This insightful video delves into essential survival skills for navigating today’s workplace challenges. Covering skills seven to ten, it emphasizes the importance of developing courage to face challenges (symbolized by “tigers”), mastering cross-functional teamwork, adapting to rapid change, and finding purpose beyond routine tasks. The author encourages readers to view their work as contributing to a larger purpose, urging them to quit a mundane job and discover work that aligns with personal passions and makes a meaningful impact. With a focus on personal development, organizational growth, and effective teamwork, the video provides practical advice for thriving in the dynamic modern workplace.
Transcript
This survival skills for today’s workplace. How to thrive in the turbulence. Now these are skills number seven through ten. If you haven’t seen one through six, make sure you watch those because it’s a wonderful set. And this follows on those first six. Survival skill number seven is you need to develop the courage to face your tigers. There’s another video on here. There’s a whole section in the conflict section on facing the tiger. But in a nutshell, we use the metaphor of a tiger coming up on you in the jungle. If a tiger came and you ran away from the tiger, you’re dead meat. The tiger is going to kill you. No, no, no other alternative, but the people that live there say, if you turn and face the tiger, he’ll stop. And he may still eat you, but he may not. So he’ll stop and think about it. So the simple act of facing a tiger creates the possibility, a chance of living, of a different outcome. So what are the tigers in your life? What are the tigers in your career? What are the Tigers in your team? What are the Tigers in your workplace that need to be faced? You’ve got to develop the courage and practice the courage of facing the tiger.
There’s other help on the Wiser at Work series about that, but you’ve got to learn to face your Tigers survival skill. Number eight, you’ve got to master cross-functional teamwork, not just be really, really good as an individual or only work in your particular department. Ironically, your KPIs, your key performance indicators, your bonuses, your reward system may be only rewarding you for the work that you do in your department and in your area. But the paradox is that what the organization really needs you to be good at is not only that, but also able to bring your expertise to bear with other people in other departments. I mean, if you’re not in a matrix, if you’re not in an actual matrix organization, you are in a matrix. Informally, people need what you know around the organization. Can you work with other people? Are you willing to contribute what you know and not just hold all that information in order to build power in your particular department or your area? Very important that you learn to master cross-functional collaboration. Number nine. You need to learn to get with change fast. Like I said earlier, change is happening so fast. The future’s coming so fast now that the future belongs not to the people who know, but the people who are fast learners.
You need to get with change fast. You need to learn to let go of the past and move on in the service of something greater than yourself. Why are you in this organization? Okay, you want to feed your family and so forth. Do you remember the story about in the medieval days, about the stone cutters? And this guy walked up this one stone cutter and said, what are you doing? He said, I’m chipping this rock to went to the second guy. What are you doing? He said, I’m feeding my family. Went to the third guy. What are you doing? He said, I’m building a cathedral. Okay. So what is the cathedral that you’re attempting to build? What is it that all this work that you put in every day, all the sweat equity you’re putting in there, the turmoil, all the stuff that you’re surviving, what is it in the service of? Can you find something big enough bigger than you that will enable you to make change happen in the service of that, of that thing that’s bigger than yourself? And then finally, strange advice. I have a video on this called, I think it’s called Quit Your Job, Find Your Work. You need to focus on what makes your heart sing when you do it, and something that makes a contribution to the larger to the larger picture.
The word job comes from the word job in English, which means a lump of something. So if you have a job, you. In the old days, you got paid by how many lumps of stuff you moved from. Point A to point B still works today. In-box outbox stuff comes in, I put it out, stuff comes in, I put it out. I’ve got a job. Good for me. Okay. You’re not going to survive at that level. You’re going to get bored. You’re going to run out of gas. You’re going to start to fail. What you need to do is quit your job. Find your work. Work comes from the word erg, which is a physics word in physics. For how many calories of energy does it take to move one gram, one centimeter something? It’s energy focused in a direction. Work is something moving. It’s energy moving in a direction. Where does your life energy want to make a difference? You’ve got to find that. You’ve got to find that there’s lots of videos and articles in the Wise Word Work treasure trove about this. So please, even if you stay in the same company, quit your job and find your work.
