Liking Your Job May Not Be Enough - Transforming Work I - Brief Article

WHAT STOPS MANY PEOPLE FROM becoming great? One answer is being satisfied with what they are doing. Many people we have talked to are satisfied with their jobs, but aren't crazy about them. But that satisfaction stops them from taking the next step higher, to find work they really love.

Not so for Jean Block and her husband John. Jean and John both left jobs they liked to create work for themselves that they loved. Jean is a consultant, trainer, and facilitator for non-profit organizations and businesses all over the country. John has a specialty software business for the racing industry and is also the team leader of a NASCAR Winston Cup race team.

In our research we have found three key processes--Discovering, Designing, and Developing--which are key to creating and maintaining passionate work and passionate work environments. Jean and John used all three.

Discovering

To create the work that she loved Jean first had to resolve to make her life everything that it could be. "I made a conscious decision on my 49th birthday. 10 years ago," Jean says, "that the second half of my life would be fun. And that the second half of my life I would find a way to leverage or to share with many what I've learned." At the time she was working for a law firm in Albuquerque, which she really enjoyed, but it wasn't enough.

"Women of my generation," she says, grew up in "environments where planning was done for me, expectations were laid for me." One day she looked around and said, "Who the hell am I? Where are my footprints?"

She peeled back layers to discover who she really was. How did she do it? She reflected. "I sat in the back yard, reflected, and said who do I want to be? Where do I want to be?" And with that sense of personal purpose, she says, came the courage to take risks and step beyond the expectations that everyone in the world had for her.

John had been passionate about car racing since he was 4 years old, when he started racing go-karts. He raced all the way through high school and college. But he ended up in a career that had nothing to do with racing.

"I watched him," Jean says. "He was burned out, and I looked at him one day and said honey we have to find what you are passionate about. If I'm going to follow my dream we've got to find what your dream is." So they went on their own planning retreat for John, just the two of them. They rented a room with a flip chart, and Jean facilitated. It was John's retreat to figure out what he could do that would combine his engineering skill, his knowledge of racing, and his passion for the racing industry. Today he owns and runs a company called AutoWare, which designs, develops and sells automotive software. AutoWare's web page says "Racers, engine builders, motorheads and speed freaks rest assured, we are just like you. We know how hard it is to get and stay ahead of the competition. That is why our goal is to help you make your car faster." No wonder John loves his work these days.

Designing

Instead of designing their careers separately, they integrated both. "My promise to John was five years--you first. You get five years. At the end of five years you need to be making money and then it's my turn and we'll see within this 10-year period if we can do this." So while Jean kept her job and salary, John immediately pursued his dream. For the first six months they banked all of John's salary from the job he had at the time. The idea was to see if they could make it on one salary, and at the same time build a six-month nest egg. Over time, with careful planning, they both were able to achieve their dreams.

Jean emphasizes the importance of planning. "It takes patience," she says. "If people expect to say that's it, I'm going to have a whole new career and it's going to happen overnight, that's unrealistic. And if you're going to take that risk and step outside you've got to incrementally plan, plan, plan. Be patient. It certainly worked for us. Now here we are both of us with businesses, passionate, having fun, fun everyday"

Developing

Maintaining passion for work requires risking, learning, and continually building confidence in your ability to do things. Training, consulting, and facilitating all around the country can be exhausting. How does Jean maintain her passion for work? "I truly believe," she says, "that if you are doing what you love there is no energy drain and if you are open to learning from every experience, there's just a constant rejuvenation. Every time I do a retreat, I learn. Every time I do a training I learn." Learning is a key to passion, she says, because when you stop learning, "you are stuck. Push your envelope every day. Take a calculated risk, and learn, learn, learn, and who knows where you'll go."

The problem with liking your job, for many people, is that it lulls you into a sense of complacency. John "was perfectly happy but he wasn't passionate." Jean truly enjoyed what she was doing.

Now they love what they do.

Patricia Boverie, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of the New Mexico. She and Michael Kroth, Ph.D., A UNM Adjunct Professor, own Boverie, Kroth & Associates. Their Book, Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace.

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