Executive thinking, made relatable.
Executive thinking, made relatable.
Your reading
Participant workbook. Define the target, diagnose what blocks it, then move it.
Get hired. Stay hired. Get promoted.
Before we start
Write in it honestly or it will not work. Nothing in here gets handed to your manager, scored against you, or kept on file. The only person who reads your answers is you, unless you choose otherwise.
Name the feeling before you reach for the fix. Most people jump straight to a decision — quit, transfer, wait it out — without ever naming what is actually wrong. A wrong name costs a year.
Love + Good At = Job Joy
Two halves. Most people have one and assume the problem is the whole job.
Define — what am I aiming at. You will finish with a written target you can say back in one sentence.
Diagnose — what is in the way. Five named blocks; you will find yours and rank it.
Solve — how do I act on it. One test, small enough to run before we meet again.
Not a personality test. Not a performance review. Not advice to quit — most of the time the repair is smaller and closer than leaving.
A note on honesty. The scores only help if they are true. Nobody has ever been helped by a workbook they filled in the way they thought they were supposed to.
Step one
01
“What am I actually aiming at?”
Most teams and most careers cannot name the target, so every fix that follows is a guess. This step puts it on paper: what you love, what you are good at, and how much of your week sits where those two overlap.
Step one · part A
Not what you enjoy about being off work. What you would still choose to do inside the working day if nobody was watching and nobody was counting.
Score each statement as it is right now, not as it was two years ago and not as you hope it will be.
| Statement | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| There is part of my week I look forward to. | |||||
| When I talk about my work outside of work, some of it is with energy. | |||||
| I lose track of time doing at least one task in this job. | |||||
| If I could keep only one part of this role, I know immediately which one. | |||||
| The work matters to me beyond what it pays. | |||||
| I would still want to be near this kind of work in five years. |
Name the hour of the week you would keep. Be specific — the task, the shift, the room.
Step one · part A
A low Love score is information, not a verdict. It usually means one of three things, and they have different repairs.
1. When did work last feel like it counted? Give the day if you can remember it. We will work backwards from there.
2. What part of the week do you dread? Name the hour, not the job.
3. Would you still do this if nobody ever asked what you did for a living?
Low Love with high Good At is the most common pattern in a room like this, and it is the one people most often misread as “wrong career.” Hold the diagnosis until Step Two.
Step one · part B
Not what your title says. What other people come to you for, and what you can do reliably on a bad day as well as a good one.
| Statement | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| People come to me for a specific thing, and I know what it is. | |||||
| I can do the core of this job well even on a bad day. | |||||
| Someone newer has learned something from watching me. | |||||
| I have been told I am good at something more than once, by different people. | |||||
| I am trusted with the difficult version of the task, not just the routine one. | |||||
| My skill has grown in the last twelve months, and I could say how. |
What do people actually come to you for? Write it as they would say it, not as a job description would.
Step one · part B
Skill you cannot point at is skill nobody can promote. Three pieces of evidence, from the last year, in your own words.
1. Something that went right because you were the one doing it.
2. Something you fixed that other people had walked past.
3. Someone who is better at their job because of you.
These three lines are the raw material for a promotion conversation, a resume line, and an interview answer. Most people cannot produce them under pressure. You now can.
Step one · part C
This is the part that matters. Loving the work and being good at it are worth little if your week is not spent where the two meet.
| Statement | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most of my week is spent on work I am both good at and care about. | |||||
| The thing I do best is also the thing I am asked for most. | |||||
| My role has grown in the direction of my strengths, not away from them. | |||||
| I end most weeks feeling used well rather than used up. | |||||
| What I am paid for and what I am good at are the same thing. | |||||
| I can see a next step from here that uses more of me, not less. |
This third number is the headline, not the sum of the three. A person can score well on Love and Good At and still be in the wrong room, and the Overlap is where that shows up.
Step one · your reading
Protect this. The work now is keeping it, not finding it — which is a different skill and an easier one to lose.
Something is draining a job that is mostly right. Usually one block, usually fixable without leaving.
Something specific is in the way. Step Two names it. Do not make a decision until it has a name.
Not necessarily the wrong work. Often the right work in a place that cannot use it.
Love 22+ with Good At 17 or under — aspiration running ahead of capability. The want is real; the skill has not caught up yet. That is a training problem, not a job problem.
Good At 22+ with Love 17 or under — the competence trap. You are excellent at something you have stopped caring about, which is the most comfortable place to lose ten years.
Step one · the decoder
List real tasks from a real week — not categories. Every job contains unloved work that pays for the rest; the question is how much and where it sits.
Job Joy Core. Protect it.
Growth Edge. Invest here.
Negotiation Zone. Your best leverage.
Delegate or eliminate.
Write your target in one sentence. The room should be able to hear it and repeat it back.
Step two
02
“What is actually in the way?”
“I hate my job” is a symptom. Treating a symptom is how people burn a year and a salary on the wrong move. There are five blocks, each takes a different repair, and treating the wrong one costs you the year anyway.
“This is not who I am anymore.”
Not boredom, and not burnout. Identity is about the fit between the work and the person; if the work is right but the pace is wrong, look at Authority or Alignment first.
Where does this one show up in my week?
“We are not pulling toward the same thing.”
Not a personality clash with one manager. Alignment is structural — it survives the manager leaving. If it would go away with one person, look at Belonging.
Where does this one show up in my week?
“I am responsible for what I cannot control.”
Not wanting a promotion. Authority is about the match between what you are accountable for and what you may decide — a title change that does not move that line changes nothing.
Where does this one show up in my week?
“I am in the room but not of it.”
Not needing to be friends with colleagues. Belonging is about whether you are treated as one of the people this place is for — which is a different question from whether you like them.
Where does this one show up in my week?
“I cannot see a way up from here.”
Not impatience. Trajectory is about whether a path exists and is visible — a real path you have to wait for is a different situation from no path at all.
Where does this one show up in my week?
Step two · the call
Most people can make a case for three of them. Only one is doing the most damage right now, and that is the one to work on. Rank them 1 to 5.
My block is: write the one, not the three.
The specific evidence that made me pick it:
If you cannot pick one, pick the one you would least like to be true. That is usually it.
Step three
03
“So what do I actually do?”
Four moves, in order. The point is not a plan you will admire and abandon — it is one test small enough to run this month, against real work, with a result you can read.
Step three · moves one and two
Move one
One sentence, plain, no hedging. “My block is Authority: I am accountable for the schedule and I cannot approve overtime.” If you cannot say it in one sentence, you have not found it yet.
Move two
A block is never everywhere. Find the specific hours, the specific handoff, the specific meeting where it actually bites.
When in the week does it happen?
Who else is in the room when it happens?
Step three · moves three and four
Move three
Change one thing, deliberately, for a fixed period. One conversation. One request. One task swapped. Small enough that it costs little if it fails, real enough that the result means something.
A test is not a decision. You are buying information, not committing to an outcome.
Move four
Read the result honestly. If the block moved, keep the change and go again. If it did not, you have not failed — you have ruled something out, which is the second most useful thing a test can do.
Testing five things at once, then not knowing which one worked. One change. One period. One reading.
Step three · the commitment
Fill this in before you leave the room. A test you write down at your desk tomorrow is a test that does not happen.
After the room
Come back to this page a month from today. Not to judge yourself — to read the result.
Date I am reading this:
Did I run the test? If not, what stopped it — that answer is often the block itself, showing up again.
What changed?
What is the next test?
Take the three inventories again and compare. Movement in the Overlap score is the number that matters — and thirty days is long enough for it to move.
Yours
Work may be required. Fulfillment is designed.
The Job Joy Fulfillment Framework™ is the method behind the JOB JOY book series by David Simmons — thirty-five years leading talent and culture inside the industries that run on people.
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david@therelatableexecutive.com
The Relatable Executive® is a registered mark of Simrock, LLC. JOB JOY™, JOB JOY Inventory™ and the Job Joy Fulfillment Framework™ (JJFF™) are trademarks of Simrock, LLC. This workbook is licensed for use by participants of a facilitated session and may not be reproduced, distributed or taught from without written permission.
What happens next
Most people never get this far. The next thirty days decide whether it stays on paper.
One-to-one coaching and mentoring with David, your workbook open, and the person who built the framework on the other side of it. For the block you could name but cannot move alone.
Email David02Secure it for your teamPeople problems become business problems. What you just did alone works the same way on a floor, a shift or a leadership team — with everyone in the room at once.
Talk about an engagement03Get the bookJob Joy: Solve the Riddle is the long version of Step One, and the first of three. It is not out yet. Leave an address and you will know the day it lands.
Join the launch listPut the date in your calendar before you close this. Score the Overlap again. Movement in that one number is the only proof that any of this worked — no link required, that one is on you.
The Relatable Exec · Get hired. Stay hired. Get promoted.
Work on it with David
Most people can tell you what is wrong with their work. Moving it is the part that goes faster with someone who has spent 35+ years on the other side of that conversation.
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