The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A fable for managers (and their employees)
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
By Jen Dawson, in collaboration with Melanie Parish
Patrick Lencioni’s book, published in 2007, begins with a fitting quote from Samuel Johnson: “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” The three signs of a miserable job, which are engagingly explored in Lencioni’s tried-and-true fable-format, are not complex, academic or especially original. They are simple and based in common sense. This book is Lencioni’s reminder, a la Samuel Johnson, that managers and employees already have the knowledge and tools to make the jobs around them meaningful and enjoyable.
All miserable jobs, Lencioni posits, are the result of three underlying factors: anonymity, or the feeling that no one knows who you are; irrelevance, or the feeling that your work has no beneficial impact; and “immeasurement”, a term he coins to describe why employees so often feel unable to determine, for themselves, whether they are doing well or poorly at work. It is a manager’s responsibility to ensure that the “three signs” are absent from the jobs of their direct reports.
Employee accountability ties into the last two “signs” in interesting ways. If an employee has no sense of who benefits from his or her time, energy, insight, and productivity–in Lencioni’s terms, there is “irrelevance” in the job–there is little to motivate the employee to continue working. Employees who know, in specific and measurable terms, that clients, co-workers, or a manager are directly impacted by their work can see that their work has value. Accountability, then, is made real for employees. It also becomes clear that accountability is based in relationships–peer-to-peer, employee-to-customer, employee-to-manager–and not in abstractions like profit or loss.
The specific measurement component is also important to a discussion of accountability. Lencioni emphasizes that the measurement must be something that employees can use to gauge their own successes and areas for improvement. At one point in his fable, an employee at the drive-thru is asked to record the number of times he causes a customer to smile. Counting smiles, for this employee, is something that he does himself: he does the math, he keeps the records, he establishes his success or failure and reports it to his boss. Thus, in addition to being accountable to those with whom you have a relationship, you are accountable to yourself. This moves accountability from simply being an external judgment from a superior to an internal assessment tool and motivator that can be used by the employee him or herself.
Perhaps Lencioni’s “signs” are more complex than they appear at first. Certainly they relate in thought-provoking ways to the day-to-day human resource challenges of any organization. They are simple lessons with profound impacts.
