My Great Resignation: 30 Years Later

If you want to read a few excellent articles about RTO, keeping your best talent, and the newly dubbed Great Resignation, click away. If you want to understand someone who lived the Great Resignation and chose to never RTO more than 30 years ago, read on.?

Armed with a college degree, a published book, and a portfolio of mock ads, by age 25 the landscape of the Washington, D.C., advertising world felt like an open runway in front of me. I landed a job writing copy for a major textbook publisher.

Then I quit within a month.?

Upon my exit interview, I’m sure I sounded brash, arrogant, and foolish.?

The problem, I honestly reported, was that my assigned tasks were more than satisfactorily completed only an hour or two into the day. Once finished, I had to spend the rest of my day sitting in a chair pretending to be busy.

What I didn't say was that the work was meaningless to me, that it was clear everyone was putting on a game face for the job and that the conversations in the lunchroom were far too banal. I was young, alive, and I wanted more.

I soon realized that even though I was writing, which was my dream job, I was still only a lowly human in a cog-in-wheel factory work setting. I knew I had to try to find something more. I would soon learn the problem wasn’t in the type of work. The problem was the work world at large.?Unless I could wait half a decade or so, any entry-level job would require low expectations and offer minimal opportunities for personal growth. It was the way of the world, I was told.?

Not my world, I said, mostly under my breath.?

I left that first job with two pay stubs to prove I could afford the tiny high-rise apartment where I would risk working at home for myself. Including some years as a stay-at-home mom, I have now gone more than 30 years without a “real” job.?

In that time, I’ve become an internationally published fiction and nonfiction author; used my ad copy skills to design and create social change projects that have traveled around the globe; taught thousands through live and online personal growth programs; helped other talented writers get and complete major book deals; and served as a mentor to world-level leaders.

If sharing that list of achievements sounds like I’m still brash, arrogant, and foolish (especially putting it out there without a strong dose of self-deprecation, and especially as a woman), forgive me, but you are missing the point.?

The point is that talent at every level is going to waste, and the talented will only put up with it for so long.?

Most office work today is still not designed to encourage or take advantage of talent, insight, and creativity. In fact, it subtly or not-so-subtly discourages all three. It has little to no capacity for capitalizing on outlier ideas and unconventional solutions, especially from the young and talented, which organizations need more than ever. Quick thinking and shortcuts that make the work fresher, faster and better are ignored, while workers who can see better systems at large are expected to keep their observations to themselves.?

While I am no Einstein—part of authentic confidence includes knowing our very real limits, which I have come to learn all too well over the years—it is worth recalling that he worked at the patent office and saved his best thinking for after-hours.?So what if we are missing our would-be Einsteins? And what if even conscious leadership can’t break through the gridlock of systems that keep real genius out of the room?

Despite all our progressive ideas, most organizations have not learned even the basics of listening to real people doing real work in real settings. ?

As they are currently designed, most structures that hold organizations together can only see what is expected. Mass systems, by their very nature, are designed to see only what is planned for well in advance. Anything else is noise and is treated as such.?

In the workplace of the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, I was a prime example of the Great Resignation. I left early on, but today there are so many more coming from the same mindset I came from. These individuals know what they want—and today’s work world makes obtaining it far more possible than I might have dreamed at the start of my career.?

As a rule, the talented feel they have no time to waste. It's part of the creative urge. It's the gift, even if it comes out more rough than ready. Today, after a worldwide pandemic that gave us an up-close and very personal look at our lives, that feeling is on steriods. We are insisting that it’s time for a change and we are no longer up for waiting on it. If our current work environment doesn’t deliver, we’ll move to find one that does. Or, more likely, we’ll take our talent onto the open market and skip the regular paycheck forever.?

Not everyone can afford to take this risk. But your best talent is likely to be able to. ?

So what’s the workplace of today to do?

It’s time for a whole new conversation around work. Not a reworked conversation. Not a fresh-coat-of-paint conversation. An entirely new conversation.?It has to be more conscious of what is really happening and what people really want. It has to center around how real people with diverse interests, talents, dreams, and potential actually work best.?

It has to be about who is the boss of me (me, or you?) and if it is possible to truly learn and grow from within that hierarchy.?

It has to be about outdated, unfair, unproductive, and often stupid rules that keep workers caged and about the way we all need to be trusted to do the best we can and give the most we have in us. We can and will fly even better without a cage, but who is going to give that chance?

This new conversation has to be about hidden talent and how our work life is going to help us discover and then excavate them.

It has to be about each individual’s way of working that brings a new capacity for genuine productivity.?

It has to recognize that we don’t need managers at maximum capacity to hover.

It has to consider that we need work structures that foster the new burgeoning world of empowered work—wherever it happens.?

Conscious leaders, take note: Your best talent is sitting at the ready.

In the days and years to come, talent is going to matter hugely. Artificial Intelligence is going to do all the work that anyone can do—and then some. It will even write the kind of copy I was writing in that job I left after only a month. It might not be fantastic copy, but it will be plenty good enough in most mass situations. With AI, that work won’t take up a single hour of desk time, let alone a whole day, and its paycheck will be dirt cheap.?

The future of work is agile, creative, and multi-faceted. Our work can be meaningful, but that will only happen if we collectively insist on making it so. To prepare, the systems of work could do worse than attempting to solve for problems like the ones I brought to my exit interview 30 years ago. It has to recognize that, while hidden talent can be found in every office, a whole lot of it is walking out the door right now.

I'm Robin Rice,?a senior advisor in conscious leadership for individuals and organizations.?I lead, mentor and teach at the intersection of work, personal relationships, and social impact. I invite you to connect with me here on?LinkedIn?or through my website at?RobinRice.com.