You need to decide what problems, what opportunities, what projects you’re going to work on.
Fred L. Turner – McDonald’s CEO
Your boss is the #1 factor that will make or break your work. Many of us who’ve been in the workplace understand this only too well.
You’ll work for bosses who steal your ideas or take credit for what you’ve done. You’ll work for ‘death march’ or ‘my way or the highway’ bosses. In other companies, you’ll have ‘stewardship’ bosses, who don’t seem to coordinate or execute well. In the middle, there are many different styles of boss, supervisor, manager, executive, or even leader.
Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, called project work ‘boss diversification.’ Adams says: “the worst risk you can face is to have one boss, somebody who can make your life miserable and then decide when it is time for you to go.” By diversifying (side-hustle) work, you lower the risk of working for a horrific boss. “The more customers and clients you have, the safer you are. People are going to gravitate to what’s safest,” he continues.[i]
Do you wonder why VUCANs don’t want to be a boss? In a good to great economy, the power of a bad supervisor or manager has diminished. If a VUCAN offers real value, people can sell their services to the highest bidder. And, many companies, are having a harder time retaining key workers.
Project hopping is good when the economy is strong and there’s a lot of demand for specialized skills that companies are willing to pay for. As a general rule, when times are tough, it’s better to homestead the job and wait out the bad times.
Work Lesson Earned: One way to survive a bad boss is to have side-hustle projects. Think of this as work diversification. Eighty percent of the work in an organization may be project oriented. Organizations are projectizing their core processes. Most consulting, engineering, and medicine are already 100% projectized.
[i] ‘Scott Adams Keeps the Home Office Humming’, New York Times, September 7, 1997.