Why Wanting to do Good at Work Burns us Out, Fired for Being Female, and Watching a World Champion at 7 years-old –?plus 2022’s Biggest Risks!

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck, and welcome to this LinkedIn newsletter featuring seven things that caught my attention this week.

Thanks to Estelle Metayer for asking me for my email newsletter picks and for including this one in her faves!

Also this week – understanding the Ukraine crisis, and what big tech’s rise has meant for the economy.

Sharing is caring – Please share this newsletter !

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1???Burned out by Wanting to do the Right Thing

Burnout is not just for thwarted billionaire offspring.

Jonathan Malesic has a new book out on burnout . To promote it he’s been sharing insights in The Guardian and New York Times .

His top insight? Work can be meaningful, but it cannot be your sole source of meaning. Plus he calls out the cult of employee engagement:

• “The system that gives esteem to engaged employees also creates anxiety only quelled through working more intensively. The cure is also the poison.

When our status anxiety wells up, we reach back into our culture’s religious heritage for a balm: hard, disciplined work.

• “To calm our anxiety, we work too much without adequate reward, without autonomy, without fairness, without human connections, and in conflict with our values. We become exhausted, cynical, and ineffective.”

No one wants to be exhausted and ineffective, but cynicism hits men hardest.

• “According to a meta-analysis published in 2010 , women on average scored higher than men on the exhaustion scale, but men scored higher on cynicism.
• “Cynicism is commonly taken as a sign of competence . As a result, the stern manager, the hard-boiled detective and the brusque physician are all male-coded cultural archetypes.”

And finally the ‘breadwinner ethos’

• “The key problems that distinguish men’s burnout share roots in the ethic of stoical duty our society has instilled in boys and men for decades: Go to work, and shut up about it. If you can put food on the table, then you’re a good father.
• “[It is] a faulty masculinization of a noble ideal... It’s a source of meaning for countless people who labor in difficult conditions so that their children won’t have to. It is also hard to live up to. This lingering ideal has been devastating for many blue-collar men , who pinned their self-worth to the notion that they were providers even as their job prospects diminished.”

I like that idea of ‘faulty masculinization’. I remember watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 playing a cyborg which sacrifices itself for a child, and thinking that this epitomised what society expects from men – dutiful, unemotional, even to the point of self-destruction.

That realization hasn’t helped me escape those expectations, but I’ve been lucky enough to have support to help me through. Lots of people don’t.

Love to hear your thoughts on burnout below.

??Getting ready almost burned me out. Please follow our all-virtual Davos meeting , starting January 17.

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2?? Fired for Being Female

Scalpels out, as male heart surgeons ganged up to oust their female boss.

Irene Cybulsky rose through the ranks to lead a team of all-male cardiac surgeons. They didn’t like her leadership style.

They said Cybulsky had destroyed the collegiality within the group. They said they were afraid of her. It was damning stuff.

Heard this before?

A female cardiac anesthetist had something different to say: she felt there was a broader context to the unrest—specifically, gender.

Cybulsky ended up dismissed by her hospital in her mid-50s. She was realistic about taking on the discrimination she’d faced, and why many others don’t:

• “Most women come to realize that it’s not the hill they are going to die on. I considered the cost in time, the impact on family, the stage of my career … I persevered ... and I realized this was my hill.”

She re-trained as a lawyer. She took her employer to a tribunal. And she won.

It’s quite a story , even though it shouldn’t be.

??Women doctors earn $2 million less than men over their careers.

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3?? The Ukraine Crisis

Taking Russia seriously.

Adam Tooze is one of the sharpest minds out there when it comes to the meeting point of economics and geopolitics. This week he does a deep dive on the Ukrainian crisis.

• “What makes Ukraine into the object of Russian power is not just it geography, but the division of its politics, the factional quality of its elite and its economic failure.
• “The end of the Soviet Union may have given Ukraine independence but for Ukrainian society at large it has been an economic disaster. Like Russia, Ukraine suffered a devastating shock in the 1990s. GDP per capita in constant PPP terms halved between 1990 and 1996.
• “It then recovered to 80 percent of its 1990 level in 2007 and has stagnated ever since. Thirty years on, Ukraine’s GDP per capita (in constant PPP dollars as measured by the World Bank) is 20 percent lower than in 1990.

There’s much, much more to chew on in this.

??Geopolitical confrontation is one risk in the Global Risks Report 2022 .

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4?? More from 2022’s Global Risk Report

Every year we look at the ten-year risk horizon. Here’s what experts told us.

It’s not just reasons to be fearful. If we get our act together on this stuff, we can make a difference.

??What you need to know from the Global Risks Report 2022 .

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5?? The Land of O’Brien, Yeats and Joyce is Paying Artists

Ireland wants to keep its creative types creating.

??The pandemic also reshaped how US workers get paid .

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6?? ?What the Rise of the Tech Giants did to the Economy

Tech progress has come with a price.

? How to harness the full potential of public-private partnerships .

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7?? Want to be F1 World Champ? How Young Should you Start?

Watch this incredible footage of 7 year-old Sir Lewis Hamilton and find out!

Sadly an FIA review stripped Lewis of that win and gave it to the grown-up next to him.

??Check out our brand new book club podcast !

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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!

Best,

Adrian

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