll be explaining what’s involved in identifying business problems later in this series of strategies, by the way.

Another direct benefit of what I’ve just spoken about is that you also get to benefit from virtually impregnable job security. The last people that any employer wants to let go are those who are key parts of the A-team, the ones who can identify and then solve crucial business problems. Incidentally, it doesn’t matter where you sit in the hierarchy of your organisation. If you have the ability to make your employer money, to save them money or to help them do things more efficiently, you’ll be making yourself pretty much indispensable. Again, delivering on this promise is a critical part of my job-search strategy which I’ll be returning to in the future.

Neil Grant, Vocation Master, London, September 2022

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the issues I raise here, I invite you to contact me personally. Please get in touch via LinkedIn;

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