Life Snippet - helping people who are passionate about their job

Helping people who are passionate about their job

My previous blog post was about how UK is following Hong Kong's path into an over-competitive, leisure-less society where people are forced to spend excessive energy in preparing and competing for highly paid jobs, sapping time from hobbies and activities that shape individual characters and breathe souls into lives.

But it's not all lost in the UK, for there is another phenomenon that is showing green shoots that can counter this still-not-set trend. In my current and previous workplaces, I have been witnessing colleagues who are passionate about their job roles and the expertise & intellectual depth accompanying the job. Just a few illustrations:

A) Working in a supermarket chain, I have met a supply chain manager who told me 'supply chain optimisation is my life-long passion, it just so happens that I am also a manager', and we discussed at length what the latest technologies could help him solve some of his problems and make the backrooms in supermarkets efficient

B) Working in a digital transformation team, the engineers have their own side projects to explore the latest code bases, and they use their work as experimentation grounds on new ways of doing things. Hackathons and 'exploration days' allow them to use their skills & knowledge on mini projects or work-related improvement that truly interest them (as opposed to the main bulk of work that needs to be aligned with strict business needs).

In the HK path, people are turning 'education certificate hunting' and investing into their passion and hobby to cope with the competition; the above UK trend shows the reverse of pursuing interesting work that become their passion & hobby, allowing individual characters to be developed. The result is mutually beneficial - my colleagues enjoy more from their day job, they savour challenges and new work, they cope well with autonomy, and the company have a productive team.

But this doesn't come free free or naturally - the companies need to recognise that the jobs are people's passions & hobbies as much as a 9-to-5 money-earning activity, and modify job roles as such. This means:

Re-package job roles to make them wholesome to the worker. A traditional company may have accounting, payroll, marketing, operations, business development, central office etc. However, if work is infused with passion, this kind of vertical dicing may have to change - for example, give accounting & procurement responsibilities to the people in charge of supply chain, so that they can go into exploring the new external suppliers and the benefits, and also be responsible for the decisions made. In effect, they now run the end-to-end project just like participating in their own hobbies

Re-distribute power & responsibilities. This is related to the first point but the 'cutting angle' is different. Give people autonomy in work and move away from strict command-and-control work organisation. Instead of the senior managers making decisions accompanied with detailed plans, then asking the team to execute with detailed methods & steps, turn around and give people the target state to be reached and resource/time constraints, then allow them to make decisions & co-ordinate with other teams to hit those goals. If this turns out well, allow the team to participate in target state-setting

Re-define work time and off time. Including myself, passionate people will spend their leisure time looking into work-related issues. It can be spending their time to work on the project, or getting themselves educated about trends and knowledge in those fields. If they are blurring work and leisure time, then the strict 9-to-5 contractual working hours should also be blurred - if they want to read about not-strictly-work-related articles or spend some time doing errands during 'working hours', so be it. As long as people are dedicated and focused, time flexibility should be granted

Re-shape career development & support. A traditional company that dice work in strict functions and decision vs. execution hierarchies have lots of layers, and career development would mean working up the layers. In a passion-infused work environment, 'career development' can take many more forms - opportunities to take up a wider scope (e.g. making procurement decisions), leading bigger projects, attending conferences, overseeing a number of projects and co-ordinating the colleagues to ensure the projects are aligned etc. Their job descriptions and titles may have changed little, but the impact of their roles on project progress, team formation and direct value-add to the company are expanded exponentially. Development paths must be re-shaped to give a clearer guidance on what progression means as they are no longer carved in stone or in formal hierarchy charts; this will then impact on what courses and learn-on-the-job goals they should fulfil. With a new workplace organisation, a new support structure is required.

Re-engage external groups and work associations. When a person pursues their hobbies, they tend to utilise like-minded people heavily through hobby groups and associations. They may interact directly - conventions, conversations, group meets, common projects, competitions; they may also interact indirectly - books, magazine, web chat forums, exhibitions/concerts. Such an environment should be created within the companies and across companies, so as to allow individuals to flourish and break from the confines of the projects offered at work - if they are forced to work on the same project in strict business confines, the narrow scope will bore people as autonomy and exploration are very much reduced. This can be overcome by allowing them to interact with other people on different projects, or being able to explore a range of topics through the project they are working on (hackathons or learning days), or empowering them to take on side projects.

to summarise, as a new work-life trend emerge, it is a good time to jump on it and give it the best chance to succeed. If changes are required, then we should make way for such changes to take place