I don’t like my Job

How many times have we come across this thought? Let’s not even guess.

Have we ever thought why this thought keeps bouncing back to our mind? I guess when something becomes routine and monotonous, it loses that fizz. Why something becomes routine? Because, we end up doing umpteen number of times? Why do we have to do it so many times?....... This is a million dollar question J

 We have to do this because “It is our Job.”                                                   

 Have we ever thought that how can we make our jobs interesting and challenging. I guess, by now you would be thinking, it took me almost 1 year to come out of that critical stage and I am asking how can we make it challenging J

 Each role and job, after a specific time, depending on the criticality and complexity, comes to a steady state where we end up doing something which has become a second nature to us.  I have seen colleagues giving complete screen by screen navigation support on phone (from home) without have a computer in front of them. That’s the stage of maturity.

How can we come out of this vicious circle of monotonous job?

 I think we can make our jobs interesting by doing automation, job rotation and job enrichment, or by brining best practices.

 Lot many times we know what could be done to make our job faster (because we are the experts), but since we are not tech savvy, we ignore it. Have we thought of taking the help from someone who knows XL or Access? No, we don’t want to go that extra mile. Why should I do that? My job is not to automate. Let my manager think about this, he should also justify his salary J

 Have we thought of reducing the hand offs in the process, how often we update SOPs or how often we coach someone to do a better job?

 Can we think of learning a new process or a new skill. No way, who wants to sit with that jerk. I can’t stand him for a second, forget about sitting with him and seeking favor from him. Not my piece of cake.

 How will it affect me? I have to stay late, may be practice on weekend. Why do I want to take all that trouble. I am happy with what I know, anyways learning something new will not increase my salary.

 This is not going to fetch me a better rating if I learn a new process. My life will not change after putting this effort.  On the contrary, I will go back home on time and spend quality time with family or complete my job fast and will have a extra session of coffee or smoke.

That what we all think and that’s  right also because we have a myopic view which does not cuts across years.

 Let’s go back and think what all we have learnt in last 5 years. We all would have about 10 things to write. But think, have we learnt that proactive way or reactive way. About 80% of the time, it would be reactive. We learn because of threat, pressure, competition. We never learnt it as a self paced learning.

 Its very difficult to inculcate this because it requires a lot of self discipline, time, effort and above all a long term view.

What we know now and what is our USP, will not be valid few years down the line. Either it would move from a USP to a necessity or will become redundant.

 With fierce competition and fast changing technology, new practices and processes are coming into picture. Lot of our skills which we have now would come as a delivered functionality of the system.

Gone are the days we when use to do manual recons by taking rims of print outs. Not system gives us exception reporting and highlight the outliers.

Voice recognizing software , OCR,  case management, auto recons, auto response knowledge base, SOP writing tools are few things which we can relate to our world.  Earlier I was able to say “I create great SOPs,”  now a software creates it better than me and takes 90% less time. So my USP has gone.

We should think of how I can add value to my work, how can I learn something new which is ancillary to my work. (to make my job interesting, so that I should say “I like what I do” and “I take pride in what I do because I implemented this”

We have to learn this at the cost of free time or asking help, which is very hard to do. We cannot always equate it monetarily or with growth.

We need to be aware of how technology is affecting  what is our edge in terms of skills and competencies and how can we increase our arsenal is this ever changing ecosystem.

I guess in few years, the word “Self Sustained Ecosystem,” will be made redundant as nothing is self sustained in our times. It has to be fed with constant efforts.

Looks like a lot of gyaan, I know. Its easy to say rather than putting it to practice J

Sooner we make our Jobs interesting, the better it is and we should find ways of making it INTRESTING.