Learning to recognize cycles in career helps to understand team and success dynamics, all sorts of transformations and life in general
As we discussed, understanding cycles is one of the essential tools for fighting uncertainty. It is also one of the secrets of wisdom, of the ability to survive, and of many other very valuable skills. In one of my posts, I noted the three-step cycle of understanding the source of career success. Initially, the route to success is by accumulating technical knowledge. Then by accumulating psychological understanding. Finally, we tune ourselves for success by, for example, avoiding risk and seeking win-win solutions.
The trick is to pass the second stage quickly. At this stage, many discover that technical knowledge, the proverbial ‘brilliant idea,’ is not enough for success. That opinions of other team members and others in the organization matter. However experienced you are, if you don’t invest time and effort in educating others and finding compromises, your best technical idea may hit a wall.
It is at this stage that at some point, you realize that diversity of opinions is a precious asset, but only if your culture is built on trust, open communications, and respect for views of others. And this ability to listen to other team members is the American recipe for success, not good technical knowledge, which is more of a commodity in countries with the right level of education.
What we just did, we took a simple three-stage graph and started adding skills and mindset that is necessary to optimize your path to success. Skills and mindset which you already have, but unless you mentally select them fast for a specific cycle, you will be slow, suffer, or even fail.
Here is an example of a practical application of this cycle. Imagine you are on your first project team. If you want to increase your chance of immediate success, you must move to the third stage of this cycle. The fastest way is to build trust between those who participate in the project or have an influence on its fate.
This cycle is an example of a simple (easily observable) cycle. Let’s move on to the patterns which are less easily observed and may initially seem abstract.
A powerful cycle is associated with boredom. The desire to entertain ourselves is more motivating than most realize. Young associates spend the first months on the job fighting the challenges of their new situation. They may complain, but a challenging task in life is usually a good thing. Traditionally we value it because it helps us grow. A less discussed value of a challenge is that it prevents us from getting bored; in essence, it is like a form of entertainment. Specifically, the difficulty of the adjustment to a workplace replaces the challenging and, therefore, “entertaining” process of learning in school and college. A year later, the novelty fades, and people start sensing the lack of intellectual stimulation. To compensate, they spend time chatting with colleagues or surfing the Internet. Later, absent other stimulation, they become irritated at work. They start engaging in needless experiments or petty squabbles.
A bit later in life, when you become a manager, you need not only to entertain your intellect but also to get your adrenaline pumping. By this time, you are perhaps thirty years old. You don’t go crazy at parties, but you’re still young and need “something extra” in life. Since by that time you’ve probably stopped learning much at work, you may have concluded that intelligent entertainment isn’t to be had, and “entertainers” of the past (like professors) aren’t about to arrive. With this pretext, you start experiencing the second variation of problems arising from boredom: you begin making more complex decisions than work requires. You get a kick out of monumental projects, many of which are pointless for the company but central to combating boredom.
Talleyrand, Napoleon’s chief diplomat, said about Napoleon, “The emperor would make a great courtesy to humanity if he were less active.” The same is implied by a saying attributed to Lao Tzu: “One who loves people and manages them should be inactive.” Napoleon was a purpose-driven, but such people tolerate boredom poorly. In seeking to fill life with adrenaline, they have something in common with people who like food: the more they eat, the more they want to eat. People who have noticed this inclination offer great advice: “Whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until it goes away” (attributed to Paul Terry).
Similarly, in a new project, people often lose because they want to do everything at once. Part of this desire comes from the often-met sense that simple things are not exciting enough.
Later in our career, avoiding boredom nearly becomes our main career goal. By then, we’ve satisfied material needs. The excitement from new projects and challenges isn’t as vivid. Things are more predictable, and we enjoy relative material security, comfort, and privileges. But security is not the only characteristic of a happy life, so we strive to rise far above basic survival. Meeting family needs takes the first fifteen years of a career (roughly the first two stages in Maslow’s hierarchy). To achieve respect (approximately the third and fourth stages of Maslow’s hierarchy) takes another decade. Then earlier objectives become less relevant because we’ve satisfied our previous needs. Our primary concern becomes finding something to do in the future.
Imagine: you’re a bit over fifty. You have at least ten years until retirement, and twenty years of active life ahead. You wonder what you’ll do at home full time. You start appreciating your work not only for status but for its entertainment value or at least as an excuse to leave the house. Few survive up to this point in the career. And those who stay at home envy those enjoying all that entertainment.
That’s when one of the most important goals of your career — securing your place at work to avoid been bored in old age — crystalizes! Do people early in their careers realize they’ll be fighting for the next thirty years for success defined not in dollars and privileges but as escaping boredom the rest of their lives?
Another interesting cycle is the cycle of perceptions of a transformation manager. Initially, soon after the appointment, he gets annoyed that some people don’t react to his suggestions or don’t perform on their promises. After a while, he notices that almost everyone does that. Even though he makes staff substitutions, he can’t stop been surprised that people around him repeat the same mistakes. After registering the permanent state of surprise, he decides that maybe better training and communication will help. At some point, after these efforts, when he spots the previous behavior, he gets surprised that he gets surprised!
These three cycles are examples of tendencies that are not obvious but important for understanding the motives of people around you.
The cycles we’ve discussed are like a big picture at different stages of different processes. Life is more comfortable if you can find a perspective. First, realize what career cycle you completed during the previous stage. It’s an interesting exercise that forces you to turn the world around you in your mind, find seemingly unrelated moments, and link them. Once you do, you better understand many things about yourself, and some of those things may not be flattering. Once you rid yourself of pointless motivators, you change many things in your life, including career goals and methods.
