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: 

1. 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. 

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 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.

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.

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, , 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Why care , 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.

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.

This is beyond the ambition question. All of our assumptions are upside down. And the assumptions on what we can accomplish for work, the assumptions on what our goals should be for work. You know, when I talk to business owners, you know, what should our priorities be this year? Where, what’s our one year, three year, five year plan, 10 year plan? It’s all very murky, okay? And so any assumptions we have on the way people are supposed to operate, the way people are supposed to be, the way business is supposed to run is really out the window right now.

And much of my advice to people is, one, we have to raise our expectations of ourselves and the people around us. Yes, from an interpersonal kind of way, but we have to eliminate assumptions, throw them out the window because anything that worked in the past is really irrelevant at this point. We can use this to inform whatever it is that we want to do, but any assumptions we have on why people would wanna pursue advancement, why people would wanna be ambitious, what drives people, what motivates people, all of this work is really out the window right now.

And we have to rethink it, reengage and re-discuss with our employees, with our leadership teams, with everybody in terms of what really matters right now. The context has changed. The work environment, the home environment, the community environment, the news environment, everything has changed. So priorities have shifted, everything has shifted. So now we need to kind of rethink what assumptions are we making, right? Training doesn’t fix everything, right? The old way of training, I should say, the old way of training doesn’t fix anything.

How do we get people more, uh, experiential in their learning? How do we get them to take ownership of their learning? How do we teach people to think in a different type of way? These are the types of questions that we should be asking. So, um, starting with this pursuit of advancement, we grew up, at least I did, and a lot of my peers, you know, you look at anybody in their mid forties where you were told work hard and everyone’s gonna notice and you’re gonna get rewarded and it’s gonna be great.

And everybody has kind of realized that that’s just kind of bunk. And, um, going above and beyond wasn’t just in the pursuit of advancement. It’s what was expected was an obligation. You just had to work Saturdays, right? Think back to office space. I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday and you didn’t really have a choice. And people are starting to have a choice. People are starting to say, well, hold up, like, I got family time on the weekends now and I get to dictate this.

And you know, the technology has allowed us to communicate with other people in this different type of way to say, if these people can get their work life balance and all this kind of philosophical, uh, bs that, that we’ve talked about, um, why can’t I have it? And a lot of people are saying, what about me right now? So people are putting their hands up. We’re aware of the fact that, you know, I just posted this on LinkedIn the other day, and, uh, an old colleague of mine, Mike, basically made the point, you know, we know that work is in a family, work likes to talk about, you know,oh,you know what, we’re all a family here.

But that family kind of throws you under the bus when it’s time to lay off half your people. Um, and it’s just an objective thing, right? That we expect the employees to give everything, but when things get difficult, the business really has the upper hand. And that ultimately is what pays the bills for right or wrong, right? It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, right? At the end of the day, businesses exist to make money and we need people to work hard and we need to pay them appropriately and we need to do all of that stuff.

But, um, when we think about keeping a business alive right now, the business environment, the market environments have changed so much that leadership of organizations have two kind of pulling philosophies. They’re going for. One is, how do we make this business sustainable? So it still exists. A businesses exist to make money, we have to make money, and that’s it. But we also have human beings working for us. And what’s that balance and how do we get the best human beings to bring them into the organization?

And how do we create that environment? I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. I would say probably 90% of organizations could be successful with half of their employees. And everybody needs to hear that. And if you’re not in that top 50%, you need to start figuring out what it’s going to take to get you into that 50%, to creating value in all of that. Um, so there’s an, this obligation of work has an obligation to articulate what their vision is, to develop their people, to create an environment for people to be successful.

But we as employees have an obligation to create value within that context, to challenge the norms to do that type of work. So pursuit of advancement, and I’m gonna circle back to this at the end because we don’t know what we’re advancing towards, um, is is not really the norm that it used to be. We used to have this assumption on pursuit of advancement. It’s not the same assumption that we can continue into 2023 and beyond.

So that’s number one. Uh, and that’s a big one. That’s a big number one, right? Pursuit of advancement isn’t what it used to be. Number two, priorities have shifted. And this kind of goes into the pursuit of advancement and kind of creating boundaries for what’s acceptable and what’s not, not being taken advantage of, uh, taken advantage of in the workplace over the last four years. We got a little taste of what it was like to spend time with our families, to have our weekends back, to sleep in, to kind of go read a book, to go do whatever.

And people really like it. People really, really like it. And for those people, they’re, you know, there’s different types of people there. The people who create work and the entrepreneurs, they’re still working the way that they used to work, but they have ownership of what it is they’re working towards. So they love it. And that’s what really drives entrepreneurship and that’s why they do it. You’ve got the other people working in, uh, organization who see a path for themselves and they’re working hard and they’re trying to push things over.

It’s very difficult for them because they have to rally other people to do it. And then there’s people who wait for work to happen to them. And those are the people who really like to kinda unwind and check out and everything else. And, and they need it and they should have it, right? Everybody needs their time to check out. Everybody’s checking out is a little bit different. Um, but when we think about priorities of what’s important, you know, I think, and this is American perspective, you take a look at Europe, Europe gets their months of August off in a lot of countries.

Europe gets this time with families. They’re done at, you know, different types and not everyone of course, right? There’s different types of industries and companies and everything else, but the American culture doesn’t really allow for taking time for yourself and it doesn’t allow for this family time. And, and part of it is a financial discussion of course, but there are other ones too in terms of what’s expected of you, the obligations you have when you sign off for a job.

And, and the way that work culture has been set up, this hustle, hustle culture that’s been going on since the eighties, the nineties, it’s continued straight through and people are starting to dictate what it is that they want. And the ones who have real value are able to kind of find that balance, but also continue to do work and work smartly. But priorities have shifted. So that’s kind of changing the ambition question of, you know what, maybe I don’t need to be in the C-suite.

Maybe just being a VP is good enough and I get my family time and how do I kind of make this work? I remember, uh, I remember applying for a job. I got the job, but there was a woman who interviewed me, she was gonna be on my team. And she said, how do you feel? She asked me, how do you feel about someone who doesn’t want a promotion? And I said, what do you mean?

And she said, I’m done. I don’t want to pursue more. I don’t wanna advance more. I’m happy. I’ve got my family. I don’t, don’t wanna keep working towards something new. I’m being pushed to work towards a promotion when I don’t really want a promotion because I’ve got this balance and everything and this is good for me. And of course I told her, you know, that’s awesome, right? Of course, my philosophy was always get your work done and you know, we’ll talk about what you need and what you want and everything else and keep work interesting and everything else.

And I feel like she was ahead of her time almost. This was, I mean, this was at least a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago. I feel like she was ahead of her time in terms of that. And I think a lot more people are starting to think that way of, you know what, maybe this is good enough from a work perspective. Let me fill in these other areas of my life so that everything could kind of even out and put work in its place and find other things to kind of take my time.

So that’s a big priority shift there. Number three on why ambition is going away or why it’s fallen off is burnout. And I hate just saying burnout, um, but we’re burned out. Everybody is burned out and everybody is burned out. Everyone is exhausted. And it’s not from work. It’s not just from work. It’s, uh, we’re burned out and we’re afraid because massive levels of change are being thrust upon us on a massive scale.

And this goes beyond work. I mean, the big one right now is ai. All you hear about in terms of artificial intelligence is how it’s gonna disrupt everything. Your job is going away and the robots are gonna take over and let’s massive fear. And it’s very exciting. It’s a very exciting time and I love reading about it. But when we think about what about me, it, it, it’s stress. It’s a, an incredibly stressful time.

And, and how do we kind of do the work when I know my work is going to change? I see that your, my company’s laying off 10,000 people. Am I gonna be one of them? All my competitors have laid off 10,000 people. Are we next? Um, what’s going on in society? What are the kids doing? What are we doing? You know, every it, it compounds from so many different places that we are completely burned out.

You cannot turn it off where we actually need to completely check out for a week, unplug and, and kind of reset to, to where we are now. You always hear me say, um,you know, we don’t know what’s coming and we have to go inside, right? My big thing is macro change. And this is important when you’re talking about change management at work, is we’re talking about ambition and you want people to kind of change their philosophies.

Macro change requires a focus on the micro individual. That’s why training doesn’t work. Cuz you’re telling them what they’re supposed to think and it doesn’t work. We have to teach them to think about things in a different way, in their own particular way. Because any type of change, any type of structurally different anything requires an individual to internalize it and then re manifest it in their own particular way so that they can respond appropriately.

So the one constant through all change is the individual responding to change. That’s it. And that’s leading to burnout because we’re being told what change is coming and we have no say. And we’re so focused on the external change that it’s driving burnout. And so how do we slow it down? Um, go, I saw this awesome article the other day about a woman who was a teacher and God help our teachers cuz I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Um, mostly because of the parents, completely burned out because of parents, because of the way we were teaching throughout the pandemic and everything else. Like it was a, if you were a teacher, it was a horrible type of job. Quit her job, went to go work at Costco. Life is better, wouldn’t change anything. She’s making the same amount of money. She gets her weekends back, she gets all this kind of stuff back.

And you know, when we go back to thinking about assumptions and responding to burnout and what do we need as individuals, maybe the assumption goes away that you need to work this particular job for a long, particular time. I know people made some rash decisions in the pandemic, but maybe we do take a different kind of stake in terms of, well, you know what, maybe I just go work this way. What’s good enough?

Right? Is it okay to be good enough rather than this overachiever and have these types of things happen to you and it’s a heavy discussion needs to be had with your family. Lots of, you know, , there’s lots of fallout from these massive decisions, but ultimately you lie in the bed you make and we have to make these types of decisions and can you make it work? And a lot of people will be dismissive of it.

Oh, I can’t make it work because they haven’t looked at all of the details. I used to work with this guy at a bank. All he did was spreadsheets all day. Hated his job, hated his life. Like it was awful. Had a great family, loved his family. He was wonderful. Loved to tinker with the tools and I don’t know what he was making, but I was like, you could probably make the same at Home Depot and you could be around the tools, you could help people and it’ll be awesome.

He’s like, I can’t do that. I can’t work at Home Depot. And he said, why not? And it was all this kind of like, what would the neighbors say and everything else, but at the end of the day, he would’ve been so much happier if he had done it. Um, and it’s hard. These types of conversations are hard when we talk about responding to burnout, responding to change, responding to this lowering ambition.

It’s hard. But the thing is, nobody can do it for you because it’s ultimately your bed. Nobody can make your bed for you. I mean, maybe like,you know, billionaires, kids can make it for them, but that’s why all like family wealth goes away by the third generation because too many people are making their beds. So it’s hard. That’s okay. We’re faced with challenges and we have to overcome them. But when we overcome challenges, that’s your purpose.

That’s the feeling we’re trying to get to. And that’s what we’re really struggling with during burnout time right now is, you know, I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Let’s take a step back and what are these assumptions that are driving this burnout that we have to have? And what’s a feasible step, right? And it’s not just gonna be this, oh, I’m just gonna quit my job and go, you know, start a side hustle.

It’s not, it’s not that there are paths, but I think we’re blind to them because we aren’t really quite looking at them. So, um, so that’s number three. Burnout. So we talked about, um, we talked about one right at the top. We talked about going above and beyond pursuit of advancement. Assumptions need to go out the window and I’m gonna come back to that. Number two, we talked about how priorities have shifted.

And then number three, we talked about burnout. Let’s go back to this pursuit of advancement because this is the fourth one. Nobody knows what they’re working towards anymore. If you were to take burnout, there’s massive levels of change and priorities have shifted. And we take a look at this pursuit of advancement. So much change. We don’t know what the future’s going to look like in five years. We feel it, we know it.

Everybody’s talking about it. It’s no big secret, but we don’t know what we’re working towards. And I’m gonna talk about this. This is different based on gender, it’s different based on race, it’s different based on every individual. And, uh, and I’m gonna cover this next week on next week’s podcast. The podcast is gonna be what do you do with the men in your office? Um, because a lot of them had this assumption, I don’t want to tease it too much, but a lot of men had this assumption that they would just keep working and they would go up and become a VP and then a president do whatever.

Um, but the dynamics of the workplace have changed so much that something like 16 to 20% of able-bodied men are completely out of the workforce. Um, but nobody talks about it because, and this is necessary. Women have entered the workforce at large, right? And we’ve done a lot of work and a lot of good work has happened in terms of equality, making sure people are paid the same and right. This is an ongoing conversation, but there’s this group of, you know, 20% of able-bodied men are out of the workforce, not even unemployed out of the workforce.

It doesn’t account, uh, for unemployment numbers. So a lot of these things, what am I working towards? Um, and I’ll cover that in detail, um, for that. But what are we working towards? Our assumptions have changed in terms of, well, you know what, I thought I was going to go to a leadership position and organization, but there aren’t any for me and I don’t see myself getting a seat at that table.

And so if that’s cut out for me, then where do I go? I don’t know what I’m working towards. I don’t have intentionality in terms of dictating my next role. And it’s not a man problem. Well, it is a man problem, but it’s also a woman problem. It’s an everyone problem. But, you know, the future of work is quite murky and we think about it from a strategic stalemate, kind of what decisions do we make?

The organizations are thinking about this, but from an individual perspective of what am I working towards? Most people can’t answer that question. They don’t know where they want to go and they don’t know where they can go. So, you know, when we look for new jobs and we start thinking about new jobs, we think about, you know, what can I do? Right? And, and uh, I I think about this as a big moment in my career where I stopped looking at what I can do and I started thinking about what I wanted to do and that kind of changed what I was looking for in terms of new jobs because it would go through the cycle.

I’d start a new job and it was great. And then I got checked out and it was, you know, whatever. And, um, cycle continues every five years you find a new job and go through the same thing and it’s the same type of company and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as you’re looking for that new job every five years, you’re like, well what can I do? Oh, I could do that.

Oh, I could do that, but you don’t really wanna do it, but you can do it. And you know, it’s always, grass is always greener on the other side and all of that kind of stuff. But now it’s, you know, the question of once you get up to a certain level, right? High middle management, it’s not necessarily what can you do because there’s a very limited aspect of where you can go.

And so people are very concerned about this and and they don’t know how to articulate it. They don’t know how to ask the questions. They don’t know how to have these conversations and they don’t know where is next. So a bunch of people made a jump during the pandemic that was great. They did it for money, they did it for other reasons, fantastic. Some of them regret it, some of them don’t.

But when we think about what’s next and where you’re gonna go, and I, I talk to, I mean my sweet spot for clients is 35 to 55. I’m dealing with a lot of these people and a lot of these conversations is, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t really have a future. I don’t really have, you know, we talk about development, we talk about how to bring these people up and give them a career path.

The onus is on the individual to articulate it. Yes. But organizations don’t even know how to articulate it to people to say, well this is what’s going to be available. Because the whole framework of how we structure an organization is changing. So there’s a lot of mystery around where do people go and what are you going to do? And everyone will be fine. We’re gonna find a job, we’re gonna do it, and that’s great, but is it what you wanna do?

And that’s a very deep difficult conversation for people to have with themselves and with other people. And so the onus is on us to define our roles and to solve all of this. When we talk about ambition and why, why am I doing this? And you know, I’m 35 to 55, I’m not gonna do this for another 20 years. Like if you were to look at this 20 years of doing what you’re doing today, right?

A lot of people just say, that’s miserable, right? I don’t want to do it. Ultimately you’re gonna have to make the decisions to say, you know, what, what’s possible, what can I do and how can I change it? And how do I prioritize what’s important to me and what do I really need? Um, because many of us don’t really know where to start, and it starts with a question of ourselves is what, you know, what do you want?

And, and how do you articulate it verbally? We can’t just think about it cuz we make these assumptions and we jump and we, we do all this other type of work, but a fun conversation. I do this with Gabby, my wife all the time, is what’s possible, what could we do? Um, we just had friends down a couple weeks ago. We were talking like, why don’t we just move to an island in Greece and just kind of raise the kids there and I dunno, teach ’em how to fish or some shit.

Who knows? Like , right? I always wanted to move to Panama and just sell hot dogs on the beach. And uh, it sounds great, it sounds great. My wife’s not on board. Um, but we need to be intentional and we need to advocate for ourselves. And when we think about ambition, we have to learn and we have to, you know, we talk about vulnerability and learning and all of this type of stuff.

You got 20 years or more or less, whatever, but you’ve got 20 years to kind of make your mark in terms of what it is you wanna do. It doesn’t have to be this exhausting, you know, do it today. So tomorrow can be brilliant and blah blah blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to put this kind of pressure on ourselves. You know, everything’s okay and everything’s gonna be okay. If we can be intentional with what it is that’s, that’s relevant for us today in the moment.

And as we figure ourselves out today, everything else in the future will kind of work itself out. The more conversations you have brings opportunities of what’s possible, we have to think about what’s possible. We often think about why we can’t do something because well, AI is gonna take that job so you can’t take it and, uh, self-driving cars. So you can’t, you know, become a truck driver because self-driving cars and, you know, 10 years is gonna be whatever.

We can always find a reason why we can’t do something. But we have to, you know, have these conversations with peers and managers with our teams, right? If you manage a team to engage your team, we have to create an environment where they could share their hopes, their dreams, their fears, where they can get honest feedback, trustworthy feedback. How do you as a manager, that’s our obligation as a leader, as a manager, how do we create the environment for people to create their ambition?

We can’t tell someone what they should be doing. I hate the word should, right? Should be removed from the English language other than the fact that I should do this. Um, we can dictate that for other people, but we can engage the discussion and we can start the discussion. What do you want to do? And most people aren’t really gonna share that right away, right? We’ve got these different lives, we’ve got the public, we’ve got the private, we’ve got the secret.

And how do we tap into some of those and how do we say it’s okay to want something that you don’t currently have and not from a consumer perspective, right? We don’t need stuff, right? The more stuff you get, the more you know, kind of, you get lost in your stuff. But when we think about ambition and what we want, be proud of what you want, right? And take those little safe kind of risks and try something.

And it doesn’t have to upend everything, but when we think about ambition, when we think about our teams organizationally, create the environment for people to articulate these hopes, desires and dreams about what’s possible within the confines of the work environment or not. And then also for an individual, engage the people you trust to say, oh, I was thinking about trying this, or I was thinking about trying that and find someone who believes in you.

Everybody can find someone who believes in them. And if you don’t have someone call me up. I believe I believe in you. I believe in you . Um, I do because it’s possible, right? There’s, we got 20 years of possibility, 30 years of possibility, 40, 50 years of possibility ahead of you. And the advice we give to young people is go enjoy life and do whatever. You’ve got plenty of time to build a career.

It’s the same for you in your thirties and forties and fifties. Yes, there’s more risk. You’ve got kids, you’ve got a home, maybe, you know, whatever. Um, but there are different ways that we could do it and we could change different dynamics based on the assumptions that we have. And so lots to think about in terms of ambition. I hope that’s helpful. I love talking about ambition, I love talking about this type of stuff.

I don’t wanna get a little too cheesy in terms of what, you know, you can do it. Um, but articulating ambition and articulating where you wish to go, not from a role perspective, but you as an individual is a great place to start. So think about that this week. I hope that’s helpful. Would love to talk to you about it more. Feel free to reach out. I love these types of conversations and as always, have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks.