Deception 9: Seperating Work and Play

Most of us tend to separate our lives into life stages of playing, learning, earning, and playing again as we move into retirement. The most successful people I know collapse it all together and never stop.  The Pikes Place Fish Market in Seattle has built a whole workplace culture that turns a very tough job into play.  In the last few years they have taken that philosophy and exported into hospitals, classrooms, and nearly every type of work environment you can imagine.  I've personally visited the market several times and then had the opportunity to watch people's eyes light up as they see the possibilities for their own work place after going through a workshop based on this fish market.


Nicholas Lore is the creator of The Rockport Institute Career Choice Program in Rockville, Maryland. In his book The Pathfinder - How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success he shares a very useful Career Satisfaction Scale. Lore suggests there are generally 5 categories of career satisfaction which he also loosely places on a 0-10 Scale. What you see here is a description of the work as play people:

Level 10: Work Occurs As Passionate Play. His experience is that only about 10% of the U.S. Population fall into this category, not much different from the Gallop findings presented by Marcus Buckingham.

General Description: Looks forward to going to work. Work is seen as a vehicle for full self-expression, fun, and pleasurable. Difficulties are interpreted as positive challenges. Considerable personal growth and contribution to self-esteem is linked to work. There is very little distinction between work and the rest of life. Sense of purpose and making a difference. Uses talents fully. Work fits personality. Usually exhibits eagerness and alacrity.

Effect on Personal Life: Self-Actualized lifestyle. Generous with self, often participates in “service” to others. Loves life. Active participant in all aspects of life. Goes for the gusto, playful, high level of personal integrity. Self-esteem is very rarely an issue. Very significant increase in longevity and disease resistance.

Contribution to Workplace: Work is an expression of a clear personal purpose. Self generating. Does not need supervision. Very trustworthy. Will persist until objective is reached. Almost always contributes and is appropriate. Takes correction as an opportunity. The presence of a person living at this level raises others with whom he or she works.

“You have to pay the price for success” is still the mantra heard across America. But author/speaker Zig Ziglar wisely points out that “you actually pay the price for failure”. I think one of the biggest deceptions adults in particular labor under is that:

Play = Energizing
Work = Depleting

This is probably what most people experience at work. Some of us with church backgrounds actually justify this Biblically. We believe that work was introduced after the fall of Adam and Eve. But if you read the Biblical account closely we see that Adam was working quite happily before the fall. And if you believe that Jesus came to reverse what happened at the fall, then it must follow that we have a good shot at turning work into something that is energizing and fulfilling. That’s what this blog is about… How we can extend much of the mission of Jesus and make work the joy that God intended.

Deception #8 - Developing Weaknesses Into Strengths

Once upon a time, the animals got together and decided to start a school. They adopted a full curriculum that was easy to administer and designed to develop a well-rounded animal. There were classes in running, swimming, climbing, jumping and flying.

The duck was a very good swimmer… actually even better than his instructor. He passed flying but only barely, and failed running. Before long he was asked to drop swimming and stay after school so he could practice running. The running practice caused problems with his webbed feet to the point he became only average in swimming. Average was acceptable, so no one worried too much… except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but he was asked to drop that and stay after class and work harder on his swimming. He developed a nervous twitch from so much swimming, and that negatively impacted his running.

The squirrel was naturally a fantastic climber, but he was constantly frustrated in flying class because his teacher wanted him to start from the ground. He regularly got cramps from over exertion and ended up with only a C in climbing and a D in running.
The eagle was always in trouble for being a non-conformist. In climbing class he beat everyone else to the top of the tree, but he used his own methods for getting there.

Then one day, a wise old owl came to be the new headmaster of school. He re-arranged the curriculum so that ducks could spend most of the time swimming, rabbits could spend most of their time running, squirrels could spend most of their time climbing, and eagle’s could spend most of their time flying.

The animals went on to get very good high paying jobs doing what they loved and were good at.


The End

I’m guessing your time in school may not have ended that way.

This is so ingrained in our culture. We absolutely believe that the path to success is more about fixing our weaknesses than amplifying our strengths. This has been verified by Gallup Polls and Surveys and can be confirmed in most families where a report card is brought home. Marcus Buckingham regularly tells the story about the proverbial kid who brings home 2 A’s, 1 C, and an F. Then he rhetorically asks which grade gets the most parental attention. In most every family the answer is the F. Buckingham suggests that the parents role is not to ignore the F but most of the attention should be placed on the A’s. My experience is that this suggestion is hugely counter-cultural. 80% of American families would place most of the attention on improving the F.

Leadership author and speaker John Maxwell has good way of explaining this. He will draw out a graph that looks something like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And then he asks if 1 is poor and 10 is great, where should you spend most of your time trying to get better. He recommends focusing on your 7 and 8’s because that is where you can make enough improvement to move into the circle of greatness. Maxwell maintains that most people can’t improve much more than two numbers on the scale. If you are a 3, the best you’ll probably ever be is a 5 no matter how hard you work. My experience and work in corporate America confirms this. My experience with golf actually suggests that if I am 5, if I work really hard I might actually regress to a 3. In an area of non-talent, hard work might actually send you backwards.

Note: The Animal School story is now in the Public Domain.  The above is an adaptation of a version by Don Clifton.

Deception #7 Demand Jobs

Some career advice revolves around pushing job seekers toward "In Demand" Jobs.  Sounds great on the surface but my advice is this...

Forget about the “hot jobs” and get in touch with what burns inside you!

Here is one of many such lists found in newspapers, magazines, placement offices, and the internet:

Career possibility #1:   Personal/Home Health Aide
Career possibility #2:   Medical Assistants.
Career possibility #3:   Mental Health Counselors/Social Workers.
Career possibility #4:   Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts.
Career possibility #5:   Computer Software Applications Engineers.
Career possibility #6:   Teacher.
Career possibility #7:   Paralegal/Legal Assistant.
Career possibility #8:   Financial Services.
Career possibility #9:   Accountants and Auditors.
Career possibility #10: Employment Services.

The problems with using this type of list are many but let me share just two:
1. By following the educational career path suggested to reach some of these jobs they may no longer be in demand once you complete school. In fact, if enough people follow this strategy that career may actually be over supplied with applicants once you are job ready.

2. For our purposes there is an even greater reason. This Strategy/Deception relies heavily on Trap # 5… that anyone can do anything. You may not have the talent to excel in one these areas. And if you do have the talent, you may not have the passion which drives the commitment to get really good.
Let me repeat:

Forget about the “hot jobs” and get in touch with what burns inside you!

It's Re-Charge Day!

Deception #6 - Degrees, Diplomas, Generalized Intelligence, Academic Scorecards, and College

Each of these could be considered an individual deception but they so often come packaged together that I will treat them as a connected group. I’m going to start with what I consider to be a wise quote from Warren Buffet. “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut”. Of course the implication is that they will always say yes because they have a vested interest in the answer.

By most accounts inside and outside, our educational system is broken. Forty years ago the United States had the number one educational system in the world. Today we stand at nineteenth. Approximately 6,000 kids drop out of high school every day. I have had numerous friends that work as educators. The reports of chaos and fighting are frightening… and that’s just the administrators. What they have to deal with in the classroom in beyond belief. What should be environments of help and hope toward a better future have become dungeons of discouragement and despair. And these are the people that claim to hold the keys to our children’s future.

The system is so flawed it’s hard to know where to start. There are pockets of greatness springing up all over the country. A teacher here, a school there, and even occasionally we see a whole school district excelling. But I want to address 3 flaws that we rarely here discussed in any forum on educational reform.
The first is generalized intelligence testing that has often come packaged as the Stanford-Binet which I believe is now in it’s 5th version. Although it is designed to access 5 areas including Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing, and Working Memory it still cuts a very narrow swath in terms of possible talents that can be productively applied in ways that could make both a contribution to society and earn substantial income. As Harvard Professor Howard Gardener likes to point out, the Stanford-Binet and tests like it tend to erroneously ask, “How smart are you?” instead of the more helpful question, “How are you smart?” This simple reorganization of 4 words has enormous implications. The solution, which is already showing up in the more progressive learning institutions is the adoption of “Multiple Intelligence” concepts and methods in the classroom. I’ll talk more about this in later posts, but if you have children of any age, don’t wait to develop a working knowledge of these ideas. A good primer for the uninitiated is Thomas Armstrong’s Seven Kinds of Smart.

The second is Academic Scorecards, specifically the SAT, which is a college entrance exam. Educator Jennifer Fox reports:

“Since 1983, U.S. News and World Report magazine has ranked America’s 100 Best Colleges. This publication has changed the way parents and students choose institutions of higher education, leading them to believe that the value of a college degree is only as good as its brand name. For the past twenty-five years, this annual ranking system has almost guaranteed that SAT scores are considered the most important factor in college admission. In reality, SAT scores remain a notoriously poor measure of both student ability and likelihood of success in college.”

For a more thorough discussion of SAT’s I recommend Chapter 3 of Fox’s book Your Child’s Strengths. But my main concern is that the SAT like general intelligence testing focuses way too narrowly and leaves many children out who are very talented in ways not measured by this instrument.

My third topic of this education trap drives back to Buffet’s comment about “never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Let me cut to the chase. The snobbery in education is appalling. We see it in many forms. There are Public School Snobs who insist that they are necessary. There are Private School Snobs who insist that only they provide a superior educational experience that will catapult your child forward to a place that will insure success.  And there are the College and University Snobs who consistently suggest that you can’t succeed or be a productive member of society without jumping through there often ridiculous ceremonious hoops.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. I believe a good education is critical in establishing the foundation for success. I’m just suggesting that our institutions aren’t as good or as necessary as they think they are in providing this foundation. And in many cases they actually confound, confuse, and destroy initiative and hope.

If you believe a college degree is a pre-requisite for success let me drop a few names on you. Each of the following either dropped out or never attended college in the first place:
Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Lawrence Ellison, Kirk Kerkorian, David Geffen, John Richard Simplot, Theodore W. Waitt, Wayne Huizenga, Ralph Lauren, Joseph Albertson, Michael Dell, Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Harry Truman, Frank Sinatra, Tony Robbins, Erik Erickson, Eric Hoffer, Andy Rooney, Peter Jennings.

Many of them are billionaires. All of them have been off the charts successful. And this is only a partial list of some of the more famous names. I have quite a file going on these people. I could go on by telling you about the University of Chicago study that reports that those with college degrees have less sex and that those with post graduate degrees have the least sex of all. I could tell you about the 500,000 you would have in the bank at age 50 if you took your college $120,000 college education fund and invested it in a meager municipal bond paying only 5%. I could tell you about the fuzzy math educrats use to convince you that your earnings will be higher if you get a college degree. But I won’t...

Again, I’m not saying don’t go to college or don’t get a degree. In many cases college is a very useful step. In some cases like medicine it is a necessary step. College can also be a great place to explore and discover your passion. Use school and college as one tool in your bag on the road to a good education built around your unique talents.

Deception #5 - Dream It - Do It and Playing Checkers in a Chess World

I'm going to wade into a raging debate with this post. It's one that is going on in the background under the conscious radar of most Americans. Yet it really is raging in our boardrooms and classrooms leaving frustration and confusion in it's wake. In fact, everytime you hear an American President or some other respected person claim we are fallling behind in math and science, they are in some measure staking a position in this debate.

This deception also often comes disguised as “The American Dream”. It is the idea that most anyone can do anything they want to. It’s roots are deeply imbedded in Tabula Rasa (Latin: blank slate)which refers to the thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world. It is supported by many psychological theories including American psychologist-educator-inventor-poet B.F Skinner who established his own philosophy called Radical Behaviorism.

Skinner believed and taught immediate positive and negative reinforcement and supported the idea that with proper behavioral objectives and feedback everyone should be able to learn anything and everything. Strengths in Education expert Jennifer Fox suggests, “this philosophy permeates education today and given the right amount of learning in a small enough dose, everyone can master the entire curriculum.”

It only follows that this idea is also deeply imbedded in the work place. Motivational experts now espouse a program called Nuero Linguistic Programming (Brain Language Programming) which canonizes a primary pre-supposition, “If one person can do something, anyone can do it”. It is rampant in all kinds of sales organizations and network marketing organizations that often teach that with hard work, anyone can be successful at selling.

A new brand of behaviorism is being led by Florida State psychology professor K. Anders Ericcson with authors Geoff Colvin, Daniel Coyle, David Shenk lining up behind him with books more suited for the masses. If you want to study their positions more closely I recommend:

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance by K. Anders Ericcson
Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
The Genius In All Of Us by Daniel Coyle

It is also well articulated in Malcolm Gladwell's recent work "Outliers".

If you want a free quick primer of the philosophy try the Harvard Business Review article:
http://www.coachingmanagement.nl/The%20Making%20of%20an%20Expert.pdf

They take positions that are extremely well reasoned, thought out, and articulated. The research is so extensive it seems to present almost incontrovertible evidence for the conclusions presented. Much or even most of the work has a strong factual and even in many cases helpful basis. But it is woefully incomplete more than it is wrong!

The problem in my opinion is that they seem to be ignoring loads of evidence and research that balance and complete the conclusions they present. Let me sum up this new body of work on behaviorism: “Talent and innate aptitude is of very little or no importance when it comes to world class performance. Desire, deliberate practice, and supportive environments over time alone lead to world class performance.”

In other words, they take a checkers position in a chess world! In some ways this simplifies management and throws us back into a world of “If you’re not performing, you either have a bad attitude or aren’t working hard or smart enough”. The problem is that this line of thinking is simply incomplete and will lead millions to frustration and often failure.

I believe that scholars Skinner and Ericcson, along with a host of motivators have significant value in inspiring people to reach their full potential and I am indebted to many of them. But we must move from the checkers mentality to a chess mentality. What is the essential difference between checkers and chess? Many would answer, “Chess is more complicated than Checkers”. Surely this is one right answer but why? One reason is that there are multiple pieces in chess with each one having different abilities to move on the board. The Rook moves in straight lines. The Bishop moves diagonally and the Knight moves in an “L” shape. In checkers all the pieces are the same. We live in a chess world and always have.

Motivator Zig Ziglar acknowledged this in some of his talks around the country. Often Zig has shared, “I don’t believe I could get in the ring with Mohammed Ali and win a boxing match no matter how hard I train… I’m too old, too slow, and too fat.” Most of us recognize this truth in the realm of physical talent. We don’t try to put 7 foot basketball players on horses and make them jockeys. We don’t try to make basketball centers out of 5 foot jockeys. We just need to realize that it extends far more widely than most of us realize. Zig rightly inspires us:

“Man is designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, endowed with the seeds of greatness.”
I couldn’t agree more. But we are designed differently, engineered uniquely, and each endowed with seeds that bloom in different shades and colors and hues.

My position is aptitude and talent based but completed and summarized well by the title of John Maxwell’s book, Talent Is Never Enough. Over the next few weeks we’ll be working through this critical foundational philosophy I first heard simplified by Dallas Theological Seminary Professor Howard Hendricks many years ago. It is generally supported by scores of leading edge educators including massive research by Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner, business authors Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, Marcus Buckingham, and Tom Rath,  the Gallup Organization and the father of Strengths Psychology Don O. Clifton.  It has deep spiritual roots in the Bible and deep historical roots in the writings of Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Rumi, Balthasar Gracian, Benjamin Franklin and P.T. Barnum himself.

 It simply states “Success comes when we:


1. Discover our unique gifts, talents, aptitudes, and abilities


2. Develop those gifts, talents, and aptitudes with attitudes,  skills, training, coaching, and supportive environments

3. Deploy or Deliver those gifts and abilities to a place that intersects with a need in the marketplace

It is actually in step two that the work of Anders Ericcson and the others becomes extremely useful. When built solidly on the foundation of step one and flowing into step three they have identified the “heart” of performance.... insanely great performance!

But first, we’ll look at a few more deceptions...

Deception #4 - Experience

When I was a manager responsible for hiring on the west coast, the two things we were taught to look for in the interview process was industry experience with the industry we were selling into and sales experience with a slight emphasis on the later.  But the truth was that some of our best people came with very little of either.

I’ll get help from Marcus Buckingham along with Co-Author Curt Coffman on this one from their management book, First Break All The Rules. This book is based on Gallop interviews with over 80,000 managers in over 400 companies. Buckingham and Coffman comment on the ill advised strategy of managers who select based solely on experience:  “Manager’s who place a special emphasis on experience pay closest attention to a candidates work history. They pore over each person’s resume, rating the companies who employed him and the kind of work they performed. They see his past as a window to the future.”

Buckingham and Coffman agree that experience can teach valuable lessons… but it fails to take into account the many kinds of talents required to get a job done. Conventional wisdom often suggests that somehow managers can teach talent, or at least teach skills that might somehow make up for talent.

From my perspective in managing for several years in a well known national company, this is acerbated by the fact that few organizations prepare their managers with tools that give any kind of a window into a perspective applicants actual talents. Work sampling would be one possibility. Having an applicant perform same or similar task simulations would be one way to get additional helpful insight. Strength oriented behavioral interviewing strategies would be another.

There is a lesson here if you in charge of hiring, but there is also a lesson when you seek work, promotion, or lateral movement.  What you've done isn't necessarily what you should keep doing even if you have been fairly successful at it.

Tom Rath in his wonderful book Strengthsfinder 2.0, shares an old Mark Twain story about a man who passed away and met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Believing that Saint Peter was very wise, the man asked a question that he had wondered about throughout his life.
He began, “Saint Peter, I have been interested in military history most of my life. Who was the greatest general of all time?”

Saint Peter responded, “Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s that man right over there.”

Confused, the man said, “You must be mistaken, I knew that man on earth, and he was just a common laborer.”

“That’s right,” assured Saint Peter. “But he would have been the greatest general of all time… if he had been a general.”

Rath goes on to comment, This story illustrates a truth that is, unfortunately, all too common. Far too many people spend a lifetime headed in the wrong direction. They go not only from the cradle to the cubicle, but then to the casket, without uncovering their greatest potential.

I don’t know about you but this story sends an uncomfortable chill down my spine. How many of our kids, spouses, friends, employees, or co-workers are currently spending most of their days engaged in those activities God designed them for. As I look around my world, I’d have to conclude, not very many.

Figure out ways to try new stuff...you might stumble across the your world class arena!