The Three Truths of Misery

If you enjoyed The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey and Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, then you might like another Lencioni book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, though I’m afraid his novelised business manual, which recounts the “unforgettable story of Brian Bailey, an abruptly retired executive searching for meaning”, didn’t do a single thing for me.

More objectionable than anything else is Lencioni’s thesis that “the universal causes of anguish and frustration at work” are: (1) Anonymity. Management shows little interest in you, your background or your life; (2) Irrelevance. You have no idea your work matters to anyone; and (3) Immeasurement. You have no objective way of gauging your performance.

My objections, conveniently, are threefold: (1) “immeasurement” is not a word; (2) While “anonymity”, “irrelevance” and “immeasurement” can make people unhappy, they do not do so “universally”. If you simply see work as a way of making money, then these qualities could make a job attractive; (3) There are evidently more than three signs of a miserable job and to discover how many more you need only ask some miserable friends and colleagues…

Read atTimes Online