These are my “book notes” from reading THE THREE SIGNS OF A MISERABLE JOB, by Patrick Lencioni.
1) Immeasurement
- The first part is that a job is bound to be miserable if it doesn’t involve measurement.
- Imagine playing a football game and not knowing the score. Or being a broker and not knowing if the price went up or down after you bought a stock.
- People who aren’t good with their jobs don’t want to be measured, because then they have to be accountable for something. Great employees love that kind of accountability.
- The key is to measure the right things.
2) Irrelevance
- The second cause of misery at work is irrelevance, the feeling that what you do has no impact on the lives of others.
- Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.
- It’s so obvious but almost none of the managers take the time to help their people understand that their jobs matter to someone.
- If a manager has any responsibility in the world, it’s to help people understand why their work matters.
- To connect the two, people ought to think about measuring those things that make a difference to the person or the people they serve.
- Most managers don’t understand how they’re relevant.
3) Anonymity
- The feeling that no one is interested in who you are.
- People deserve to like their jobs, and that it’s up to managers to make that possible. A company deserves to have its employees care about the business and do their best to make it successful.
- Treat people humanely and they will do as you wish – a valuable lesson for any manager or, indeed, anyone at all.