The costs of depleting professionals
Showing up with your whole self. Pursuing a career that is your life passion. Building the confidence to stay on your path no matter what, so that your God given gift can send out the ripples that also serve others.
While we focused on the path of the artist in this episode of The Breit Side podcast, working from your passion is not the prerogative of artists alone.
Rather, every real professional I have ever met and worked with has been deeply passionate about their work.
Just like artists, these professionals become vulnerable in the exercise of their craft, because just as for an artist, their work is deeply personal. It is not just a job. One of the crafts I have worked with closely over the last thirty years were A/V engineers, i.e. the guys that take care of the technical side of effective communication – the mikes, the channels, the cameras, the interfaces, the switches, the cables, and all the rest that transports human voices and faces from A to B without the actual people having to move. I have been blessed to work with some of the best. I can still see the happiness and pride in their eyes and that mischievous smile on their faces after a job well done. Just as much as the pain in their entire bodies when something went wrong. They took it personally.
Great professionals do. They take things personally, because they feel personally responsible. They care. This is what makes them excellent and why you can put your trust in them. They are willing and able to honour that trust and to carry the weight of it. Their “service level” is peace of mind.
Over the past few years, I have seen an increasing number of these outstanding professionals burn out and/or “numb up”, i.e. losing all the fucks they once had to give. Especially, in and at the fringes of corporate environments. The factors are manifold: relentless cost pressure that favours mediocrity instead of excellence. Overregulation and a generalized atmosphere of fear and control that strangulates professional freedom and the exercise of discretion. A general exhaustion that creates environments where people you depend on have less and less energy to care as much as you do. Continuous misunderstandings because people have less and less time to make sure they communicate effectively. Or simply a blatant lack of appreciation: instead of being valued, their insistence on excellence (or simply on doing a proper job) is rather seen as a nuisance or extravagance and a cost factor.
As Whiren van Niekerk said in this episode: “There are spaces that can truly break you down. And this is where you start having to relearn and teach yourself to feel that trust in yourself again.”
All of this comes at a cost for those who fight to maintain their work ethics, their excellence, their passion and their love for their craft. However, it also comes at a substantial cost for those who lose these guardians of excellence. It takes a while until this attrition shows up in income statements and balance sheets, but it eventually will, as every process chain that loses diligence and care will eventually corrode trust with clients.
When a company, a community or a society loses the people who care, they lose the energy of love and passion, which is the same energy that is needed for excellence and healthy growth. The current version of “mass AI” that is being pushed into all our lives adds a new dimension to this.
What does it do to the soul of an artist or passionate professional when they are told that a piece of software can do their job just as well as they can?
Actually, they are often the ones who look into innovation first because they constantly try to improve their craft. They are also the ones who can discern what works and what does not work, because they know what mediocre, good, good enough and excellent looks like. Now, if someone who has no deep understanding of a particular craft is allowed to set the “good enough” standard for the work of the professional, while the pro knows that the “good enough” version of the layperson is rather close to “actually not really cutting it”, the insistence on a mediocre standard puts dedicated professionals under constant stress. Told to be happy with the mediocre, they constantly have to negotiate with their better judgement, their work ethic and their passion. They are forced to compromise the integrity of their work.
Also, being told that some piece of software can do the work you put your heart and soul in just as well (when it actually doesn’t, and you know it), inflicts a deep hurt. What they are really told repeatedly is that they are not good enough. That their passion is not wanted and rather cringe. That their expertise and their pursuit of excellence is a relic from a different age. It’s hustle time, now, man. It’s the time of the jack of all trades. Never mind the masters.
Last week, I had coffee in one of my most beloved places and got chatting with one of the owners about this, that and how the kids are doing. When she spoke about her son, my heart hurt. He is obviously a very artistic soul, pouring his heart into exploring and developing various art forms.
Against the backdrop of the current AI frenzy, however, he recently decided to go and study business administration, because he sees not future for himself in the arts. My hear hurts again, writing this.
It is one thing to stop appreciating passion and mastery in our fellow adults. But how can we allow this to happen to our children?
I have no answer to this. I know, though, what all of us will lose, because I saw it happen before and I see it happening all around me now. It has always been difficult to follow your passion and to stay with the work of your heart through thick and thin. There have always been the voices that feed your doubt and your fear. However, we are now dealing with a force that attacks and erodes people’s passion and trust in themselves, in their gift and in their path at an unprecedented scale and in a uniform fashion and direction around the globe. A force that has no concept of passion and the power of perseverance in the face of vulnerability, because it cannot feel anything.
How can we allow this to happen to our children?