Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

There are a number of employee / employer relationship types.  Adversarial - "I am exerting my power over you."  Transactional - "You do this for me. I pay you something in return." Trust-based and collaborative- "I like you and I trust you. Let's work together to build something meaningful. " I remember when I left a big Firm to go to a smaller company, I asked for equity.  After all, I'd established a reputation in the business and inflated my ego -- I deserved a percentage of the company that I was joining.  "Ah the naivete." Instead, the counteroffer was an hourly wage. I might as well been the union worker in the tire plant that I worked for right out of college, except that I had no union representative to help me file a grievance.  The hourly wage is what defines the mechanical turk.  (Read anything Seth Godin to fully appreciate what this means.) Don't sell yourself short and accept that you are a cog in you...

Every job has its highs and lows.  Some days are better than others and you do your job because it's what you are paid to do-- generally speaking. I would venture to say that the majority of people are doing jobs where they've given into acceptance rather than chosen it as a career.  That's evident in statistics that you hear about employees that are not just disengaged from work, but actively disengaged. 1 out of 10 of us are not engaged in what we do.  Unfortunately, many organizations feel like it's not their place to make work engaging or meaningful. The onus is on the employee. And there is advice out there where you need to see the glass as half full, make lemons out of lemonade, follow a lot of Peter Drucker / Dale Carnegie self-help advice in order to become a good corporate citizen and move up the corporate ladder.  The reality is that you may just be in the wrong job. Here are 7 signs that you are: It gets harder each day to wake up in th...