#7 If you're not getting better, you're getting worse, you're not in the same place
Job security and the Red Queen
If you're any good at all, you know you can be better. Lindsey Buckingham.
Status quo in professional life
You finish your studies and manage to get there.
Where to?
We don't know, but it seemed like it was somewhere, so let's accept that premise in order to move forward.
Then you get there.
Then you get a job. One that you really like, too. A highly skilled one, if you want.
They've called Bingo.
There is nothing more to talk about. You got it where you want it, you don't have to move anything.
Not really.
The Red Queen and your professional career development
Whether you're just getting started in the professional world or you've been in it for a while, this applies equally well.
There are at least three major options to choose when you are working:
Strive to improve yourself.
Don’t touch anything and consider that being as you are is perfect.
Get worse. You don't usually choose this, but it also happens. You can become a functional useless person.
The above would be simple if it didn't hide a hidden trap:
If you're not actively getting better you're getting worse.
You're not staying in the same place.
You may be under the illusion that doing the same thing every day and getting the job done right is maintaining the status quo and that this fixed picture can be maintained for years and years, but it is not.
It turns out that in the professional world there is a sort of evolutionary theory similar to the species theory.
Specifically, the Red Queen hypothesis already explains what will happen to you if you do not move forward.
This Red Queen dynamic takes its name to Lewis Carroll's 1871 children's novel "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There", written after "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".
In it there is a scene where Alice runs hand in hand with the Red Queen, who rebukes her and encourages her to go even faster, and then they exchange these words:
-I think we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything is just the same as it was!
-Of course! -said the Queen- how could it be?
-Well, in my country -said Alice, still panting-, if you run that fast for that long, you usually get somewhere else....
-A pretty slow country! -replied the Queen.
Here, you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place.
To get somewhere else you have to run twice as fast.
A pretty slow country...
In the professional world you have to move forward just to stay in the same place because everything and everyone is moving around you, so if you don't move, everything and everyone overtakes you.
Every month, every year that you are working without striving to improve, you are devaluing yourself professionally.
You are, as a professional, exactly like a newly purchased car that starts to lose value the day you drive it out of the car dealership.
- But... I have a permanent contract (job security) and I work in an interesting place doing a highly qualified job!
What I do is not easy, I have prepared myself a lot and now I have more than enough to do my job.
Sure.
So, you've chosen to stay in the same place. That is to say, to get worse.
The problem is that what happens to you is the same as what happens to species in nature, which are also immersed in the Red Queen dynamic: just to maintain the status quo and not become extinct, a prey has to evolve and improve, otherwise its predator will kill it.
Its predator, in turn, has to evolve and improve just to not become extinct, otherwise it will not hunt any prey.
What is job security?
Is it a permanent contract?
Is it 33 days per year worked? Is it 100?
Surely you know someone who has been fired, had an indefinite contract and has been paid his severance pay. Or they have not been paid and they have gone to a public agency to get a coin toss.
If you don't know anyone yet, don't worry, you will.
If this is so, then having a permanent contract and little or a lot of severance pay is not job security.
Security, what is called security, is not.
Both the contract and severance pay are defensive actions, sometimes they are stronger and sometimes weaker, depending on how the numbers vary with each reform, but it is always defensive. And it is never security, but something palliative.
I recommend a more aggressive approach:
Strive to improve yourself as a professional every month, every year, little by little, but without stopping, and build yourself the best professional profile you are capable of.
If you improve incrementally year after year, you are playing offense.
If you don't stay in the same place, but continually move forward and it is noticeable how good a professional you have become, then, only then, would I call that something close to job security.
Job security has more to do with getting 3 Whatsapps and 2 missed calls in the time you were training when some found out you were fired, than anything else.
Certainly much more to do with that than with having a contract with which you can be fired and with a compensation that you can be paid (or not paid, even, because companies also go bankrupt).
- I don't believe in it. You are painting me an extreme scenario. If I am well qualified and have a good job with a good permanent contract, I will be safe and I can be confident of keeping the position without moving.
You think that you have studied hard, that you have got a good job and that you work hard, so all this can't and won't happen.
False.
But you find that out when you are 45 or 50 years old, and you get fired or your company goes bankrupt and you have been doing the same thing for 20 years.
The same to the point that F4 registers the invoice and CTRL + up arrow is a new customer file. The same chemically pure.
You're optimized for one type of work in one type of company (certainly even for one particular company). And you're devalued for everything else.
Job inflation has overtaken you.
The problem is that catching up now, after 20 years of not doing so, is a bit difficult... to say the least.
However, if at 45, 50 or 60 years old you have become a better professional over time who has been keeping up with the knowledge and skills appreciated by the market, what usually happens is that you get called.
If you've become Terminator, someone that people fear because you're a real beast, you get called a lot.
At 40, 50 or 60.
It's hard not to call someone who brings a lot of value (solves a lot of problems).
If you've done this throughout your professional life, you've been building....
El Foso.
El Foso is built a little bit every month, every year.
El Foso is very difficult to cross when enough time has passed.
Your friend can no longer stand where you are. You've spent too much time piling up knowledge and skills.
It's spent too much time widening El Foso.
El Foso looks like this:
You and your friend came in to work together. He played at doing his job.
You did your job, obviously, and also kept pushing yourself to acquire new knowledge, like moving from being an accountant to a management control analyst, and new skills, like selling.
Now you sell your company's services to clients and do management control.
Add whatever spices you want.
In the end you end up with a foso that is impossible to cover in a short period of time.
You've convinced (or scared) me. What can I do?
You may be thinking one of two things:
- In my job, I already receive some training, so I don't have to do anything, that's all I need to do to get ahead.
Or, just the opposite:
- I don't get any training at my job, so how can I improve?
In either case, I would say that it is hard to believe that you do not know how the issues are approached at La Forja, where you forge your own tools for your professional development.
No one owes you anything. Do it yourself.
Your goal is to improve your knowledge and skills continuously, so, if you are trained, analyze if that training is good and/or useful for something in the professional line in which you intend to continue improving.
If it is not useful: the responsibility is yours to continue learning and improving.
If you are not trained: the responsibility is yours to keep learning and improving.
- But... how do I do that? I can't study a master's degree every year.
Don't study for a master's degree every year. Why would you want to do that?
Do three things:
Identify what subjects you're interested in improving in.
Sit down, think about it and write it down.
Find out from whom you can learn within your job about those topics.
Your own work is a spectacular place to squeeze the knowledge that your colleagues, bosses and subordinates have. Take what you can from there.
If that's not possible, find out from which friends or acquaintances you can learn it.
In parallel, do this:
There is a thing called books.
You can identify the good ones on the subject you are interested in.
You can buy them.
You can even read them and take notes.
I go further.
There are many online trainings available at very low or even free prices, and there are experts in everything under the sun sharing knowledge on YouTube.
There are podcasts specialized in the topics you are interested in.
And there are courses, masters and formal training. There is that too.
So you have the full range of training available to advance on your own. From on the job to off. From free to expensive.
But you know the style I'm going to recommend.
Be a little more aggressive: theory and practice.
Why not learn and put it into practice?
Put in the work today that they won't, so you will get tomorrow what they can't. Dwayne Johnson.
Get involved in new projects within your work. Propose those projects because you are interested in advancing in that direction and learning more.
- I would, but my job won't let me do that. It's all very restricted.
And what's the problem?
There may be a problem, figure it out by knowing if you're professionally aligned with what you're doing, depending on whether you're more of a creator or an executor.
If it's not that problem, then you do it on your own as a side project.
I'm not telling you to create another company or do another job, I'm telling you to make a demo, a mockup, get the prototype going on your own in your garage. On your PC. With a friend in the evenings.
What you want is to improve.
If you're lucky in your job, you'll be fine and you won't want to change anything, but that's not what you're looking for.
You're looking to move up to stay in the same place.
You're looking not to devalue yourself and become obsolete.
That's the goal.
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José Fortes - La Forja
josefortes@substack.com