Same Salsa, Different Day

My one-year anniversary at my job coincided with an earthquake. After the building flung us out onto the sun-baked streets, a dozen of us gathered at a local watering hole to catch our collective breath and wait out the traffic. There I was, one of a dozen university administrators bobbing and gossiping around the table, knocking back margaritas. It seemed the most normal and enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Even though the building had decided to stand firm and we would all be going back in the morning, smiles flitted with ease around the room.

It is a wonder to me that still, a year in, I look forward to going to work every day. What began as the first job I could land after five years as a mountain mama has turned into a job I love.

What is the secret recipe? What ingredients make work work? I know I am not alone in my sense of dumb luck. This graduate school happens to have a great knack for keeping low-paid employees around without dulling their sparkle. A quick sniff around this week has offered up some possibilities:

·         Service: Believing your work, however mundane, contributes to a larger (and worthwhile) objective.

·         Celebration: Pausing to cheer on colleagues for achievements and life events, even if (or perhaps especially if) the celebration puts the brakes on work for a moment. People who feel valuable tend to produce valuable work.

·         Tapping expertise: Leadership calls upon the insights of people from various levels of the organization, and allows that expertise to inform significant decisions.

·         High standards: Leaders pay attention to anything produced. No one gets to be sloppy.

·         Learning: The organization provides opportunities on the company dime and on company time for employees to enrich themselves professionally and personally.

·         Variety: Expansion and contraction of pace, scope, and nature of work. We all need a few surprises to stay nimble. No one should be so pigeonholed that the dance becomes a grind.

·         Adaptation: Tradition tussles with progress in a well-refereed, ongoing game to identify the best processes.

·         Flow: Helping folks zero in on that sweet spot right between where the work is easy enough to be dull and just tough enough to be frustrating. Allowing room to shape a position around this moving target.

Mix the component parts, cook it all in an atmosphere of respect and challenge for the people who do the work, and voila!

It isn't magic, of course. Perhaps the real mystery is not how to master the recipe, by why organizations keep cooking up pablum and poison. Why are so many of my contemporaries slogging away at unsatisfying jobs in dysfunctional outfits? How much responsibility rests with the workers, how much with the leaders, or and how much with the institutional context? I may not have more than a dim sense of things, but it does seem important to identify the unique texture and flavor of a company's strengths. The people in an organization need to commit to a certain kind of culture, then follow through on engendering it through hiring decisions and the day-to-day operations.

As for me, one year in? I plan on sticking around, keeping that smile on my face and the bounce in  my step. An organization is its people, after all. When I embody the resilient spirit, I make my small contribution to creating the kind of workplace to which people want to return, even if they know the menu by heart.