What Type of Work Engages You?
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In last week's post, we offered a look at three different corporate cultures -- and specifically at three different "entry experiences" -- and asked you to select which one you preferred. (It's not too late to participate.)
Which did you choose?
• Company A – with its strong emphasis on team work?
• Company B – filled with ambiguity, intense challenge, and high visibility?
• Company C – with its well-defined approaches and clear path to success?
Here are the results so far:
• 14 % of you would prefer to work at Company A
• 51 % of you would prefer to work at Company B
• 33 % of you would prefer to work at Company C
No surprise that your preferences differ. We don’t all find the same work environment attractive. What we enjoy, what causes us to feel comfortable and puts us in a frame of mind to do our best work, varies from person to person.
Are you in a position today that really matches your work preferences? Click here to take a short quiz to find out.
My colleagues’ and my research has identified six fundamental archetypes that describe people’s preferred relationship with work. I call these archetypes “Life’s Lures.” They are:
1. Expressive Legacy: Work is about creating something with lasting value
2. Secure Progress: Work is about upward mobility; a predictable, upward path to success
3. Individual Expertise and Team Victory: Work is an opportunity to be a contributing member of a winning team
4. Risk with Reward: Work is an opportunity for challenge, change, learning, and, maybe, wealth
5. Flexible Support: Work generates a livelihood but not currently a life priority
6. Limited Obligations: Work’s value is largely its near-term economic gain
What draws you to work? Click here to download a 10 question self-assessment to see which lure is most important to you.
Next week I’ll offer some suggestions for the criteria you might use in selecting a new position or deciding to remain in your current one based on your “Life’s Lure.”
Read all of Tammy Erickson's Across the Ages posts
HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
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The Seasoned Executive's Decision-Making Style (HBR Article)
Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Paperback)
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Tamara J. Erickson is both a McKinsey Award-winning author and popular and engaging storyteller. Her compelling views of the future are based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations work. 
Comments
Madam,
Thank you for the brilliant exposition of Life's Lures.
It appears to me that the model has some parallels to the Maslowian Hierarchy with economic gain having precedence over much else at the beginning of one's career and expressive legacy finding frution only in a small percentage of the population for whom fulfillment comes from a process of internalization, where value creation for the larger good becomes the pre-eminent driver of one's thoughts, words and deeds.
The other stages outlined may serve as sub-sets of the extreme positions. Is it possible to create long-lasting value without the help of anyone? (the exception could be in the pure sciences in which it may be possible for an individual to come up with a path-breaking invention or discovery) Doesn't success come as a corollary to value-creation? Here success is meant to be holistic and not just material. And in all such processes, is it not critically important to challenge the status-quo, think out of the box, adapt to new perspectives and environments?
The challenge for individuals, and by extension to organizations (or is it the other way around?) is to create a work environment that treats value creation as an end in itself, and not necessarily as a means to an end. Here we enter the grey areas of metaphisics, spirituality, a higher meaning for life and so on.
Once again, thanks for some wonderful food for thought.
Warm regards
- Posted by B V Krishnamurthy
October 19, 2007 4:52 AM
Dear Mrs. Erikson,
Am taking the freedom to suggest another focus-reason for people to work (which you call "archetypes"): SERVING OTHERS EFFECTIVELY, FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL.
That's why and what for I myself work!
May this be the beginning of a dialogue, if yo so wish?
All the best,
Rubens Turkienicz
rubensturkienicz@hotmail.com
- Posted by Rubens Turkienicz
October 20, 2007 8:05 AM
Dear Mrs. Erikson,
My thoughts -
Value addition - is such a vague term or context sensitive that only limited people in corporate are privileged to understand or pretend to understand - so at present it is at bottom of my list.
Most of people work to meet "deadlines" where primary focus is - "lets do it", Term deadline becomes CHALLENGE when result and constraints are set by demanding forces (people and situation)- this demands each individual to be skillful/useful as well as SERVE AND ALIGN WITH DEMANDING FORCES in productive direction.
I think, indirectly or directly I work for demanding forces.
All the best,
(Kameshwar Singh),
Kameshwar.singh@gmail.com
- Posted by Kameshwar Singh
October 21, 2007 2:53 AM
Dear Ms. Erickson,
it must be something that keeps us getting up in the morning in spite of all the (very good reasons) of not doing so, I totally agree.
So far I used Ed Scheins career anchors to explain the phenomenon. They are:
technical/functional competence
managerial competence
security and stability
entrepreneurial creativity
autonomy and independence
basic identity
service to others
power, Influence and Control and
variety.
Best regards
Patricia Dill, Germany
- Posted by Patricia Dill
October 22, 2007 3:45 AM
Dear Ms. Erickson
It's a nice survey.I believe it is different in Mid-East to US,I really like to do the same research in Mid-East.what do u think?
plz email me if u r interested
- Posted by Adam
October 22, 2007 6:28 PM