Working in Parallel
Employees
“I’ve gone in trying to love every job I’ve ever had. But when the organization’s purpose gets hazy, and the words don’t match the actions, the job gets stressful. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore.”
Doug Bell
Founder, Parallel
Do you love your job? You should.
You want to love your job but it’s not easy. Your workload can get unmanageable, communications aren’t always clear, and you don’t feel as supported as you could be.
The truth is leaders and employees want the same thing: happy, productive employees. But you’ve been relegated to earning your paycheck and hoping things get better.
Don’t give up. There is a new way to operate.
Find your passion and become a more valuable employee
There are days you wake up dreading work. You are dreading a day because of a job that you are choosing to do. Not that switching jobs is easy but this is your time we’re talking about and your time is limited.
It’s a different game waking up in the morning with passion and purpose. Everything is better. You feel more alive. But too often these days you wake up thinking about your task list or things that seem meaningless.
If your boss could just give you clear direction on what the ultimate purpose is, you could help make it happen for them. But the reality of your job is that communication isn’t always clear and neither is your role.
In Parallel, your boss clearly identifies their priorities and your role in making them happen so that you can wake up every morning focused on making things happen in pursuit of the ultimate purpose.
If you don’t feel as though the work you’re doing on a daily basis has meaning, it’s really hard to sustain passion and productivity in a job. Regardless of your role, you need to find the meaning in your daily work.
To find meaning in your daily work, focus on the people whose lives you have the opportunity to enhance in your role: your boss, your teammates, your customers, and everyone you interact with in your role. Empathize with them to understand their goals and how you can help them succeed.
Aligning your goals with the goals of those around you makes you feel as though you're all moving toward a shared end goal that you’re all vested in contributing to. When groups of people are vested in helping each other reach their goals, everyone lives a more meaningful life.
In Parallel, your role is connected to the people whose lives you are responsible for enhancing so you can focus every day on having a meaningful impact on their lives.
You feel stuck, constrained or limited in performing your role. You fight it for a while trying to make things better by doing what you know is right. But over time you lose steam and passion.
If only you could feel free to perform your role - the role you were hired for and are paid to perform. But some leaders micromanage to the point that crushes their employees’ spirit.
In defense of micromanaging leaders, they have never had a tool for delegating responsibility that can provide employees with that freedom while keeping work connected to company priorities.
In Parallel, leaders cleanly delegate responsibility to their employees giving them freedom to find their passion, love their job and contribute to a better future for all.
A result is an event that happened in the past. It has already happened and having meetings focused on results steers the discussion onto what happened and not what is going to happen next.
Measuring and reporting progress puts results in a better context so you can see how fast your team is moving towards your ultimate purpose and how you can better focus your efforts to get there faster.
In Parallel, you can see all active team priorities, how your team is performing against each and consequently, how fast your team is collectively moving towards your ultimate purpose. So Parallel focuses your team’s discussions not on what happened but what you are going to do about it and what is going to happen next.
When you have a clear view of your leader’s ultimate purpose, you can determine whether or not that purpose is something that you want to dedicate your working life to help them fulfill. That’s your choice. It should never be just a job. You won’t thrive and fulfill your own potential.
If you can find passion in your leader’s purpose, you can easily find passion in making your role integral to fulfilling that purpose. By finding your passion, you’ll focus your energy on maximizing your contribution to your boss’ success.
This is the jackpot. By maximizing your contribution to your boss’ success, your value to your boss goes way up both securing your job and putting you in position to command a higher salary from your current employer or your next one.
Now you’re driving the bus, moving in a direction you want to move not just in a direction someone else wants you to move.
