Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs
Oct 27, 2022
Discussion How should business leaders deal with life-floating employees who have no aspiration and no goals?
Blogs from The Third Way Working Group
- How do we define the floating? People tend to flow when they lack these three things, namely, ambition, direction and motivation.
- Ambition comes from one’s internal drive. Direction comes from a clear goal. And motivation comes from expected personal benefits.
- When one has none of these three, the person will float or drift by quiet quitting at work and unconstructive living at home.
- It may be the case that students in Japan are not pushed hard enough to seriously think about the future course of their lives at school. In USA and UK, students are often pushed hard to think seriously about their future at high school. In Germany, children at age 11 or 12 have to decide whether they want to go to universities or start working earlier as technical or physical professionals. In Japan, it seems the majority of even Master program students have not thought seriously about what they want to do for their career.
- Recent global incidents such as pandemic, war, inflation, climate change etc are adding more uncertainties for the future and making difficult for people to clarify their future direction. Also, some pessimistic sense of hopefulness may be discouraging people to think of their future. It is understandable that many people are just floating these days all over the world.
- What is the opposite of floating then? If many people are floating and living aimlessly, what is the behaviors of the people who are not floating? It is self-learning.
- Non-floaters are busy with self-learning. Despite the uncertainties and worries for the future, non-floaters are trying to upgrade their skills and strengthen their survivability.
- Today’s highly automated and virtual world has made learning a lot easier for people. People can be well self-educated even without going to universities.
- At the same time, however, the same automated and virtual world has made learning shallow and quick. People nowadays have less critical thinking skills, less memory power and less ability to come up with right questions. People want the right answer right away. But there is no right answer in today’s VUCA world. There is only your own answer.
- In old days, people actually had to go out, do something to get something. So people could not afford to float. They had to decide what to do and do it each day. Today, we can do pretty much everything at home with our PC. We can just repeat the same things every day and live pretty smoothly. Our basic animal ambition and abilities were tamed and taken away by the technology.
- So, if this floating is happening everywhere in the world, is there anything specific about Japan? How do Japanese people float or try not to float? What are managers doing with those floating people at work in Japan? We will discuss this next time.
- Ambition comes from one’s internal drive. Direction comes from a clear goal. And motivation comes from expected personal benefits.
- When one has none of these three, the person will float or drift by quiet quitting at work and unconstructive living at home.
- It may be the case that students in Japan are not pushed hard enough to seriously think about the future course of their lives at school. In USA and UK, students are often pushed hard to think seriously about their future at high school. In Germany, children at age 11 or 12 have to decide whether they want to go to universities or start working earlier as technical or physical professionals. In Japan, it seems the majority of even Master program students have not thought seriously about what they want to do for their career.
- Recent global incidents such as pandemic, war, inflation, climate change etc are adding more uncertainties for the future and making difficult for people to clarify their future direction. Also, some pessimistic sense of hopefulness may be discouraging people to think of their future. It is understandable that many people are just floating these days all over the world.
- What is the opposite of floating then? If many people are floating and living aimlessly, what is the behaviors of the people who are not floating? It is self-learning.
- Non-floaters are busy with self-learning. Despite the uncertainties and worries for the future, non-floaters are trying to upgrade their skills and strengthen their survivability.
- Today’s highly automated and virtual world has made learning a lot easier for people. People can be well self-educated even without going to universities.
- At the same time, however, the same automated and virtual world has made learning shallow and quick. People nowadays have less critical thinking skills, less memory power and less ability to come up with right questions. People want the right answer right away. But there is no right answer in today’s VUCA world. There is only your own answer.
- In old days, people actually had to go out, do something to get something. So people could not afford to float. They had to decide what to do and do it each day. Today, we can do pretty much everything at home with our PC. We can just repeat the same things every day and live pretty smoothly. Our basic animal ambition and abilities were tamed and taken away by the technology.
- So, if this floating is happening everywhere in the world, is there anything specific about Japan? How do Japanese people float or try not to float? What are managers doing with those floating people at work in Japan? We will discuss this next time.
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