DOES YOUR WORK BRING YOU JOY?

In 2009 I was laid off from my job as a product development engineer. They made the right call.

For the better part of the previous year I had become disengaged from my work. I had let myself think of the job as routine, monotonous, boring. I felt lost. Little did I know my bosses were well aware of my general lack of purpose (wearing earbuds in the office all day instead of interacting with the team around me probably had something to do with it).

I was let go in June and it stung hard. I remember feeling physically ill for several days. Looking back at that time, though, I realize it was one of the greatest blessings of my life (though I didn't feel that way at the time). I realized I wasn't happy there and my work suffered as a result. That's when I started Pipeline.

I knew when I started my own company that it was an opportunity to make work a joy not a chore. One way we've been able to accomplish that at Pipeline is by facilitating an environment in which team members can work wherever they are most comfortable (which typically means working from home). One of our core values is "governed by productivity, not bureaucracy", and telecommuting has been a perfect fit with that value. Not surprisingly, this ability to work in a comfortable environment has also led to increased productivity. Where would you get your best work done: in the comfort of your own home, or in a cubicle farm?

We spend a massive percentage of our lives at work, so doesn't it make sense to do all we can to make this experience joyful? We recently completed an exercise at Pipeline where every team member recorded their work activities for two weeks. Next to each entry we would write "love" or "hate". Armed with this information, the project managers are now better equipped to assign tasks to team members in a way that maximizes the efforts they love and minimizes the efforts they don't. Of course we still have to do things we don't love, but how much would your work experience be affected with even a small shift to more "love" work?

In their excellent book "Nine Lies About Work" authors Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall make the argument that people don't really care where they work. What they do care about is the team in which they work. Another one of our core values at Pipeline is "treat our customers well, treat our team members better". We're not perfect, of course, but candid feedback I hear from our team members is that they enjoy being part of the Pipeline team, and I have to believe our focus on treating each other "better" is a big part of that.

For me as the owner, this journey of building a joyful work environment is ongoing and will never be entirely finished, and that is perfectly fine because developing the process of building a joyful workplace is part of what delights me in my role. 10+ years in, I can honestly say I love what I do. I hope you can, too. And if not, maybe a change is in order. As the author of “Who Moved My Cheese” tells us, it’s not as scary as we might think.