EmployeeNext: Creating success and joy at work

It’s Saturday and I’ve been concentrating on trying to learn how to blog. Not yet able to get comments implemented correctly on the site so working on that today. Hopefully soon I’ll have the blog in a condition where I can open it up and start to participate in the active blogging community.

Coming from a corporate environment where I could just pick up the phone and call the help desk, I’m finding the open source forum environment challenges my desire for instant gratification! And that raises the questions of expectations — perhaps a great subject for a future post. What exactly do we expect as employees? Now that the rules of the game have changed?

Are unfulfilled expectations and the resentments they engender occurring because we aren’t communicating our needs honestly? Because we can be fearful of the consequences of asking for what we need? Would that require that we really know what we need and why we feel we need it before we ask for it? Which would then imply that we need to think through our needs and wants and what portion of those are our responsibility?

It brings to mind some of the challenges I face as a parent — I often find myself reacting to a request without thinking, just saying no, feeling my defenses rise and responding without thinking. Then, if my son asks me why, and I get calm and really listen and think it through, I’ll often find (much more often than I like) that I don’t actually have a good reason. I’ve acted from habit, or a desire to control and direct. Or from a past perception that has no relevance to the here and now.

Corporations are no longer paternalistic. We no longer live in a world of mutual loyalty and reasonable guarantees of employment assuming we perform as required. The rules have changed, the world has changed. The foundation on which we based our expectations has largely disappeared.

No longer does the large corporation resemble a benevolent parent who sets clear and fair rules which if followed ensure certain security and reasonable rewards. Long term strategies are often trumped by short term decisions to maximize shareholder value and stock performance. In this wonderful age of instant information and misinformation, often we feel we are on shifting sands.

In future posts this week, we’ll discuss the past, present, and future of being an employee. EmployeePast, EmployeePresent, EmployeeNext …….