Category — career

One of the tasks I set for myself at the most recent Emotus Operandi meeting was to visualize and write about my ideal office/work space.

So I sat down this morning and started looking at pictures from the online Restoration Hardware catalogue. I had some lovely fantasies of me sitting down in my Madeleine Side Chair to work at my beautiful Portuguese Desk, a cozy Scrollwork Tibetan Rug beneath my feet and a cup of fragrant green tea within easy reach. Once in awhile, as I was immersed in the creation of my incredibly brilliant first novel, I would look out the generously sized windows towards the sea and maybe get up to throw another log on the fire – after stepping over my irish wolfhound dogs, Heathcliff and Boris.

How’s that for ideal?

Then I realized the chances of me ever having such an office were pretty slim and I’d never get any work done in there anyway. I’d be too distracted by all the first edition books in my Grand French Casement Oak Cabinets and probably fritter the day away playing with my dogs on the seashore.

I took a good look at the work space I have at home and realized that aside from the fact that it’s pretty much in my living room, it’s actually not a bad space for a home office. The less than ideal aspects about my current space were all the office supplies cluttering up the lovely 1930′s dining table I use as my desk.

I figured if I couldn’t have my office by the sea, I could have a good work space here at home. So I cleaned the table off – and ruthlessly threw everything that was superfluous onto a huge pile that I will donate to a school-supplies drive come September.

So, now I’m sitting at my newly cleaned up desk and having another realization: I still haven’t fulfilled the object of the exercise. I’ve made my home office more or less ideal – but I’ve done nothing to envision what my office/work life might be like if I were get a more regular job outside of my home office.

If I’m being honest, I suppose I don’t care so much about the office space as I do about the work I’m doing and the people I’m doing it with, but I’ll give it a shot anyway:

The work should be interesting and meaningful.

Ideally, I want to work on something that means something to me personally – something I’d use, buy or want for myself. I’ve worked on projects and at places that were never more than a means to a paycheque. Lots of people do this and it’s considered normal. I don’t want that kind of normal. I want to want more than just the paycheque.

I would also prefer work that doesn’t cause me to go home feeling stressed out and annoyed with the universe – I don’t want to become my work, I want my work to simply be a natural extension of something I like anyway (and then I want to be paid a reasonable salary for doing it).

My work environment should be reasonably pleasant.

When I say “work environment” I mean the people in the work place. Ideally, I would work at a smallish company with (or for) like-minded people and we will create a work environment that is nice to be in. When I’m at work, I want to actually do work. I want to create and produce things. I want to know that my colleagues and I are working together toward a common goal, but I also want a relaxed atmosphere that is friendly. My dream job has an ROWE policy anyway, so the rest should follow. I also want the people I work for to be available and have an open door policy.

I’ve had many managers, and they were nearly always busy with paperwork or in meetings so it was rare that I could use them as a resource for the work I was doing. Of course, they always made time (eventually) for performance reviews and when they discovered I’d been struggling along and improvising a little they’d inevitably ask, “Why didn’t you come to me about this? That’s what I get paid for.”

The work space should be set up for the results I’m supposed to produce.

Most places don’t give their employees a say in how their work space is set up. I suppose all I would ask is that I have some measure of privacy, one of those metal locker things for my coat and personal belongings, and equipment that works, with the software I need set up and ready to go.

I can’t count how many times I’ve started at an office with an empty desk, or a PC that doesn’t work, a broken chair and two cheap pens that leak in a dusty holder. Please, if you want good things from me, treat me like I matter. Have this stuff set up and tested, don’t give me the chair no one else will sit in, and clean the desk.

If there could also be some sort of cleaning schedule in place for the kitchen – that would be awesome. Communal fridges/microwaves/sinks are generally disgusting and I hate having to clean random goo off the counter before I can use it.

Looking over what I’ve just written here, I don’t think my ideals are very demanding or unrealistic. Ultimately, I want to be happy in my work. I want to know that I am doing something useful with and for people with whom I have a good and honest working relationship. I will give a lot to the place that can provide these things.

Now that I have a picture in my head of my ideal office, I just need to start looking for a place that fits these criteria!

Two months ago I left a technical writing contract to pursue…something.

I wasn’t sure what that something would turn out to be, but I’m getting a clearer picture now. I know writing is a major component and my stick people drawings too.

So, fine – I have the freedom to pursue writing and drawing now. Lots of freedom and my husband’s blessing and a good support group – all good things for venturing out of the cube farm.

Last night I set out goals, I made a very doable “to do” list and yet by 10:30 a.m., I found myself mired in MSN conversations about video games, RPGs, personal relationship crises (not mine), random chit chat and idle web-surfing while reading replies.

This is not the work I committed to.

I would never have frittered away the morning on MSN conversations at my contract job. I would have chatted a little, but politely cut it off to get some real work done. Not that I don’t love chatting with my friends, I do. I want to hear about their day, their thoughts, their troubles – all of it. But, never really in-depth talks at work unless it was really dire.

I had rules when I was in the office.

Conversations fell into two categories: Fun/Unimportant and Serious. You can’t decide between whole wheat and white bread for lunch? That’s Unimportant and unless I was waiting around for my project to compile, I never paid much attention to that sort of chatter. You just found out your girlfriend sent all your belongings to your mother’s because she no longer wants to live with you? That’s Serious and I made some time to talk and make plans to continue discussions right after work.

Emphasis on the “after work”. I did my job first, and only rarely – and for really, really Serious things – did the work day take a back seat.

Now that I’m working from home on something a lot less 9 to 5ish, there seems to be an impression that what I’m doing now is really nothing more than a frivolous hobby.

That impression is my fault.

People talk to me and I feel rude if I don’t really listen and respond accordingly. I think I do this in part because a) I was raised to be polite and b) I don’t take what I’m doing seriously either.

I mean come on, I write blog posts and draw stick people. Yeah, that’ll put me on the map. I keep looking at what I want to do and thinking: “This isn’t a grown-up job. I need to do something meaningful.”

For instance, I showed my portfolio of stick people drawings to a few other folks and when I heard the term “artist” come up – I laughed and blushed. Artist!? Pshaw. Waterhouse is an artist. Klimt is an artist. The woman drawing the Mona Lisa on the sidewalk with chalk is an artist.

Me? I’m a doodler.

As for being a writer…I’m a good technical writer. You want a help file that will give you step by step instructions without making it complicated? I’m your girl. These blog posts – well everyone and their brother has a blog. That can’t be serious work.

Except that it is – or at least, it can be if I take it seriously. And if it isn’t serious work, it’s the groundwork for the writing that will be.

So now that I’ve admitted the problem is me, I need to fix it. Maybe I am an artist! Maybe my little stick people are going places. I’ve been a technical writer so why can’t I just say that I’m a writer and leave off the technical part? Besides – no one ever knew what I was talking about when I said “technical writer” anyway and I never thought of it as my lifetime career.

My first step towards fixing this mess is setting my status to “busy” on MSN. If I am going to commit to this, I have to actually commit to it instead of farting around waiting for the Big Idea to fall out of the sky. That isn’t going to happen – I will have to work at this.

Sorry friends, there will be a lot less MSN chit chat in the future so I can focus on the work I keep saying I need to do.

Maybe now I can get on with this new work!

Yesterday, I bought Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive. I was inspired to read his work after watching the following video about why money is a poor motivator in the work place.

The whole book was an excellent read, but what really grabbed my attention is the concept of the Results-only Work Environment (ROWE).

Let’s compare and contrast:

Typical office workplace:

• Must be present during “core business hours”.
• Must fill in time sheets to record all work activities – sometimes in excruciating detail.
• Must attend all meetings – even if they will not be useful to your work in anyway.
• Socializing with other employees is not encouraged except for company sponsored “team building” exercises.
• Managerial “babysitters” whose purpose seems to be ensuring you’re there and working.
• Personal or professional development is encouraged so long as you do it outside of work hours.
• Flex-time is available, but it’s not really that flexible. You must still work a 40 hour week and account for all your time.
• Yearly evaluations from people you don’t work with on a daily basis to set meaningless, buzzword filled goals.

ROWE workplace:

• Must get the work done and it must be good quality – when and where you do it doesn’t matter.
• Meetings are for collaborating on or discussing something – no meetings just for the sake of having one.
• Employees can do great work on their own terms.
• Pays employees fairly so they can a) take care of themselves and their families properly without a lot of stress and b) stop worrying about who’s making what and get on with creating something great.

I know which model I prefer.

Does it work for all businesses – yes. Say you have a retail store, it will be open during what is considered “core business hours” generally speaking. It will also likely provide a service or product – and you can still let your employees direct themselves. People who aren’t comfortable on the cash register can work the floor and help people. Employees with a creative eye can set up enticing displays, the diplomats among them can deal with unhappy or difficult customers. And of course, money won’t be an issue with them at work, because you pay them fairly.

I wonder though if the old and stale model is still around because we keep dressing it up with fancy concepts. For instance, let’s look at software companies that use an Agile development process. Agile is meant to stop treating software development like a car-factory (the waterfall method) and let self-directed, cross-functional teams build software in short cycles. This allows for better collaboration and visibility and when done correctly, you have a small piece of working software that could potentially be released to a customer for immediate feedback.

Agile is a fantastic concept and a great environment to work in when done right; otherwise, it’s simply another buzzword used to make the company sound innovative and interesting to people who don’t work there. I have worked at such places – and after the initial excitement of forward momentum, there comes a screeching halt and a feeling of confused betrayal. It seemed like we were moving forward, things were changing, the old ways were being dismantled so new growth and ideas could flourish. But really, it was just a new coat of paint on the same old tired structure. Like lipstick on a pig is the phrase that comes to mind.

When something that should have been great turns out to be riddled with problems and mediocre at best  – people lose heart, become unhappy, demotivated and even angry. This is when people spend their lunch hours surfing Workopolis and cleaning up their resume. This is where employee turnover happens.

Daniel Pink points out that as children we are self-directed, curious and will work at something just for pleasure – but we lose this once we start school or working and we start doing things only because we have to and for the dubious reward of a gold star or a cash bonus at work. We become uninspired people merely collecting  rewards we won’t enjoy.

My goal is to get back to that curious and motivated state. I know I can’t be five again, but I wonder what things I might think up if I just explored what was around me, read more, wrote more and rather than feeling humiliated by my failures, used them as new opportunities.

We need to free ourselves from these schedules and time-sheets and silly carrot-and-stick systems and just engage with the work we’re doing – no matter what that work is. We need time and space to create new ideas and try new things – and this time and freedom could lead to truly innovative ideas that advance our thinking, our way of working and the work itself.

I’ve read all these concepts before and thought “What cheesy, new-agey sounding crap this all is.” But I was wrong to think that – not wrong because I know for a fact this approach won’t work for me, but wrong because I’ve never bothered to try it before.

That changes now.