ra2 studio/Shutterstock
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “good enough”?
Professionals often subscribe to the notion that you only achieve success if you work longer, push harder, and sacrifice more — often in pursuit of an indeterminate amount of greatness.
Such narratives often clash with millennials and Gen-Zs, who are more value-driven in making career decisions. With COVID-19 predicating career shifts and meaning-seeking, early-career professionals are wondering if they should stay for “the grind” or move on to new opportunities.
We understand that navigating your work environment can become challenging if you begin to experience feelings of apprehension or burnout, which we’ve both felt. However, we’ve discovered a framework that allows you to reconsider your current circumstances and adopt an approach wherein you shift away from a grind mentality towards something more sustainable.
In the book “Designing Your Work Life,” authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans explore how to redesign your work when you are feeling dissatisfied with your job. An approach they propose is the “Good Enough” framework, wherein you think about the components of your current role that make your work manageable. From there, you reframe your perspective to focus on those aspects as a way to make things “good enough” for now. This does not mean you stay in your current job forever. Instead, this framework aims to help you stay engaged professionally and gives you time to thoughtfully consider what your next professional move may be.
A disclaimer: the “Good Enough” framework does not mean ignoring or downplaying harassment or discrimination in the workplace. Rather, it is an avenue for reframing and reimagining the path forward when you may feel stuck in your current work circumstances.
*****
When it comes to deciding when to adopt the “Good Enough” framework, you may first notice some changes in your internal or external environment that create imbalances in your work. For instance, you are likely to experience volatile shifts when personnel changes happen in the workplace. That could be a supervisor taking a position elsewhere, the unit is downsized, or new members joining the team.
Such moments may cause your workload to increase because you may have to step up to shepherd the organization. The “Good Enough” framework can help you stay focused on your increased responsibilities in these moments of transition and also offers you an opportunity to demonstrate your leadership and institutional knowledge.
In higher education, many of us often have to wear multiple hats due to limited resources. Such role-switching creates friction and limits one’s bandwidth, which often leads to a de-prioritization of one’s own professional development. In order to create space in your professional world, utilizing the “Good Enough” framework can help you decide on the level of engagement you want to have with each of your projects, tasks, and relationships so that you can have some energy left to yourself.
Despite growing feelings of dissatisfaction, a variety of circumstances may prohibit making a career change (dual-career challenges, immigration restrictions, lack of better opportunities than the current one, to name a few). Instead of making a position or employer change, you can focus on what you can leverage now within your current position to grow yourself, following the “Good Enough” framework, before your circumstances shift.
If you decide to adopt the “Good Enough” framework, there are some strategies to help redefine what success in your current role looks like. Consider the following to help navigate your circumstances:
1. Keep track of accomplishments and challenges
It can be difficult to maintain perspective of your accomplishments when you are feeling frustrated with work. Keeping track of your work wins throughout the week gives you a written account of the progress you are making and makes updating your professional documents easier. Tracking challenges provides you with points to consider when you decide you are ready to make a career transition. It helps you identify what you want to include and avoid in your next role.
2. Find a confidante
It can feel isolating to be at a professional crossroads. Finding someone to confide in and collaborate with can be transformative. Do you have a peer in a different department or another institution? Reach out to them to see if they are willing to establish a recurring meeting to discuss each other’s professional development. A key point to remember when establishing this dynamic is to make the conversations productive, and do not treat them as venting sessions. The reason for this is if you spend the entire time revisiting your feelings of dissatisfaction, you can find yourself in a negativity cycle and leave the conversations feeling more defeated than when you began. Instead, find enrichment opportunities and discuss your work wins. It is important to remember how you are succeeding with someone you trust to remind you along the way.
While we present this article for those who may be contemplating their current work, we also feel the “Good Enough” framework provides valuable opportunities for managers, especially for the ones who want to support their early-career supervisees and grow their team.
There are strategies managers can adopt to help their team navigate difficult situations and prevent the need for the “Good Enough” framework altogether. Earlier, we talked about how you may experience certain challenges during major organizational transitions. When events like this happen, managers should be the ones to reach out to their team and stay tuned with the team’s existing conditions.
Similarly, knowing many early-career folks crave advancement opportunities, managers can be proactive about discussing career development with their supervisees. This certainly requires a manager to be strategic and to prioritize human resources. Even when a tangible promotion may not be possible due to factors a manager cannot control, a supervisor can still help each person on the team in various ways to ensure career development is in place to challenge individual growth.
Final Words
As more higher education employees are leaving their jobs, we hope this article provides a new way of thinking, wherever you are in your career journey. Especially when career decisions are so intertwined with our personal circumstances, we want to highlight the in-between space for you to make progress. Ultimately, every Good-Enough effort will become a critical building block for your path forward.
