Episode 114: Where Has All The Ambition Gone?

It’s a hot topic, on multiple fronts: Where is the ambition?  Organizations are working hard to “re-engage” their employees, based on the assumption that they should be excited to go “above and beyond.” Employees, and individuals in general, are fairly checked out – not sure where they should be focused or going on a personal level. There are many obvious reasons for this:  Burnout – on a major scale, beyond work. AI, society changes, and massive uncertainty have us constantly looking in the mirror trying to anticipate what’s coming.  Priorities have shifted – the pandemic showed us what it was like to have time for dinner with our families. And we liked it.  Our assumptions have been turned upside down – Before, going above and beyond wasn’t just in the pursuit of advancement – it was an obligation and expectation that above and beyond was the norm … and people are saying, “Hold Up!” Finally, we don’t know where we are going – many of us are unsure of where to head, as the future of work and success is quite murky.  Yes, the onus is on us to dictate our next steps, but we must do so in the context of a bigger picture. With so much change and uncertainty, we should focus less on making hard decisions, and focus more on creating the environment where we can throw out hopes and desires and see what’s possible.  This can be done at home, at work, in communities. More on the podcast – enjoy! Your Title Goes Here Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings. Click Here for an Unedited Transcript of the Podcast Welcome to Bellwether episode 114. Where has all the ambition gone? Lots to talk about today. It’s a hot topic. It’s a hot topic everywhere. Organizations are talking about it. The news is talking about it. We’ve been talking about it for a long time. People are starting to talk about it. They’re catching up and kind of realizing that their ambition is gone and what does that mean for them and where are they going to go. 0:25 There are a lot of different angles I’m gonna take today, and I want to kind of peel back the onion a little bit in terms of how to solve it, if it’s solvable, <laugh>, um, but then also what strategies people can employ to, to kind of get that little spark back and everything else. Um, I feel like it’s a Joan bias song where have all the ambitions gone. The, um, a couple of things I want to cover today just to kind of cue it up. 0:52 And then you could probably fast forward if you wanna fast forward or you could just listen to my musings throughout. I’m gonna chat about why. One, I think sentiment and priorities have changed. Two, um, people are realizing the work isn’t really what they thought it was going to be. Three, um, burnout of course we’re gonna cover today. And then four is this lack of direction. A lot of people have lost their assumptions and their, their lack of direction, their, they’re not quite sure where to go. 1:19 So I wanna talk about those in, in differing types of order. So, um, when we think about ambition, and this has been going on, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn or any of the others, I’ve been sharing some of the articles. There was an article maybe a year ago, the Times had done it. Um, the Time Magazine wrote, uh, an article on it back in 2022. LinkedIn was just posting again about new studies about how self-reported ambition is just, you know, falling off a cliff. 1:47 Um, and it’s a difficult thing to measure, you know, how do we actually measure ambition? And, and a lot of it is just kind of this feeling. We’ve got this feeling that people aren’t really doing as much as they wanted to do, or, or pushing themselves in the same kind of way. It’s not the same as productive productivity, but it’s linked to productivity and some of the other statistics in terms of actual pro productive output. 2:08 What organizations and individuals and organizations are about to do. And I’ve covered this on a podcast, it’s going away. Productivity is gone and what’s actually happening, it’s not because people are working from home, although that might have something to do with it, but there are a lot of things going on in the different types of angles, uh, that, that we have to, that we have to cover. Burnout is one of them, of course. 2:28 Um, the pandemic has shown us what life is like without work being everything. And some of the questions, is this an American problem? Is this a global problem? I’m sure it covers both, but I’m gonna talk about it from the American perspective because hey, that’s where I am and that’s where most of my clients are. And that’s where a lot of, uh, a lot of other countries that I work with tend to look towards America towards this kind of work ethic, uh, philosophy because Americans are just known as, um,you know, the crazy people who work on weekends. 2:59 Um, the ambition question is coming up a lot from clients, and I’m gonna talk about this in two different ways. One is from an organizational perspective. One is from an individual perspective, from an organizational perspective, yes, productivity is down. Um, the idea of the pursuit of advancement and working hard in all of this, you know, how do we get employees engaged? We want to engage in employees so they can go above and beyond, and we could do all of these things. 3:26 Um, so a lot of organizations are feeling that pinch. They don’t know how to approach it. They’re trying to respond with, you know, do this webinar and do this training, and do this and do that. And they’re trying to just jam more things down the throne. It’s not the right approach, in my opinion. Um, and so how do you get them to do more than expected? Well, how do you create the desire to do more than expected from an individual perspective? 3:51 Why care <laugh>, right? What are we working towards? What are we getting jazzed about? I mean, this goes back to fundamental purpose conversations that every, you know, Tom, Dick and Harry coach is talking about, find your purpose. It’s not that simple. And many individuals are just kind of saying, well, what am I working towards? You know, I’m 45 years old, I gotta do this for another 25 years. I don’t wanna do this for another 25 years. 4:13 What am I working towards? The, the assumptions have changed, the future has changed, and I don’t quite know or see where I actually fit in. So why am I working so hard in this pursuit of advancement and ambition when I don’t know what the, the end game is going to be? So that’s where, that’s where we go first and foremost. Um, and this is fundamental to, to everything is all of our assumptions. 4:37 This is beyond the ambition ques...