What is work?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

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• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

Most people view work as something they must do to pay the mortgage, their bills or feed the children, and then look forward to the rest of their lives when they can really enjoy themselves. This assumption underlines many of our interactions throughout the week. What are you doing at the weekend? What did you do last night? Where are you going for your holiday next year? All these assume there is always something better than working.

Now if you read this blog regularly, you will know I love my holidays and leisure time.  Indeed, I am writing this having managed to combine work on Friday in Jersey with a lovely weekend mainly in the sun following the work on that beautiful island.  Nothing wrong with enjoying our leisure time.  I simply want my team and everyone else to love all their lives, not just their leisure time.  “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” said Confucius in his wisdom.  The key to enjoying 100% of your life is to find something you absolutely love doing.

We are lucky in the speciality food industry that many people within it have a great passion for what they do, not seen in some other industries.  Some may well exclaim that they are certainly not in it for the money with the low margins involved in food!  I was judging the final last Thursday at the New Producer’s Awards 2018, and there were a bunch of finalists who are completely passionate about what they are doing, and, most likely, don’t consider what they are doing as work as they are in it for the love.  That is what has got them this far, they will need to start turning a profit soon, if they haven’t already, to continue enjoying it, I would suggest.  Passion for what we are doing is what gets us through those first couple of often difficult years.

The trouble is that some of us aren’t in that place.  You haven’t been loving your job for a while and are always hoping for something to change.  Well, let me tell you that it usually doesn’t.  Either you need to change, or you need to change what you are doing.  Waiting around for something amazing to happen and you will wait a long time.  If you are unhappy at work why don’t you, this week, take some steps to change.  Make that leap or at least start exploring first steps.  Join me and let work become fun and not feel like work at all.

Have a life-changing week.