35. The Future of Work
There is no doubt our world is going through a lot of technological, demographic, and social change. And among many other things, this means that the way we are working is changing. So, it’s time to look at how we can think about the ways we learn and develop in our careers, and the future of work in general.
This episode was inspired by a book I recently read called The Adaptation Advantage. It talks about the change the world is going through, the importance of letting go of the past and learning fast, and how to lead others in this evolution of how we work. And I’m sharing all my key insights with you into how this applies to public health in this episode.
We know that COVID has pretty much been two years of adapting and responding, but it won’t end there. So, tune in this week to hear my insights into the future of how we do things in public health, how public health needs to adapt as a whole, and how you as a public health professional need to respond over the coming years to avoid burnout.
If you’re struggling at work, burnt out, overwhelmed, hate your boss, or at the end of your rope after a year-and-a-half of dealing with a pandemic, I have an amazing free course beginning in 2022. It’s packed with simple, direct content that you can easily consume over your lunch break to help you feel better and less stressed in 2022. Join the 2022 course waitlist here!
What You Will Discover:
Why public health has not kept up with other fields in these fast-changing times.
The industrial revolution we are currently going through.
Why the future of work is going to involve constant and consistent adaptation.
The changes in the way traditional education is being viewed, both by those currently in it and those
who have been through it.
Why we will need thought work and mind-management skills more than ever throughout this evolution.
How public health has already had to adapt over the pandemic, and how it will have to continue adapting in the future.
Why the future of work will require a shift in our occupational identity, anchoring ourselves in the why, more than the how.
Resources:
Sign up for a Curiosity Call to find out more about coaching
Join the waitlist for the 2022 Public Health Burnout Mini-Course.
Follow me on Instagram!
The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley
Full Episode Transcript:
If you're two to five years out of your MPH degree, love public health, but find yourself secretly unhappy at work and maybe even thinking about quitting your job, then this is the podcast for you. I'm Marissa McKool, host of the Thoughts Are Your Root Cause podcast. Join me each week as I share tips, tools, and resources to help you have the career you've always dreamed of without any of the stress you are experiencing right now. Come along.
Hi everyone, welcome. I hope you had a great holiday season. If you were celebrating any holidays or have a great winter season going, it's almost 2022. I cannot believe that. It just started feeling like 2021 about three or so months ago. It felt like 2020 was most of 2021. So, this is tripping me out a little bit. I wanted to get into the episode as soon as possible because I am so excited to talk about this. But first, I want to give some updates on the new course coming out soon. I know some of you have been wondering about a few more details, so I want to make sure you all get that.
So, I know this time of year, many of us are thinking about goals, setting goals, and New Year's resolutions. We're really marketed towards that, right. And we think about what we want to achieve and accomplish next year. I just think we often forget to take time to process and heal from the year prior. Sometimes we take time to reflect on what we accomplished this past year, but have you ever taken time to just process and heal the challenges you went through and what you faced? I'm guessing not.
And I think that more than ever before, we need to do that. I mean, it's been two years living and working in a pandemic, and I think that's so important. And also, if you do really want to achieve some goals, like, if that is something you truly want and are committed to, I really think all of us, in order to achieve our goals, have to be able to process and heal from the challenges we've been going through, right, and let go of some of that burden. So, that's what this public health burnout mini-course will help you do.
So, the past couple of weeks, I have been talking and teasing a little bit about a new course that I have created for you all coming out in 2022. So, it's the public health burnout mini-course. I decided to call it a mini-course because it's more accurate. It's not as intensive as a true course or classroom, but it's a series of three videos that you'll get that will help you process and heal and not bring all of your burnout into 2022.
So, the course will cover three main areas that I see folks in public health struggling with right now. The first is how to deal with the impact of COVID two years in, what to do when your boss or leadership are making it harder, right, making your job harder, and what to do when you have too high of a workload. So, the boss/leadership challenges and the high workload, we experience those before COVID. And now, it's two years into COVID, and the burnout is so much higher. So, that's why this mini-course will focus on these three areas.
It will be short videos for each topic. I am making them short because I know your time is precious. So, you can watch these on your lunch break while getting ready for work, and they will have a big impact. And by impact, I mean that just because they're short mini-series videos doesn't mean they're not going to be useful, right? They're going to give you something that you can use to help process and heal and go into 2022, either leaving some of your burnout behind or having some tools and skills to prevent future burnout.
So, it will be released to those on the waitlist and only those on the waitlist on January 10th. It's in one week, and then the folks on the waitlist will have a whole month, and it won't be available to the broader public until February 7th, so that is a month later. So, if you think you might be interested in this if you want to set some goals, but see that maybe processing COVID will be useful, before you do that, or if you're really struggling right now, want 2022 to be different, sign up for the waitlist. That way, you can get the mini-course when it's released to the waitlist, January 10th. Otherwise, you're going to have to wait until February 7th. So, if you aren't on it yet, join now, mckoolcoaching.com/courses, that's courses plural. And I'll also leave a link in the show notes.
Today we're talking about the future of work. So, kind of on this New Year's theme. So, this episode was inspired by a book I just finished reading called The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley. So, I actually found this copy randomly in one of my neighborhood free libraries that people have in their yards. You know the kind of little boxy things in folk's yards where you can leave a book or take a book. I always check those when I walk by, and I found this. I looked at it, and it seemed interesting, and it was actually published in 2020. So, it's really recent.
If after this episode you're interested in it, check it out. We'll leave a link in the show notes where you can buy a copy if you want, or I encourage you to see if your local county or city library has a copy or if your workplace would purchase one, so we can be a little bit more sustainable. So, the book covers three main areas, and it's in these three sections.
So, the first is adapting at the speed of change. And it talks about how and why we need to adapt to the technology, demographic, and social change that the world is going through. The second section talks about letting go and learning fast to thrive. So, this talks about the section, our attachment to occupational identities and why we need to let that go, as well as the changes and how we need to be able to learn and develop in our careers. And the last section is, leading people in the organization in the evolution of work.
So, they talk about addressing how to lead both individually and as an organization in the future of work. So, today I am just going to share a handful of key insights. There's so much more in the book, so if you find this interesting, try to find a copy. I thought it was really great, and as I was reading it, I just couldn't wait to share it with you all. I do want to start with a few notes about some of the things I want you to be mindful of, not necessarily for what I am talking about in the podcast episode, but if you do, pick up a copy of the book.
The book itself addresses a lot of the existing concerns folks have about, quote, machines taking human jobs, right. So, this idea is technology is taking over and AI, and we're losing our jobs, all of that. For me personally, it really shifted a lot of my thinking around that belief and technology in this area. However, I won't be covering or talking about that at all today. So, if you're interested in that, the book is where to go. This book is framed much more in a technology and business way, but part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast is that as I was reading it, I just kept writing in the margins, like, oh my gosh, public health needs this. This applies to public health. So much of it applies to public health.
So that's kind of what I will do today is talk about it in relation to public health. And lastly, I just want you to note that the book did not really address diversity in a broad sense. It did very narrowly and not in a way where I felt satisfied, and it didn't talk about equity to my recollection at all. So, I left with a lot of questions about the future of work and the impact of the future of work or of the changes they're recommending on both what we may call "low-wage or entry-level workers" or marginalized identities.
They did show many case studies of changes being made currently to adapt the future of work by individual leaders or large organizations, but I didn't think that they addressed how that affected or what the experience was like for marginalized identities or entry-level positions, whether they were taken into consideration in those changes, or affected, and I don't recall any discussion about the impact or consideration for folks who are disabled or have a disability.
So, I wanted to share that caveat because I really think this book is valuable and gives a really great perspective. But if you do end up reading it, I would just encourage you to read it with an equity mindset and really ask questions along the way about equity and who's at the table in these discussions and changes, who's going to be most impacted that maybe aren't being thought of, ask those kinds of questions.
Okay, so, this book presents essentially that we are in the fourth industrialized revolution right now. So, I want to review the first three, don't worry, it won't be too much of a history class, and then talk about this fourth one they're stating we're in right now. So, the first industrialized revolution started about the end of the 1700s and went into throughout the 1800s. And this was really mechanical and manufacturing. So, think of it as the steam engine invention. I always think if I watch the show Victoria on PBS Masterpiece, and they have an episode where the steam engine invention, you know, Prince Albert gets really excited, and he's really hesitant, and that's what I imagine during this revolution.
And so, the focus of this industrial period was learning a specific skill and usually learning it on the job. And the job was often multi-generational, meaning okay, maybe your father became a steam engine mechanic, and you learned that trade, and now you do too. And then the second industrial revolution was the beginning of the 1900s. So, this is really where mass production began to develop and take off, and then, of course, electricity. And so, the focus was to join a trade, right?
We think about trade school, and you develop these trades in trade school. You might also learn on the job or from family, but the trade schools really became a larger part of it. So, for example, an electrician, and then there was a focus on the division of labor, and there were different movements that happened with that, which I won't get into. And then the third industrialized revolution was at the start of the 1970s. So, computer, automation of manufacturing, and then the focus became much more on formal higher education as we know it now.
So, picking an aligned major and then moving up the career ladder in that sector. That might be what we're all most familiar with. So, what the authors pose is that we're in the fourth revolution. Starting 2015, and is to present, and they state that it's kind of cyber-physical systems, internet, technology expansion, AI, and all of that. And the focus is on learning to learn and learning to adapt and creating new types of value.
Then, it looks a lot more like hybrid jobs and multi-industry careers. So, not just staying in one sector or career type and not just doing a job that has one function, meaning that the future of work, this is what they propose will be a constant and consistent adaptation. So, the authors talk about how this will require the ability to reskill and upskill, reskill being expending knowledge and skills to new domains, and upskill being deepening your knowledge and skills into your current domain.
They also talk about in the future of work; we need to let technology do the mundane, repetitive tasks and spend more time as humans doing uniquely human skills, learning, reflecting, leadership, and creativity. And they also talk about how we will need to anchor our work to our why, why we are doing our work rather than our how, which is how we are doing it. And I'm going to purpose one more, which I will talk more in detail at the end of the episode. A skill we will need in the future work which, is emotional skills.
We will need thought work and mind management skills to ensure that constant adaptation is not exhausting, which we have felt and seen during COVID. COVID has been two years of constant adaptation. Most of you listening probably have been exhausted by this because you don't have the mental and emotional skills to navigate the high speed of adaptation and change happening. But if these authors are accurate in predicting the future of work will continue to be this fast-paced changing and adaptation, then you will need better mind management and emotional management skills, so you are exhausted by constant adaptation and change.
You'll also need these skills, so you're not as resistant to technology, and changes in technology won't be so disruptive to your life. So, you don't get so upset and hold on and don't let go, and so you can be able to continue adapting. Okay so, one of the first things they talked about was how this speed of change is real. In the sense of, think back to how I outlined those industrialized revolutions.
The timing of each revolution has sped up. The first revolution took about 100 years, and it occurred over that period. The second, more than 50 years, the third less than 50, and the fourth we have only been in for a handful of years, but it's moving faster than ever, as well as there are many other things speeding up faster than ever, including population demographics, and social and cultural norm changes.
So, some examples they used were, adults over 65 are on track to double between 2020-30. With the decline in fertility rates, the middle child may become extinct. Gender identity is moving from thinking about it in a fixed binary way to a fluent non-binary way. Then, there are other changes across race, religion, education, consent, power, occupation, authority, experience, populations; all of that is shifting rapidly. As well as, and they don't talk about this, but public health concerns are changing rapidly.
There are constant and ever more quickly developing environmental threats and disasters. Infectious diseases are becoming more and more of a challenge in modern-day, and it's not just COVID. Think about Zika, Ebola, and other outbreaks. The political division that we've seen among communities and populations that kind of cause disruption and constant changes in policies in healthcare, from reproductive health to vaccinations. So, what will be adapted or need to be adapted in this fourth industrialized revolution?
The first I want to touch on is career adaptation. So, the authors talk about how the past experience of getting a college education, climbing the career ladder, and then retirement is being deconstructed and rebuilt. They argue this is happening because of the fast-changing world increasing technological advances, rapidly changing population demographics, shifts in social and cultural experiences, and I would argue shifts in climate change, and health needs, and all of that public health stuff we think about.
With the world changing so fast, technology and all the other factors—Well, what is required of you and your job now be the same in three years? Or better yet, is what's required in your job now the same as what was required five years ago? The answer to both of those questions is probably no. What we have seen and are seeing in this pandemic has lit a fire under this change. People are now leaving their careers, not just jobs, but careers, and making big changes.
Universities are having to grapple with students questioning why they're paying huge dollar amounts for several years of formal schooling, organizations are dealing with high turnover and trying to figure out how to have the training, roles, onboarding, and teams that don't crumble with all this change, and the truth is it's extremely uncomfortable for all of us. It is a challenge for folks to change, all of us. For folks who are more seasoned in their careers, it can be challenging because it means what they've come to expect, and all their knowledge and experience in hiring, organizing, leading is going away. And there's some resistance.
I'm sure you've seen this; I had a conversation a few years ago with a leader with the organization I was in who was complaining about millennials, which I identify as a millennial, jumping from job to job. They were clearly upset by this, and they've been in their organization for, I think, 20 something years. Another reason some more seasoned professionals might struggle with this change is even if they don't admit this, part of it is, they don't know what it means for them.
Do they leave and adapt as well? Do they stay and cling to what they've known for so far in their career? If they change, will they be able to change when they're set in their ways? All of those things. And it's a challenge for earlier or mid-career folks because what we have been taught about career preparation and expectation and planning is rapidly coming undone. And we will have to forge our own new path, a clear map to guide us, which can create panic and anxiety for many of us.
It's a challenge for public health organizations, whether academic, government, non-profit because those organizations have traditionally moved very slow, right? There are high levels of bureaucracy and hierarchy and complex processes and apartments, layers of review and approval, limited resources, time, and staffing. So, public health has not been a field that has really kept up as fast as other fields and domains with the fast-changing times. Public health has a hard time of letting go of the way we've always done it, has resisted in many ways, integration of a lot of technology that could change the way public health is conducted.
Now, I'm not saying this isn't for a good reason. There are concerns about technology not being designed thoughtfully and potentially increasing inequities, as well as real challenges of doing programmatic and research and new innovative ways that don't leave out communities. And of course, given our work is centered on protecting the public, there are difficulties with changing processes and policies, and approvals quicker to match the pace of changing times while also integrating enough protections, you could say, in the process to ensure there is no harm.
So, I am not saying public health needs to all of a sudden mirror big tech or business and throw everything out the window. What this book talks about is real, and we've seen it in the pandemic. That the fast-changing working world is changing fast, it's happening across sectors. So, the question is, how is public health going to adapt as an organization, and how are you as a public health professional going to adapt? I think public health organizationally and as individuals, we've kind of envisioned that we will just stay in our little public health lane on the freeway, on a two-way highway, and business and tech will be in their own lane. We'll just drive next to each other. And they'll probably drive faster, but that's okay. We will eventually catch up.
But now, what we're seeing is all of a sudden, we're on a six-lane freeway, all the cars are crossing lanes, right? You need to keep up with the speed of traffic. So, the question is, is public health, and are you going to continue to stay in the far right lane driving ten miles under the speed limit, or move back and forth between lanes, move with the speed of traffic? So, this second piece I want to talk about that they brought up is educational adaptation and change.
So, the authors argue that education is being replaced with continual learning; either it is now, or it needs to be. It is not tied to a degree or formal learning. So, this book was actually written before COVID. But with COVID hitting, I've seen, and I think a lot of us have seen firsthand how this is really changing, both academic institutions, I saw that firsthand. I was working at a school in public health during the first year and a half of COVID and in the broader field of public health. As many of you have seen, I had to learn very quickly on the job in the past two years.
Public health, during the pandemic, has had to seek out staff who don't have a formal MPH to feel gaps and train them on the job to meet the need. Current staff with MPH or doctorate have been required to adapt in their job; learn new skills or do projects that weren't really part of their role or their formal training. So, as this is happening, many people are questioning and rethinking education for the future of public health. Students are wondering now more than ever if a multi-year expensive degree is necessary. Professionals are reflecting back on their degree and seeing all the gaps of learning they missed that aren't really helping them in the current fast-changing working world.
So, the author quotes, and I love this quote, we tell students to pick a good major to get a good job in a good industry to climb the vertical career ladder. Well, that ladder is gone. And public health is going to have to grapple with how to ensure the staff is trained to do their job without relying so heavily on formal degree training programs. And schools of public health are going to have to figure out how to stay relevant when the needs of communities in the world itself are changing at twice if not three times the speed of traditional degree programs.
Students and professionals are going to have to figure out how to climb a jungle gym, right. Those domes, if you remember as a kid that have tons of different bars and different directions and shapes, and get around that, rather than a ladder that's just one direction. Because waiting 2, 4, or 7 years for professionals to get trained in a skill or a back to school and get a new skill or a deeper skill with the newest method, it's not going to serve the field if new methods and skills are going to be needed to be developed and learned and implemented every few years, or once a year, or several times a year with the way things are going.
So, the future may look like positions themselves and their tasks being more focused on learning, with a focus on learning through curiosity and inquiry rather than formal training through prototyping and trying things out through more of a designed thinking approach. This would also require us to unlearn, which means developing the ability to let go of information or systems or ways of doing things that no longer apply or is useful. Letting go of the quote, way we have always done it. And many people in public health struggles with this.
I bet you know someone in your organization who, in a project meeting or talking to, has been resistant to trying something new and express that. And I bet there's been a few times where you've been the resistant one to trying something new or changing how things are done. I want to share one example, although there are many, but this one example, on the whole, public health has not adapted to utilizing a lot of the new technologies out there to make the field more innovative, effective, or responsive.
So, for example, we've been conducting research for via traditional [inaudible] methods, right, collect individual data via email survey or in person, which can take a lot of time in order to get a sample size we want, and you know, the representation we might be looking for. But now we have technology that could be used to collect data for research, at record speeds, reaching more people, even reaching populations we have a hard time reaching with traditional methods, doing research on topics we traditionally struggle with getting enough data in order to do research on them. This is using what we know as quote, big data, social media, to collect data using phone apps, and there are lots of people doing this type of research, using big data to conduct public health research.
But a lot of them are not led by folks with public health backgrounds. Who aren't thinking about equity, who aren't thinking about the community. We don't see as much federal funding going towards investments in public health research in this area. We see a lot of app companies and entrepreneurs taking this on and investing in this. And there are valid concerns in public health for changing or adapting the way research is done in using more technology. Right, concerns about ethics, privacy, and so many other things.
But I would argue that is exactly why public health needs to adapt and change, so it can be at the table. In partnership with tech companies, engineers, businesses, and others, to be the voice to advocate for change that is equitable that doesn't exclude the community, that draws sound scientific findings. This will require letting go of the old ways of doing things so we can take up new ways of doing them.
The other piece the authors talk about is letting go of your occupational identity. So, one of the other things the authors discuss is the need to unlearn and let go of occupational identity; let go of quote, who we think we are. So, what is occupational identity? What is the first or second question you typically ask someone you just met? What do you do? We have centered our whole identities based on our career and what we do for work. What the authors pose is that the future of work and how it's changing will require what we do, the actual work, tasks, and skills to change every few years or more often than even that.
This means your occupational identity will constantly be shifting as well. They talk about changing the question from what do you do to where do you find a purpose? Because as our careers functions and skills and even sectors will become more and more fluid and intertwined. The question of what you will do or what you do for your job will lose its relevance because our jobs will no longer be our primary identity. This is why instead of anchoring yourself to your how, as in how do you do your job, because the how will change so much, and so much more often. You would need to anchor yourself to your why more often; why do you do your job?
So, when the how changes, it won't throw you off because even if your how changes, the why remains. But they talk about, and I quote here, it is very difficult to learn and adapt when you feel your core identity is under threat. And this is exactly why there is so much resistance to change in the workplace, change on the larger organizational level, team level, individual job description level because we feel our occupational identity is under threat, and we will lose it, and we won't know our place, or who we are, how we fit in. But if you weren't so tied to your occupational identity, then those changes wouldn't scare you as much. You wouldn't be as resistant to them.
Public health has developed into a field of experts. Now, on the one hand, most folks in public health do not call themselves an expert because all of us know that even in science, nothing is ever 100% certain. A new finding next week can undo what we know so far, so we tend not to think of ourselves as an expert, per se. But the way the field is set up to learn a skill or understanding in a content topic area deeply and then continue to work in that for your career, you're set up to become a sort of like, expert, and adapt that mindset, even unconsciously.
One of the things the book talks about is that research has shown that the more we acquire expertise in one area, the less we are willing to question what we know or go out of our comfort zone to try something new. So, this is why organizationally, and individually public health also has been so resistant to the fast-moving change. We're going to have to let go of some of that idea of expertise and spending so much time becoming so skilled in one area or knowledgeable in a topic area.
The next piece is around human adaptation, right? So, we've talked about career adaptation, educational adaptation, occupational identity, so I am going to share a little bit about what Brook talks about, but I am also going to talk a lot more about my perspective as a coach. And what you need to do to be able to adapt, what mental and emotional skills do you need to acquire in order to do that? Because at the core of being able to adjust to the career, changes, educational changes, occupational identity changes, you will need to be able to adapt your brain.
So, the book quotes Dan Gilbert, who said, human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished. Our brains hate change. Ironically our brains are really good at changing. This is how humans have survived. This is essentially evolution. But as humans, we have a desire to be in a fixed mindset to avoid change and adaptation because to our brain that saves energy and reserves effort. Our brain wants to do that, have that reserve in order to run from a lion, or to fight off a purse robber, so our brain is resistant to using its energy for change and adaptation, especially so frequently. With how fast the world is changing, we do need to become more comfortable and use skills in order to manage the constant change and adaptation mentally. It is a skill, the skill of managing your mind because your brain will resist it.
And you've probably seen that during the pandemic and experienced your brain resisting it. And when you're trying to adapt while resisting the adaptation and the change, that creates exhaustion, overwhelm, and a lot of burnout. It's probably what you've been experiencing a lot during the pandemic. You have to take charge of your brain. In order to lead it where it doesn't burn too much energy but also doesn't see new change as a life threat, you need to manage your mind. It requires you to get comfortable with uncertainty and to expect changes. So, when the changes happen, you're not surprised and don't resist them, you accept them and take them on, and you have the brainpower and energy in order to think creatively, strategically, and change.
When you spend so much of your time in resistance, holding on to how things have always been done, how you thought things were going to go, your work identity, you become way too tired and exhausted to be able to adapt and change. You're also going to have to let go of some of your conscious and unconscious beliefs about what work is, and work should be, work cannot be, in order to adapt. So, right now, I want you to ask yourself on a belief scale of one through ten, ten being you believe it hardcore, and one being you don't believe it at all. How much do you believe that in order to get paid higher than your MPH ceiling, you have to get a doctorate degree? Leaving a job after only working there six months is bad. Life will be so much better in retirement. With your MPH, you can't work in business, engineering, or technology. To get paid more or have more work-life flexibility, you have to move up into a more manager or supervisor role. To do your current job, someone has to have the degree you have right now, maybe an MPH.
Taking a leadership role like a CDC center director, state health department director, academic deem, you have to have a doctorate degree. If your answer was yes to any of those, you have some beliefs that may conflict with the future of work. What this means is, if you keep these beliefs, you might resist future change, and miss a lot of opportunities, and burn yourself out. I'm not saying you have to get rid of these, and I'm not even saying I know exactly what the future of work will look like. What I am saying is, you need to become conscious of your beliefs, even the ones you're not aware you hold, and learn the skills of seeing what result holding those beliefs are creating for you, especially as the times change.
This is a skill. And for many of you, what you will see if you build this skill is that some beliefs that may have served you in the past won't serve you in the future or aren't serving you now. And you need to change them and let them go in order to adapt. We also need to redefine productivity and rest. This will be more important than ever. So, the book talks about how between 1979 and 2018, so about the third industrialized revolution, productivity grew almost 70%. But they also talk about how with the future of work, organizations will be required to focus way less on productivity as we think about it now by allowing technology to do those mundane, repetitive tasks and focus way more on creating the best place to work for humans.
An organization, a team that creates psychological safety so that you have the ability to adapt and change and be vulnerable. A place that optimizes human potential, not from productivity but from creativity, thoughtfulness, and reflection. Things that technology cannot do but are definitely needed for the rapid change we are experiencing in the world. The way we have internalized productivity and the push of productivity from the last 40 years has been that if you get a lot done, clear and measurable tasks completed, then you are worthy and successful. Then, you get the raise, promotion, money, and the accolades, and you'll be happy.
As a result, as the book states, I quote, we have trained humans to act more like machines. What we have not organizationally and individually is the expectations of humans to be more like machines to have no emotion, to constantly measure our outcomes, to prioritize output over input. This is going to have to change. I think when we think of the speed at which the world is changing, we assume that means we as humans have to sprint. When actually, in fact, we as humans have to slow down because slowing down allows us the space to adapt and change in order to keep up with the changing times.
There's this quote in the book that I absolutely loved. It said when you press the pause button on a computer, it stops, but when you press the pause button on a human being, it starts. This is where redefining rest comes in. We will continue to burn ourselves out if we don't press pause more, and more often, and in more ways. Giving ourselves space and time to rest is what allows us to use those uniquely human skills of thoughtfulness, reflection, creativity. When you don't give yourself that time, you don't have the ability to think at that high level, and then you get into that machine-like mode.
This is why so many folks are leaving their job because they realize that the organization, they're in promotes burnout productivity and not the rest and restart. So, organizations are going to have to change, too, and grapple with this, and provide a better environment that's part of public health as a field called to action to change. But individually, in order to change how you relate to productivity and rest, you must change your beliefs about productivity and rest, which I talk about all the time. Because as you know from what I've shared, what you believe creates the results in your life.
So, if you continue to believe being productive is the most important thing, you will continue to burn yourself out. If you continue to believe rest is a reward, you will never give it to yourself. But if you change your mindset to see that pressing pause more often allows you to harness your highest thinking and contribute to the world in a different and more meaningful way, then not only will you do that, but you'll be better equipped to adapt and relate to the changing world, and be present in your life, and enjoy your time, and have a fulfilled and more joyful experience in work and life.
Okay, last part of this, I loved this quote in the book; flexibility is the ability to pivot from one tool in your toolbox to another or from one approach to another, but adaptability requires you to add something. It may require you to drop that tool and forge a new one or drop that method, unlearn it, and develop an entirely new one. I share this last quote to say that I think public health for decades has been very flexible. That's something you're taught in your training. Something you're like good at, at the job, but we need more than flexibility. We've seen that in the pandemic.
We have needed adaptability. We need to be able to drop a tool and create a new one, to unlearn a method and make a new one better. And we're not always willing to do that, and that's what's created so much resistance, exhaustion, and overwhelm with all the rapid changes of the past couple of years. If the world continues to change in this way, public health as a field and individually public health professions will need more than flexibility. You will need to become adaptable, which requires a growth mindset and the tools to manage your mind and emotions. In order to be consistently and constantly able to adapt, thought work tools, thought work practice, coaching, mind management, emotional agility will be needed; this meaning, the practice of actively managing your mind, of allowing emotions and processing them, of getting support to do this. This will need to become common practice for everyone.
My vision of the future of public health as it steps into this new generation of work is everyone in public health has a coach to help them do this individually. And organizations focus way more on providing the tools and the support, and the space for individuals to do this work. Because this mindset work is not a one and done, it's an ongoing practice, just like adapting to the changing world and workplaces are not a one and done. It will be an ongoing practice, and it doesn't have to be like the experience you've had in the past couple of years. And I know that because of my experience the past couple of years having thought work tools, having a coach has been so different than so many of my colleagues. That's how I know because I've seen it.
I've seen the difference it makes to be in a fast-changing environment, job, and world with constant change and adaptation needed, and having the thought work and coaching tools to manage your emotions. Allow the feelings, negative and positive, to manage your mind, to not become burnout exhausted, vs. not having those tools and getting burnout, and not being able to adapt, resist, and be stuck in your negative emotion. So, I hope this was thought-provoking. It really got my wheels turning. We will be talking a little bit more about some of this stuff next week and next week's episode as well. Thank you all for tuning in, love to you all. I hope you have a great, and safe, and happy New Year. Bye, everyone.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
Hi everyone, welcome. I hope you had a great holiday season. If you were celebrating any holidays or have a great winter season going, it's almost 2022. I cannot believe that. It just started feeling like 2021 about three or so months ago. It felt like 2020 was most of 2021. So, this is tripping me out a little bit. I wanted to get into the episode as soon as possible because I am so excited to talk about this. But first, I want to give some updates on the new course coming out soon. I know some of you have been wondering about a few more details, so I want to make sure you all get that.
So, I know this time of year, many of us are thinking about goals, setting goals, and New Year's resolutions. We're really marketed towards that, right. And we think about what we want to achieve and accomplish next year. I just think we often forget to take time to process and heal from the year prior. Sometimes we take time to reflect on what we accomplished this past year, but have you ever taken time to just process and heal the challenges you went through and what you faced? I'm guessing not.
And I think that more than ever before, we need to do that. I mean, it's been two years living and working in a pandemic, and I think that's so important. And also, if you do really want to achieve some goals, like, if that is something you truly want and are committed to, I really think all of us, in order to achieve our goals, have to be able to process and heal from the challenges we've been going through, right, and let go of some of that burden. So, that's what this public health burnout mini-course will help you do.
So, the past couple of weeks, I have been talking and teasing a little bit about a new course that I have created for you all coming out in 2022. So, it's the public health burnout mini-course. I decided to call it a mini-course because it's more accurate. It's not as intensive as a true course or classroom, but it's a series of three videos that you'll get that will help you process and heal and not bring all of your burnout into 2022.
So, the course will cover three main areas that I see folks in public health struggling with right now. The first is how to deal with the impact of COVID two years in, what to do when your boss or leadership are making it harder, right, making your job harder, and what to do when you have too high of a workload. So, the boss/leadership challenges and the high workload, we experience those before COVID. And now, it's two years into COVID, and the burnout is so much higher. So, that's why this mini-course will focus on these three areas.
It will be short videos for each topic. I am making them short because I know your time is precious. So, you can watch these on your lunch break while getting ready for work, and they will have a big impact. And by impact, I mean that just because they're short mini-series videos doesn't mean they're not going to be useful, right? They're going to give you something that you can use to help process and heal and go into 2022, either leaving some of your burnout behind or having some tools and skills to prevent future burnout.
So, it will be released to those on the waitlist and only those on the waitlist on January 10th. It's in one week, and then the folks on the waitlist will have a whole month, and it won't be available to the broader public until February 7th, so that is a month later. So, if you think you might be interested in this if you want to set some goals, but see that maybe processing COVID will be useful, before you do that, or if you're really struggling right now, want 2022 to be different, sign up for the waitlist. That way, you can get the mini-course when it's released to the waitlist, January 10th. Otherwise, you're going to have to wait until February 7th. So, if you aren't on it yet, join now, mckoolcoaching.com/courses, that's courses plural. And I'll also leave a link in the show notes.
Today we're talking about the future of work. So, kind of on this New Year's theme. So, this episode was inspired by a book I just finished reading called The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley. So, I actually found this copy randomly in one of my neighborhood free libraries that people have in their yards. You know the kind of little boxy things in folk's yards where you can leave a book or take a book. I always check those when I walk by, and I found this. I looked at it, and it seemed interesting, and it was actually published in 2020. So, it's really recent.
If after this episode you're interested in it, check it out. We'll leave a link in the show notes where you can buy a copy if you want, or I encourage you to see if your local county or city library has a copy or if your workplace would purchase one, so we can be a little bit more sustainable. So, the book covers three main areas, and it's in these three sections.
So, the first is adapting at the speed of change. And it talks about how and why we need to adapt to the technology, demographic, and social change that the world is going through. The second section talks about letting go and learning fast to thrive. So, this talks about the section, our attachment to occupational identities and why we need to let that go, as well as the changes and how we need to be able to learn and develop in our careers. And the last section is, leading people in the organization in the evolution of work.
So, they talk about addressing how to lead both individually and as an organization in the future of work. So, today I am just going to share a handful of key insights. There's so much more in the book, so if you find this interesting, try to find a copy. I thought it was really great, and as I was reading it, I just couldn't wait to share it with you all. I do want to start with a few notes about some of the things I want you to be mindful of, not necessarily for what I am talking about in the podcast episode, but if you do, pick up a copy of the book.
The book itself addresses a lot of the existing concerns folks have about, quote, machines taking human jobs, right. So, this idea is technology is taking over and AI, and we're losing our jobs, all of that. For me personally, it really shifted a lot of my thinking around that belief and technology in this area. However, I won't be covering or talking about that at all today. So, if you're interested in that, the book is where to go. This book is framed much more in a technology and business way, but part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast is that as I was reading it, I just kept writing in the margins, like, oh my gosh, public health needs this. This applies to public health. So much of it applies to public health.
So that's kind of what I will do today is talk about it in relation to public health. And lastly, I just want you to note that the book did not really address diversity in a broad sense. It did very narrowly and not in a way where I felt satisfied, and it didn't talk about equity to my recollection at all. So, I left with a lot of questions about the future of work and the impact of the future of work or of the changes they're recommending on both what we may call "low-wage or entry-level workers" or marginalized identities.
They did show many case studies of changes being made currently to adapt the future of work by individual leaders or large organizations, but I didn't think that they addressed how that affected or what the experience was like for marginalized identities or entry-level positions, whether they were taken into consideration in those changes, or affected, and I don't recall any discussion about the impact or consideration for folks who are disabled or have a disability.
So, I wanted to share that caveat because I really think this book is valuable and gives a really great perspective. But if you do end up reading it, I would just encourage you to read it with an equity mindset and really ask questions along the way about equity and who's at the table in these discussions and changes, who's going to be most impacted that maybe aren't being thought of, ask those kinds of questions.
Okay, so, this book presents essentially that we are in the fourth industrialized revolution right now. So, I want to review the first three, don't worry, it won't be too much of a history class, and then talk about this fourth one they're stating we're in right now. So, the first industrialized revolution started about the end of the 1700s and went into throughout the 1800s. And this was really mechanical and manufacturing. So, think of it as the steam engine invention. I always think if I watch the show Victoria on PBS Masterpiece, and they have an episode where the steam engine invention, you know, Prince Albert gets really excited, and he's really hesitant, and that's what I imagine during this revolution.
And so, the focus of this industrial period was learning a specific skill and usually learning it on the job. And the job was often multi-generational, meaning okay, maybe your father became a steam engine mechanic, and you learned that trade, and now you do too. And then the second industrial revolution was the beginning of the 1900s. So, this is really where mass production began to develop and take off, and then, of course, electricity. And so, the focus was to join a trade, right?
We think about trade school, and you develop these trades in trade school. You might also learn on the job or from family, but the trade schools really became a larger part of it. So, for example, an electrician, and then there was a focus on the division of labor, and there were different movements that happened with that, which I won't get into. And then the third industrialized revolution was at the start of the 1970s. So, computer, automation of manufacturing, and then the focus became much more on formal higher education as we know it now.
So, picking an aligned major and then moving up the career ladder in that sector. That might be what we're all most familiar with. So, what the authors pose is that we're in the fourth revolution. Starting 2015, and is to present, and they state that it's kind of cyber-physical systems, internet, technology expansion, AI, and all of that. And the focus is on learning to learn and learning to adapt and creating new types of value.
Then, it looks a lot more like hybrid jobs and multi-industry careers. So, not just staying in one sector or career type and not just doing a job that has one function, meaning that the future of work, this is what they propose will be a constant and consistent adaptation. So, the authors talk about how this will require the ability to reskill and upskill, reskill being expending knowledge and skills to new domains, and upskill being deepening your knowledge and skills into your current domain.
They also talk about in the future of work; we need to let technology do the mundane, repetitive tasks and spend more time as humans doing uniquely human skills, learning, reflecting, leadership, and creativity. And they also talk about how we will need to anchor our work to our why, why we are doing our work rather than our how, which is how we are doing it. And I'm going to purpose one more, which I will talk more in detail at the end of the episode. A skill we will need in the future work which, is emotional skills.
We will need thought work and mind management skills to ensure that constant adaptation is not exhausting, which we have felt and seen during COVID. COVID has been two years of constant adaptation. Most of you listening probably have been exhausted by this because you don't have the mental and emotional skills to navigate the high speed of adaptation and change happening. But if these authors are accurate in predicting the future of work will continue to be this fast-paced changing and adaptation, then you will need better mind management and emotional management skills, so you are exhausted by constant adaptation and change.
You'll also need these skills, so you're not as resistant to technology, and changes in technology won't be so disruptive to your life. So, you don't get so upset and hold on and don't let go, and so you can be able to continue adapting. Okay so, one of the first things they talked about was how this speed of change is real. In the sense of, think back to how I outlined those industrialized revolutions.
The timing of each revolution has sped up. The first revolution took about 100 years, and it occurred over that period. The second, more than 50 years, the third less than 50, and the fourth we have only been in for a handful of years, but it's moving faster than ever, as well as there are many other things speeding up faster than ever, including population demographics, and social and cultural norm changes.
So, some examples they used were, adults over 65 are on track to double between 2020-30. With the decline in fertility rates, the middle child may become extinct. Gender identity is moving from thinking about it in a fixed binary way to a fluent non-binary way. Then, there are other changes across race, religion, education, consent, power, occupation, authority, experience, populations; all of that is shifting rapidly. As well as, and they don't talk about this, but public health concerns are changing rapidly.
There are constant and ever more quickly developing environmental threats and disasters. Infectious diseases are becoming more and more of a challenge in modern-day, and it's not just COVID. Think about Zika, Ebola, and other outbreaks. The political division that we've seen among communities and populations that kind of cause disruption and constant changes in policies in healthcare, from reproductive health to vaccinations. So, what will be adapted or need to be adapted in this fourth industrialized revolution?
The first I want to touch on is career adaptation. So, the authors talk about how the past experience of getting a college education, climbing the career ladder, and then retirement is being deconstructed and rebuilt. They argue this is happening because of the fast-changing world increasing technological advances, rapidly changing population demographics, shifts in social and cultural experiences, and I would argue shifts in climate change, and health needs, and all of that public health stuff we think about.
With the world changing so fast, technology and all the other factors—Well, what is required of you and your job now be the same in three years? Or better yet, is what's required in your job now the same as what was required five years ago? The answer to both of those questions is probably no. What we have seen and are seeing in this pandemic has lit a fire under this change. People are now leaving their careers, not just jobs, but careers, and making big changes.
Universities are having to grapple with students questioning why they're paying huge dollar amounts for several years of formal schooling, organizations are dealing with high turnover and trying to figure out how to have the training, roles, onboarding, and teams that don't crumble with all this change, and the truth is it's extremely uncomfortable for all of us. It is a challenge for folks to change, all of us. For folks who are more seasoned in their careers, it can be challenging because it means what they've come to expect, and all their knowledge and experience in hiring, organizing, leading is going away. And there's some resistance.
I'm sure you've seen this; I had a conversation a few years ago with a leader with the organization I was in who was complaining about millennials, which I identify as a millennial, jumping from job to job. They were clearly upset by this, and they've been in their organization for, I think, 20 something years. Another reason some more seasoned professionals might struggle with this change is even if they don't admit this, part of it is, they don't know what it means for them.
Do they leave and adapt as well? Do they stay and cling to what they've known for so far in their career? If they change, will they be able to change when they're set in their ways? All of those things. And it's a challenge for earlier or mid-career folks because what we have been taught about career preparation and expectation and planning is rapidly coming undone. And we will have to forge our own new path, a clear map to guide us, which can create panic and anxiety for many of us.
It's a challenge for public health organizations, whether academic, government, non-profit because those organizations have traditionally moved very slow, right? There are high levels of bureaucracy and hierarchy and complex processes and apartments, layers of review and approval, limited resources, time, and staffing. So, public health has not been a field that has really kept up as fast as other fields and domains with the fast-changing times. Public health has a hard time of letting go of the way we've always done it, has resisted in many ways, integration of a lot of technology that could change the way public health is conducted.
Now, I'm not saying this isn't for a good reason. There are concerns about technology not being designed thoughtfully and potentially increasing inequities, as well as real challenges of doing programmatic and research and new innovative ways that don't leave out communities. And of course, given our work is centered on protecting the public, there are difficulties with changing processes and policies, and approvals quicker to match the pace of changing times while also integrating enough protections, you could say, in the process to ensure there is no harm.
So, I am not saying public health needs to all of a sudden mirror big tech or business and throw everything out the window. What this book talks about is real, and we've seen it in the pandemic. That the fast-changing working world is changing fast, it's happening across sectors. So, the question is, how is public health going to adapt as an organization, and how are you as a public health professional going to adapt? I think public health organizationally and as individuals, we've kind of envisioned that we will just stay in our little public health lane on the freeway, on a two-way highway, and business and tech will be in their own lane. We'll just drive next to each other. And they'll probably drive faster, but that's okay. We will eventually catch up.
But now, what we're seeing is all of a sudden, we're on a six-lane freeway, all the cars are crossing lanes, right? You need to keep up with the speed of traffic. So, the question is, is public health, and are you going to continue to stay in the far right lane driving ten miles under the speed limit, or move back and forth between lanes, move with the speed of traffic? So, this second piece I want to talk about that they brought up is educational adaptation and change.
So, the authors argue that education is being replaced with continual learning; either it is now, or it needs to be. It is not tied to a degree or formal learning. So, this book was actually written before COVID. But with COVID hitting, I've seen, and I think a lot of us have seen firsthand how this is really changing, both academic institutions, I saw that firsthand. I was working at a school in public health during the first year and a half of COVID and in the broader field of public health. As many of you have seen, I had to learn very quickly on the job in the past two years.
Public health, during the pandemic, has had to seek out staff who don't have a formal MPH to feel gaps and train them on the job to meet the need. Current staff with MPH or doctorate have been required to adapt in their job; learn new skills or do projects that weren't really part of their role or their formal training. So, as this is happening, many people are questioning and rethinking education for the future of public health. Students are wondering now more than ever if a multi-year expensive degree is necessary. Professionals are reflecting back on their degree and seeing all the gaps of learning they missed that aren't really helping them in the current fast-changing working world.
So, the author quotes, and I love this quote, we tell students to pick a good major to get a good job in a good industry to climb the vertical career ladder. Well, that ladder is gone. And public health is going to have to grapple with how to ensure the staff is trained to do their job without relying so heavily on formal degree training programs. And schools of public health are going to have to figure out how to stay relevant when the needs of communities in the world itself are changing at twice if not three times the speed of traditional degree programs.
Students and professionals are going to have to figure out how to climb a jungle gym, right. Those domes, if you remember as a kid that have tons of different bars and different directions and shapes, and get around that, rather than a ladder that's just one direction. Because waiting 2, 4, or 7 years for professionals to get trained in a skill or a back to school and get a new skill or a deeper skill with the newest method, it's not going to serve the field if new methods and skills are going to be needed to be developed and learned and implemented every few years, or once a year, or several times a year with the way things are going.
So, the future may look like positions themselves and their tasks being more focused on learning, with a focus on learning through curiosity and inquiry rather than formal training through prototyping and trying things out through more of a designed thinking approach. This would also require us to unlearn, which means developing the ability to let go of information or systems or ways of doing things that no longer apply or is useful. Letting go of the quote, way we have always done it. And many people in public health struggles with this.
I bet you know someone in your organization who, in a project meeting or talking to, has been resistant to trying something new and express that. And I bet there's been a few times where you've been the resistant one to trying something new or changing how things are done. I want to share one example, although there are many, but this one example, on the whole, public health has not adapted to utilizing a lot of the new technologies out there to make the field more innovative, effective, or responsive.
So, for example, we've been conducting research for via traditional [inaudible] methods, right, collect individual data via email survey or in person, which can take a lot of time in order to get a sample size we want, and you know, the representation we might be looking for. But now we have technology that could be used to collect data for research, at record speeds, reaching more people, even reaching populations we have a hard time reaching with traditional methods, doing research on topics we traditionally struggle with getting enough data in order to do research on them. This is using what we know as quote, big data, social media, to collect data using phone apps, and there are lots of people doing this type of research, using big data to conduct public health research.
But a lot of them are not led by folks with public health backgrounds. Who aren't thinking about equity, who aren't thinking about the community. We don't see as much federal funding going towards investments in public health research in this area. We see a lot of app companies and entrepreneurs taking this on and investing in this. And there are valid concerns in public health for changing or adapting the way research is done in using more technology. Right, concerns about ethics, privacy, and so many other things.
But I would argue that is exactly why public health needs to adapt and change, so it can be at the table. In partnership with tech companies, engineers, businesses, and others, to be the voice to advocate for change that is equitable that doesn't exclude the community, that draws sound scientific findings. This will require letting go of the old ways of doing things so we can take up new ways of doing them.
The other piece the authors talk about is letting go of your occupational identity. So, one of the other things the authors discuss is the need to unlearn and let go of occupational identity; let go of quote, who we think we are. So, what is occupational identity? What is the first or second question you typically ask someone you just met? What do you do? We have centered our whole identities based on our career and what we do for work. What the authors pose is that the future of work and how it's changing will require what we do, the actual work, tasks, and skills to change every few years or more often than even that.
This means your occupational identity will constantly be shifting as well. They talk about changing the question from what do you do to where do you find a purpose? Because as our careers functions and skills and even sectors will become more and more fluid and intertwined. The question of what you will do or what you do for your job will lose its relevance because our jobs will no longer be our primary identity. This is why instead of anchoring yourself to your how, as in how do you do your job, because the how will change so much, and so much more often. You would need to anchor yourself to your why more often; why do you do your job?
So, when the how changes, it won't throw you off because even if your how changes, the why remains. But they talk about, and I quote here, it is very difficult to learn and adapt when you feel your core identity is under threat. And this is exactly why there is so much resistance to change in the workplace, change on the larger organizational level, team level, individual job description level because we feel our occupational identity is under threat, and we will lose it, and we won't know our place, or who we are, how we fit in. But if you weren't so tied to your occupational identity, then those changes wouldn't scare you as much. You wouldn't be as resistant to them.
Public health has developed into a field of experts. Now, on the one hand, most folks in public health do not call themselves an expert because all of us know that even in science, nothing is ever 100% certain. A new finding next week can undo what we know so far, so we tend not to think of ourselves as an expert, per se. But the way the field is set up to learn a skill or understanding in a content topic area deeply and then continue to work in that for your career, you're set up to become a sort of like, expert, and adapt that mindset, even unconsciously.
One of the things the book talks about is that research has shown that the more we acquire expertise in one area, the less we are willing to question what we know or go out of our comfort zone to try something new. So, this is why organizationally, and individually public health also has been so resistant to the fast-moving change. We're going to have to let go of some of that idea of expertise and spending so much time becoming so skilled in one area or knowledgeable in a topic area.
The next piece is around human adaptation, right? So, we've talked about career adaptation, educational adaptation, occupational identity, so I am going to share a little bit about what Brook talks about, but I am also going to talk a lot more about my perspective as a coach. And what you need to do to be able to adapt, what mental and emotional skills do you need to acquire in order to do that? Because at the core of being able to adjust to the career, changes, educational changes, occupational identity changes, you will need to be able to adapt your brain.
So, the book quotes Dan Gilbert, who said, human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished. Our brains hate change. Ironically our brains are really good at changing. This is how humans have survived. This is essentially evolution. But as humans, we have a desire to be in a fixed mindset to avoid change and adaptation because to our brain that saves energy and reserves effort. Our brain wants to do that, have that reserve in order to run from a lion, or to fight off a purse robber, so our brain is resistant to using its energy for change and adaptation, especially so frequently. With how fast the world is changing, we do need to become more comfortable and use skills in order to manage the constant change and adaptation mentally. It is a skill, the skill of managing your mind because your brain will resist it.
And you've probably seen that during the pandemic and experienced your brain resisting it. And when you're trying to adapt while resisting the adaptation and the change, that creates exhaustion, overwhelm, and a lot of burnout. It's probably what you've been experiencing a lot during the pandemic. You have to take charge of your brain. In order to lead it where it doesn't burn too much energy but also doesn't see new change as a life threat, you need to manage your mind. It requires you to get comfortable with uncertainty and to expect changes. So, when the changes happen, you're not surprised and don't resist them, you accept them and take them on, and you have the brainpower and energy in order to think creatively, strategically, and change.
When you spend so much of your time in resistance, holding on to how things have always been done, how you thought things were going to go, your work identity, you become way too tired and exhausted to be able to adapt and change. You're also going to have to let go of some of your conscious and unconscious beliefs about what work is, and work should be, work cannot be, in order to adapt. So, right now, I want you to ask yourself on a belief scale of one through ten, ten being you believe it hardcore, and one being you don't believe it at all. How much do you believe that in order to get paid higher than your MPH ceiling, you have to get a doctorate degree? Leaving a job after only working there six months is bad. Life will be so much better in retirement. With your MPH, you can't work in business, engineering, or technology. To get paid more or have more work-life flexibility, you have to move up into a more manager or supervisor role. To do your current job, someone has to have the degree you have right now, maybe an MPH.
Taking a leadership role like a CDC center director, state health department director, academic deem, you have to have a doctorate degree. If your answer was yes to any of those, you have some beliefs that may conflict with the future of work. What this means is, if you keep these beliefs, you might resist future change, and miss a lot of opportunities, and burn yourself out. I'm not saying you have to get rid of these, and I'm not even saying I know exactly what the future of work will look like. What I am saying is, you need to become conscious of your beliefs, even the ones you're not aware you hold, and learn the skills of seeing what result holding those beliefs are creating for you, especially as the times change.
This is a skill. And for many of you, what you will see if you build this skill is that some beliefs that may have served you in the past won't serve you in the future or aren't serving you now. And you need to change them and let them go in order to adapt. We also need to redefine productivity and rest. This will be more important than ever. So, the book talks about how between 1979 and 2018, so about the third industrialized revolution, productivity grew almost 70%. But they also talk about how with the future of work, organizations will be required to focus way less on productivity as we think about it now by allowing technology to do those mundane, repetitive tasks and focus way more on creating the best place to work for humans.
An organization, a team that creates psychological safety so that you have the ability to adapt and change and be vulnerable. A place that optimizes human potential, not from productivity but from creativity, thoughtfulness, and reflection. Things that technology cannot do but are definitely needed for the rapid change we are experiencing in the world. The way we have internalized productivity and the push of productivity from the last 40 years has been that if you get a lot done, clear and measurable tasks completed, then you are worthy and successful. Then, you get the raise, promotion, money, and the accolades, and you'll be happy.
As a result, as the book states, I quote, we have trained humans to act more like machines. What we have not organizationally and individually is the expectations of humans to be more like machines to have no emotion, to constantly measure our outcomes, to prioritize output over input. This is going to have to change. I think when we think of the speed at which the world is changing, we assume that means we as humans have to sprint. When actually, in fact, we as humans have to slow down because slowing down allows us the space to adapt and change in order to keep up with the changing times.
There's this quote in the book that I absolutely loved. It said when you press the pause button on a computer, it stops, but when you press the pause button on a human being, it starts. This is where redefining rest comes in. We will continue to burn ourselves out if we don't press pause more, and more often, and in more ways. Giving ourselves space and time to rest is what allows us to use those uniquely human skills of thoughtfulness, reflection, creativity. When you don't give yourself that time, you don't have the ability to think at that high level, and then you get into that machine-like mode.
This is why so many folks are leaving their job because they realize that the organization, they're in promotes burnout productivity and not the rest and restart. So, organizations are going to have to change, too, and grapple with this, and provide a better environment that's part of public health as a field called to action to change. But individually, in order to change how you relate to productivity and rest, you must change your beliefs about productivity and rest, which I talk about all the time. Because as you know from what I've shared, what you believe creates the results in your life.
So, if you continue to believe being productive is the most important thing, you will continue to burn yourself out. If you continue to believe rest is a reward, you will never give it to yourself. But if you change your mindset to see that pressing pause more often allows you to harness your highest thinking and contribute to the world in a different and more meaningful way, then not only will you do that, but you'll be better equipped to adapt and relate to the changing world, and be present in your life, and enjoy your time, and have a fulfilled and more joyful experience in work and life.
Okay, last part of this, I loved this quote in the book; flexibility is the ability to pivot from one tool in your toolbox to another or from one approach to another, but adaptability requires you to add something. It may require you to drop that tool and forge a new one or drop that method, unlearn it, and develop an entirely new one. I share this last quote to say that I think public health for decades has been very flexible. That's something you're taught in your training. Something you're like good at, at the job, but we need more than flexibility. We've seen that in the pandemic.
We have needed adaptability. We need to be able to drop a tool and create a new one, to unlearn a method and make a new one better. And we're not always willing to do that, and that's what's created so much resistance, exhaustion, and overwhelm with all the rapid changes of the past couple of years. If the world continues to change in this way, public health as a field and individually public health professions will need more than flexibility. You will need to become adaptable, which requires a growth mindset and the tools to manage your mind and emotions. In order to be consistently and constantly able to adapt, thought work tools, thought work practice, coaching, mind management, emotional agility will be needed; this meaning, the practice of actively managing your mind, of allowing emotions and processing them, of getting support to do this. This will need to become common practice for everyone.
My vision of the future of public health as it steps into this new generation of work is everyone in public health has a coach to help them do this individually. And organizations focus way more on providing the tools and the support, and the space for individuals to do this work. Because this mindset work is not a one and done, it's an ongoing practice, just like adapting to the changing world and workplaces are not a one and done. It will be an ongoing practice, and it doesn't have to be like the experience you've had in the past couple of years. And I know that because of my experience the past couple of years having thought work tools, having a coach has been so different than so many of my colleagues. That's how I know because I've seen it.
I've seen the difference it makes to be in a fast-changing environment, job, and world with constant change and adaptation needed, and having the thought work and coaching tools to manage your emotions. Allow the feelings, negative and positive, to manage your mind, to not become burnout exhausted, vs. not having those tools and getting burnout, and not being able to adapt, resist, and be stuck in your negative emotion. So, I hope this was thought-provoking. It really got my wheels turning. We will be talking a little bit more about some of this stuff next week and next week's episode as well. Thank you all for tuning in, love to you all. I hope you have a great, and safe, and happy New Year. Bye, everyone.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
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