“People always think it is easy as a founder to job craft. On paper you have almost total freedom and flexibility in how you do your job. The reality, for me at least, often feels very different.”
Despite the work I do, the research I read and share, and the amazing people I get to learn from, I personally have not mastered the perfect balance at work.
Whilst I still aspire to have better work life integration, I have found job crafting as a practice is critical to me remaining buoyant, focussed and perhaps most importantly energised and excited by the work I do.
People always think it is easy as a founder to job craft. On paper you have almost total freedom and flexibility in how you do your job. The reality, for me at least (and many other founders I know), often feels very different.
As a founder or director, the opportunity to personalise your work is perhaps always available in theory, but in the midst of day-to-day working on, and in, the business it can feel hard to find the space and focus to craft your work .
Despite the challenges of finding time and energy to job craft, I do actively and deliberately find and create opportunities to iterate, improve and experiment with how I do my job.
Job crafting fundamentally helps me allocate the energy and focus to the areas of (my messy) work and life that need it and matter to me.
How I job craft
Building on the (fabulous) blogs from Chloe, Charlotte and Carly, here are some small ways that I apply job crafting to my job and practice what I preach when it comes to shaping how we act, interact and think about our work.
Task crafting
I regularly try to tinker and change how I do tasks and allocate my time. A recent task crafting experiment - inspired by Charlotte - was to dictate rather than write elements of this blog. And whilst I’ve found this awkward and clumsy it’s also been freeing and fun to approach a specific task in a new and novel way. This experiment has encouraged me to think about other ways I might find for dictation and it is definitely something I’m committing to exploring further.
Skill crafting
I feel fortunate that I feel I am constantly learning in my role (although at times I crave a bit of stability); there are always new ideas to explore, people to learn from and skills and knowledge to develop.
From a work perspective I always strive to have at least one work project that stretches me and the team to learn and try new things or new approaches to existing issues.
As we look to develop the Job Canvas, a way that I am deliberately learning is my knowledge around the world of SAAS (software as a service) and how to build and market new products. I’m listening to lots of podcasts, speaking to people in the industry and reading lots of blogs.
Relationship crafting
Relationships inside and outside of Tailored Thinking are core and fundamental to everything that we do. We work with, and for, people.
I try not to take any relationship for granted and find ways to shape, improve and amplify the connections I have with others.
Aside from colleagues and clients, I actively create and make time to informally connect and speak with people who are doing interesting things related to making work better to share and spark ideas, offer help and support, collaborate and / or just chat.
I try to pencil these types of meeting in on a quarterly recurring basis which means that we are not scratching around at the last minute to find time in our diaries (I hate diary management), that we forget to reconnect when we are busy doing other things.
They’re informal, unstructured and are always positive. I often come away from them feeling energised and excited – this might be about something they are doing - or having discussed and explored a new idea.
Purpose crafting
I’m always surprised by the power of cognitive or purpose crafting. Simply changing how we think about a work activity can fundamentally shape how we engage with it. Remembering why you are doing something, and why it matters to you, can be instrumental in pushing forward with an activity when motivation or inspiration is in scant supply.
Along with diary management, another area of work that I never look forward to or enjoy relates to doing expenses and reviewing the finances of the business. Last year I started to think about how I could look at, and approach these tasks differently.
I started to think of finance tasks as ‘work weeds’ related to the general gardening required of growing a business. I recognised that most gardeners don’t look forward to weeding but they know it is a key and important part of having a thriving and blooming garden.
So now, when it comes to doing my expenses and finances I think about this as a way of showing care and compassion for the business rather than a transactional activity.
If I’m honest, this change in my mindset isn’t enough to spark joy and excitement when I log into Quickbooks or download the latest financial report, but it has shifted how I view these activities and I find myself dealing with them more regularly and thoroughly rather than simply putting them off.
Being diligent about my finances is a way of caring and being considerate for the business and is ultimately in the service of the team, our clients and partners, and the people we support.
Wellbeing crafting
I find watching films and TV a real escape but I often struggle to create the time to do this. Whilst I used to think it was sacrilege to not watch films and TV programmes in one sitting, I’ve started to ‘snack’ on films during my lunch break.
It feels really indulgent (I need to get out more) to watch a 15 or 20 minutes of film or TV programme whilst I am eating my lunch and it enables me to completely switch off. In the past couple of months I’ve made my way through a rewatch of Point Break (still a classic) and the first season of Severed (brilliant and mind-bending).
Another way I have wellbeing crafted relates to giving myself permission to run during ‘office hours’ as I know categorically and unequivocally that I will be a better worker, thinker, collaborator, husband and dad after I have exercised.
Job crafting failures
Whilst I’ve shared some ideas of how I have successfully job crafted, it’s important to recognise that job crafting is an experiment, and that experiments don’t always work. Some notable failures I’ve had when it comes to job crafting include:
Keeping Fridays free from meetings (I found that I for lots of practical reasons struggled to keep this day completely free)
Resolving never doing work in the evenings or at weekends (I found this absolute approach unworkable and ultimately increased my levels of anxiety - I now have looser boundaries)
Having check-in meetings with colleagues first thing in the morning before I do anything else (I find that to give the team my full attention it is more helpful for me to have settled in for 30 minutes or so by planning my day and scanning emails and messages)
Going to the gym at lunch (I struggled to commit the time to do this - I still aspire to do this but need to approach this in a different way – any advice welcome).
Finding the light
When it comes to my personal job crafting, I don’t do anything different from what we advocate to others. Starting small, with curiosity and commitment is all you need.
Making a small change to how I do my work can make me feel more in control of my day.
As founder, when you feel overwhelmed or overstretched it’s often hard to see a way through. And for me job crafting is like the smallest chink of light coming through in an otherwise blacked out room. It allows me to reorientate and refocus on the things that matter to me and hopefully allows us a team to do the work that matters to others.
The author of this blog, Rob Baker is founder and Chief Positive Deviant at Tailored Thinking. Rob is a chartered fellow of both the CIPD and the Australian HR Institute and has a first class Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. He is passionate about making work better and making better work.
