Why am I doing work on a Sunday morning? And I don’t mean this blog – I mean real work for my company: We have talked through a presentation for our management. There would be time to do it during the week still – however, when this Friday afternoon somebody had suggested to do it Sunday morning, I said: Fine, great idea, let’s continue the discussion then. We have no problem to do it in our ‘leisure’ time, because this work is important, meaningful and the type of work that we like to do and are very well able to do. The whole presentation for mangement is even an intiative that we have started ourselves – it is nothing we have been asked for. We pushed for it, because the presentation talks about what our company needs to do transformation into the right direction.

Unfortunately it is nothing we have been asked for, because much of the work that I am asked for during my ‘work’-time is less meaningful, less important, less beneficial – for some of it it would even not make a difference if we did it or not. Only few of my current tasks are reaching the level of having a mentionable impact on the overall direction and performance of the company as a whole. And many of the tasks I have are even not tasks that I like to do or that would be a good match with my talents.

After four hours of good work and discussions I finally thought, now I must stop myself to not use the whole Sunday for work. Not because I felt tired about it – rather because I could not get enough of it and because I knew that I need this Sunday to compensate from the rest of the ‘work’-week. Read a good novel, have a walk, meet friends and plan our ski-week next year.

There we have it: ‘Compensation’. Compensation is a term used in many companies and in literature to talk about pay-systems. The (very old) idea behind it is, that work is a pain and an effort, which human beings would not naturally like to do, so you need to compensate them for their sacrifice of time and life-joy. In the tradition of that term ‘compensation’, work is nothing that you would do voluntarily and with joy and it is nothing that is considered as ‘rewarding in itself’ – or even less something ‘fulfilling’.

What I did during four hours this morning was rewarding and fulfiling and it even was a lot of joy. When we do that type of ‘work’ the borders between what we like to do and what we should do/ what is needed, disappear. It is not two types of activities, it is the same: Work (useful and needed) and something that we like to do very much. And I mean that really in that sense: There are very few things that I would have preferred doing this Sunday morning – very few only like: Have sex, win in the lottery, write this blog, take time to play with a child. Anything else would not have felt better – in contrary, it would have felt less meaningful and I would have felt less alive, because I would not have been able to use my talents and capabilities – like a bird that has wings but no occasion to fly.

Now, please do not mix up this type of acitivities and feeling with ‘things that do not cause effort and that do not create struggles’. Writing this blog is effort and it creates struggles (how do I go on in the next paragraph, gosh, this is too long and that phrase is not really saying what I want to tell…) – but it also gives energy back and it is very rewarding. For me, this is even rewarding, if not many people will read it (of course, still the purpose is to have an audience, because I have something to tell!). And the preparation work this morning is rewarding, even if I consider that this type of presentations has not given me a mentionable career in the last years yet (at least not a career in the formal sense of ‘position, money and fame’ – if you read these blogs, you will probably understand why that does not happen easily with what I do).

And voila, there we have the next key-term that is very much mentioned in a typical company: Career. Everybody (no, sorry,: the majority) wants to make a carreer in their company. But if you look closer, what is it really for the majority of those who want to make a career – what is this really about? Position, responsibility, money and fame? No matter how and what they do in that position and what they are famous for? Or if they really are able to take the responsibility without being overstrained or ineffective or both? No, certainly that is not what people are really seeking. Some few, a minority, certainly. But for the rest I bet with you that if they had the choice, it was somthing else: Let them choose between a) “Do you want a job where you can do the whole day what you like most and what fulfills you and where you are mostly doing what you are best in doing and where you produce one great result after the other – and your salary will be high enough that you don’t need to worry about your pension or a nice home or the education of your children –  or B) Be an important manager with power over others and a really really high income – but you will have more responsibility than really feels good and you will need to do all kind of stuff that is necessary and that is not really what you like to spend your time with most. I bet, the majority would choose option B).

The problem with a lot of today’s organizations and jobs is that ‘work’ is designed in a way that it results in being option B – but unfortunately without the position and power and with much less money (I know, there are a lot of people that live in option A and there are even a lot of mangers who get the wonderful combination of A) and B) together, living their passion, but these are, let’s be honest, the quite small minority of lucky people. Usually, still and unfortunately, we have to admit, that indeed today most jobs are a pain and effort and not what you would do the whole week, if you had the choice.  And now, what happens? We find ways to compensate. The employer does (security, money, other benefits of all kind) and the employee does: Have a great dinner in a good restaurant with a real good wine on Friday evening. Buy a fancy, beautiful new car and nice clothing and a new mountainbike and a better hotel for your next ski-trip, read novels and see films where either the dreams of a better life are reality or where others have a much bader life and bigger problems than we do (ever wondered, why films and books and TV nearly never just tell the story of all ordinary lifes?).

A propos dreaming: Now let’s dream, let’s put up a vision of a world where ‘work’ is no longer something that needs ‘compensation’, but where it feels like this Sunday morning felt for me. Can you imagine? Do you see it in front of you, how that would be? Impossible? Ah, really? That’s not true, there are people who are living it. You know it. Not possible for everybody, you say? How can you know? Because reality shows it? Which reality do you mean? The one of the past or the one that we can create for the future?

This is not a question of ‘if it is possible’, it is a question of ‘what we need to do to make it possible’: Throw away some outdated organizational and work design principles, forget rationality myths that never ever had a scientific base and a success-proof in reality, teach managers to stop managing and start leading, teach them what is good system design (organization, processes, work, mangement systems) and start to develop systems that are much more effective in bringing people to the right activities according to their talents, education and wishes. Start to invest much more in developing people at ‘work’, build learning organizations that learn to be more productive because the people can use their intelligence and passions for the ‘work’. Encourage employees to bring in their whole personalities and respect that everybody has strenghts and can grow – but not everybody must learn everything. Allow exploration and failure, support learning, support human work conditions, trust, honesty and authenticity. And make sure they all know who is the customer and what value they need. Replace the philosophy of compensation by a practice of appreciation and you will get the results that everybody needs.

No worries, it will not create creative, unproductive and useless ‘children’s picknick time’ – no, it will create rewarding work with much better results, both for the employee and the employer – which in turn will create better products for the customer, more revenue for the company including more revenue for all stakeholder-groups (and there you go, this even helps to dissolve the old conflict myth of ‘either more fun or more money’).

I don’t say the way to get this is easy and free of struggles and fallbacks. There are plenty of obstacles and even more details that need to be sorted out, some of them will need ‘redesign’ several times. However, the most difficult thing to do to create this future, better reality is to get first steps started: To do so, we need to stop to run in the hamster-wheels of trying to meet the requirements of ‘work’ that is a pain and to stop to spend the rest of our time with the search for ‘compensation’. That is the most difficult  (like you can easily see by the last big gap of postings through the whole summer). But there is also one great, very helpful, inspiring insight that can make us overcome it: Compensation does not work. You can not compensate the missing thing ‘X’ (fulfilling, rewarding acitivity that we like to do) by adding more of someting different ‘Y’ (more expensive cars, clothes, houses, restaurants, travel and new sports). You can ‘compensate’ by doing what is missing: Do fulifilling ‘work’ activity. For me that works right here, right now. As it does for more and more people in our modern societies. People who have woken up and look at reality today: It is full of possibilities and freedom that is not being used and that just waits to be taken.