Alan M. Patterson - Burn Ladders. Build Bridges: Pursuing Work With Meaning + Purpose

Burn Ladders. Build Bridges.

Burn Ladders. Build Bridges.

Pursuing Work With Meaning + Purpose

Alan M. Patterson

Burn Ladders. Build Bridges: Pursuing Work With Meaning + Purpose

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2022.

Cover design by Jenny Knuth

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2022 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-213-7 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-214-4 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Business Career Development Collection

First edition: 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To brothers Larry and Bob. Two characters. Remembered and loved with all my heart.

Description

Burn Ladders. Build Bridges. undoes the status-quo of career enhancement. Tearing up the playbook and finding breakthrough ways to create impact, build meaning, fuel your passion to do bigger, greater thingswhile enjoying the entire journey. No matter what stage youre currently in.

Maybe youre going from college to career and wondering how on earth youre going to unlock all the business world has to offer.

Or maybe youre the experienced professional who wants more out of their lot in life and wants to make work abundantly more fulfilling.

Or maybe you want to be that leaderthe one who connects. Engages. Inspires. But havent had the mentor or the training to set you up for success.

No matter what your goals are, what lies on these pages can put you on a path. An enlightening one.

Unlike other career wisdom, youll find the balance of theory and practicality. Of success and connection. And youll be able to demonstrate leadership and find your purpose in whatever position youre in, organization you work for or business you create.

By connecting with others, and more importantly, with yourself, this book will help you find a new way to contribute to the people and opportunities around you. And, in the process, discover that connecting with others is not what you doits who you are.

Welcome. Lets burn. Lets build.

Keywords

career coaching; career advancement; professional advancement; employee engagement; success at work; key to success; success ladder; business success; workplace leadership; leadership development; dream job; happiness at work; career books; job skill-building; career guidance; career change; self-help career book; college to career

Contents

Perhaps some detours arent detours at all. Perhaps they are actually the path.

Katherine Wolf

Instead of asking, How can I motivate people, we should be asking, How can I create the conditions within which people will motivate themselves?

Edward Deci

Why Would I Do That?

Emmas Dilemma

I met Emma in a small conference area, and the expression of pain on her face sucked out what little fresh air was left in the room. Emmanot her real namewas a member of an engineering team in a biotech company I was working with several years ago. She found out she did not get the promotion she was promised. The most frustrating part was that she had met all her goals that year. As I recall, this was not a situation where several people were competing for one job. This was about moving to the next level. She was devastated. She felt this was not fair. When I asked if she had ever talked directly with her boss over the past year about what it would take to get promoted, the answer was a resounding no, followed by complete silence, then after a few moments, Why would I do that?

Not getting a promotion is a big deal. Its a blow any way you describe it. Some people back up, take stock, and figure out what it will take to move forward. Others quit and go to another organization, hoping to get back on the bandwagon someplace else. Some jump and become entrepreneurs and business owners. Others are stuck and feel defeated, depressed, and uncertain about what they really want to do. And some people will carve a nontraditional path forward, motivated by something more deeply personal.

Success contributes to our need to feel valued. Striving for success in the workplacewhat we do for a livingplays a major role in how we define personal success. We need to feel good about who we are. We need to know that we matter and that people see us, acknowledge us and our contributions, and appreciate us for who we are and what we do. Without this, we are forced to run our own race, to do our best to separate ourselves from the pack, and to constantly take note of whos ahead of us and whos behind us.

Did Emma think she failed to get a promotion, or did she consider herself a failure? I suppose the only way to know for sure is to have asked her at the time. I was too busy trying to give her a pep talk about what to do rather than understanding her personal situation. In hindsight, its that understanding that has inspired me to write this book.

My purpose is to:

Validate the hazards in climbing the corporate ladder.

Propose a different approach to career development.

Describe the principles, practices, and skills needed to engage in work with meaning and purpose.

We will also explore the broader challenge issued by Clayton Christensen, former professor at Harvard Business School, to consider how will you measure your life?

Our sense of success and value is tested in times of turbulence. We couldnt share a more common experience than what we lived with in 2020. We climbed Maslows hierarchy of needs, moving from safety and security to feelings of self-esteem and purpose, only to get pushed off and start over. Jobs were lost, living situations shattered, and livelihoods destroyed. In times like these, feeling valued is a distant second to survival. Its hard to dig deep when youre digging out.

How we navigate our careers and sense of success is tested through a more enduring and treacherous type of turbulencethe climb up the corporate ladder. The climb requires accumulating and tracking personal accomplishments, much like a person collects wine or baseball cards. We refer to these achievements by many namesgoals, objectives, outcomes, deliverables, results, and resumes. These are manifestations of our American belief system. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Persist. Work hard, and you can be anything you want. The sky is the limit.

The problem isthe ladder is a mirage. It is based on a set of material rewards that, over time, lose their motivational power. It is an illusion, where the top is invisible to all but a few. Different rungs are all too similar in their exclusivity, especially at the higher levels. Women and people of color have The climb itself is treacherous, often an expedition into territory where mergers, acquisitions, restructures, natural disasters, economic upheavals, and leaps in technology render certain jobs useless and skill sets obsolete. At one time, ladders were images of certainty and predictability. Todays social awakening and economic uncertainty expose the ladder for what it is