The Bummer of Job Suck & What To Do About It

Today, I'm introducing my quarterly project: The Bummer of Job Suck & What To Do About It.

In the ten (!) years I've been reading/exploring/writing about how our current management paradigm (industrialized management) is incongruent with the work our operating environment demands, I've often focused on the impact to the individual worker: you, me, and people we know.

It's a rarer point of view than it should be. The books and podcasts and LinkedIn posts and etc. are, more often than not, targeted at an audience in the executive suite. Which is understandable. But if there's one thing I've learned about job suck, it's that there's a lot of it experienced before anyone reaches a position of authority—a position you might think would come with the ability to do something about it.

If there's a second thing I've learned about job suck, it is this: job suck exists up, down, and all around the hierarchy. Outside of it, too.

You know job suck. Job suck is that pervasive sense of discontent that creeps into your workday, making even meaningful work feel hollow as purpose gets ground down by bureaucratic machinery. It's not a bad day or difficult week, but rather the slow erosion of spirit that comes from working in a system where your psychological needs go unmet, your expectations too, and your values clash with organizational realities.

Here's a more formal definition: Job suck is a subjective experience of discontent arising from a job that fails to meet psychological needs, expectations, or values.

My (informed) hunch is that we could fill pages with flowery prose about the feeling of job suck because it's a feeling everyone knows, knows quite well, and experiences in deeply personal and distinct ways.

And that's the reason I chose the phrase "job suck". Calling it job suck personalizes the problem. Because for as long as "we've" known about job dissatisfaction and job disengagement, the problem has often been conceptualized as one for organizations to solve.

That remains true, I suppose. But the problem has persisted for more than two decades, if we use Gallup's engagement data as a finger-in-the-wind measure. So I've come to believe the job suck problem is our problem to solve. It's clearer than ever to me that what our organizations need is a renaissance of sorts, a different way of conceptualizing, organizing, managing, and doing the work that facilitates improved organizational performance for how work is now.

But that's unlikely to happen on a timeline workable for us. Because the system of work we have works on the metrics that matter most to organizations. No mission, no margin as they say. So how things are today, generally, are likely to be how they are tomorrow. And the day after that, too ...

That's the reality we're working with. But within this industrialized management paradigm that so often gets in the way of our satisfaction at work (and organizational performance, but we're here to talk about us ... not that), we have an opportunity to make a selfish and self-preserving act: Worthy Work. Worthy Work is work that is worthy of your care—your time, your energy, and your creativity.

My general stance is that if we were more intentional about how we do our work, our workplace experience has the opportunity to improve significantly, not to mention nudging the system in a better direction. When we start to see the invisible system of work around us, when we acknowledge its presence, when we explore it ... then we can start to do something about it.

So "The Bummer of Job Suck & What To Do About It" is:

• a short podcast about why our current way of working leads to job suck (hint: it's a feature not a bug)

• a get-to-it-guide for doing something about it and getting to Worthy Work

If you're in the throes of job suck, I mean—I created this for you, so check it out. And if you aren't, well maybe still check it out and share it with someone who is, or keep it on hand for when job suck again double-books your already full calendar.

My purpose at Worthy Work (a work design studio that, among other things, ships a project each quarter) is to help healthcare pros make work better. I'm delightfully and deliberately hierarchy agnostic—so my work is for everyone working in healthcare: up, down, and all around the organization. Worthy Work provides … tools, practices, frameworks, mental models, resources, curated links, guides, products, perspectives, insights … and support for designing work worthy of your care.

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.