Most of us at some time will get into
what I will call an “ugly job”
And in this economy many businesses
are just getting less fun, so there is
more “ugly” to go around.
But if your job is not so bad that
it’s causing lasting psychological
damage to you — it’s just kind of miserable —
Here are some reasons why you are not making a bad decision to stay, and may in fact start to feel good about hanging in there.
1) The best reason to stay: If the job is serving your desired outcome.
Let me give you a personal example. My desired outcome was to be the CEO of a public company by the time I was 45.
At one point in my career I was in a job that I loved. I loved my boss. My boss loved me. I loved my team, my team loved me. We were a high performing team. It was fun to go to work in the morning.
But one morning I woke up and realized that this job was no longer serving my desired outcome. (heavy sigh.)
I had “finished” what I needed to do in this job, and realized that spending any more time in it was burning “career capital”.
So I moved into a job that became the ugliest 6 months of my career.
It was a business that was losing $50M/quarter. We had to do a major turn around, but my job was to drive a new strategy, re-build a worldwide marketing organization, build and re-inspire a sales channel globally, and personally manage a large global team.
For the first 3 months, people from pretty much every function and level, from all over the world called to yell at me.
As ugly as this job/situation was, it was serving my desired outcome way more than the job that I was so happy in. (damn!)
So that is the first thing you should think about: What is your long term desired outcome?
And is this ugly job building, neutral, or draining the career capital you need to get your outcome?
You can survive or even enjoy an ugly job much better if you are doing it on purpose, for a good reason.
2) YOU become more impressive in a struggling business.
If your job is ugly because your business is shrinking, this may seem like an automatic reason to jump ship, but be careful as you could be missing out on a great opportunity.
People who only spend time in successful growing businesses don’t have as much to offer as people who have done real work and made a difference in challenging situations.
In a growing business, although you can report that you were part of a great success, it’s harder to claim what you specifically did to create that success, vs. what the business did thriving on its own while you were present.
Achieving in a struggling business sets many things in your favor:
- Less people will be in your way – there will be less competition to take on bigger responsibility. You can create more opportunity and career capital for yourself than you could in a more crowded, growing, “good” business.
- You can define the results that you achieved, in a more compelling way – this is what I personally fixed and the great result achieved vs. here’s how we all grew 40%.
- You develop critical skills for creative thinking, executing with lean resources, and sticking to ruthless priorities.
This makes you a more effective leader in any business than someone who never needed to be as creative, flexible, and accountable.
3. Patience has a pay-off.
If you are feeling impatient for a promotion or “something better” look really hard not only at what you are learning in the moment, but what you will learn by sticking around.
Companies dislike a candidate’s “jumping around” not only because they feel like you might jump again, but because you didn’t stick around long enough to learn the most important stuff, which makes you the most valuable.
I have found that it takes about 3 years to really learn what you can learn in a job. Year 1 to learn the basics, year 2 to do stuff, and year 3 to live with what you did and either build on it or recover from it.
It might not take 3 years, but that last phase is the critical one.
You will be worth more if you stuck around to deal with the consequences of your actions.
Closing thought:
Whatever your situation, be in it On Purpose, and it will feel better and have a bigger payoff.
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