PNN Mirroring - determine yours workplace status

PNN mirroring is about translating your thoughts and feelings into statuses and colors. PNN is an abbreviation of Positive, Neutral and Negative which mirrors the statuses and colors back to you. Continue reading and you'll figure it out

Intro

For many years there were studies and researches that tried to discover what is motivating employees to stay or to leave their work. Some of them were done by academic institutes, private companies, HR companies and others. Here are some of the common reasons that you can find in most of them:

• Relationship with management
• Organizational culture
• Compensation / Salary
• Commute time or distance
• Work-life balance
• Financial benefits
• Office benefits
• Co-workers
• Career growth
• Working remotely
• Professional and personal challenges
• Skill development
• Field related reason

And there are many other reasons with which we can expand this list.

There also might be field related reasons depending on the person's profession or the industry he is working in.
Some people may see some of the above reasons as less important and some may see some of them as more important. It depends on the person's needs, character, culture, age and other factors.
But if we will try to group those reasons we will get 4 main groups:

• Compensation and benefits
• People and community
• Self fulfillment
• Career

Where it all started

From the very beginning of your working career you are probably being asked a lot by your friends and family the question - "How's work?" - pretty annoying question and in most of the cases you will probably answer - "OK...". In some of the cases you'll detail the answer (maybe tell a little bit about the job itself or some other benefits you have there) but you might also lie (maybe because of ego or to avoid unwanted conversation or any other reason) - and that is fine as long as you don't believe those lies.

Once I talked to my friend and I heard in his voice that something was wrong. I asked him - "Is everything ok? Something related to your work?" and he replied - "I am not sure. The compensation is good, the people are friendly and nice, I am working with the tech stack I wanted but something feels wrong".
I told him a bit about the tool I was thinking of and asked him if he wanted to be the 'pilot' user of it, and he agreed.
Few days later he called me and said - "I've decided to quit the current job, and I understood that thanks to your tool".
About a month later I was in the same situation but this time it was the other way around - my friend offered me to be the user of that tool. I agreed and this is the point where I actually realized the power of the tool that I came up with.
After that I told to my wife - "I think I will start looking for a new job...", she was amazed. She asked me - "But just a few days ago everything was ok, what happened??", and I answered - "Nothing special happened, I just realized that I was lying to myself. But on the other hand the tool proved itself again". You can imagine my wife's facial expression...

The Problem

The problem starts when you are lying to yourself. Lying to yourself not necessarily has to be a 'pure lie', it can be an ignorance from a part of the situation like - "The arguments with my team leader are temporary, it's probably because he has a lot of pressure right now" while most of the team members doesn't get along with him as well, or "I will probably get a raise soon, I am doing a really good job" while no one got a raise or a bonus in the previous 3 years and the management doesn't care about their employees, or "I am working with a really good tech stack" while so little of the overall companies are looking for this tech stack and its popularity is going down every day. There are more examples, but I think you've got the point.
Those thoughts and feelings cause you to ignore mostly the bad parts, maybe because you are a crazy level optimist (which is fine) or because you want to avoid facing the truth - Why? Because when you'll see the bigger picture you'll start considering making a change at your current workplace or even leaving your workplace and this is something that you maybe want to avoid at this point.
Each and everyone has their own reasons for avoiding the bigger picture (relocation for this position, the efforts you've made to get there, personal financial issues, tired of all the interview processes and many other reasons).
Some people may say - "Ye, that is fine, I can live with that.", but the question is - "What will be the consequences of this kind of living?". Those situations will lead mostly to anger and frustration. It can be a slow process (which you can use to make some smart moves) but eventually it'll start getting out onto your relationship, family, kids, parents, friends, pets and of course - yourself. At some point you'll become desperate and probably will start looking for a new workplace, but at this point you'll try to find a workplace just to escape from your current one and not because that's a place that you were aiming for.
The sooner you'll fix it the better. Trust me - I've been there...

If after reading the first part you think that you are ready to try it - then go for it and continue reading, otherwise come back when you'll feel that this is the right time.

PNN Mirroring

PNN mirroring is about translating your thoughts and feelings into statuses and colors. The whole idea is to keep it simple. Remember the 4 groups we've aggregated at the intro? Now let's use them:

Step 1 (PNN)

PNN - Positive, Neutral, Negative.
Your task is to choose one of the following statuses for each group:
Positive 🟢
Neutral ⚪️
Negative 🔴

Compensation and benefits [ ]

This group includes: Salary, any kind of insurance, bonuses, office benefits, work-life balance, sick days, etc...

People and community [ ]

This group includes: relationships with co-workers, relationships with management, interaction with other workers, social events, atmosphere at the workplace etc...

Self fulfillment [ ]

This group is about your own goals. For example - Do you work at the position that you desire? Or at a position that will help you to get to the desired one? Are the missions/tasks you are dealing with are something that you wanted to do? Do you learn from the place you work in something that you wanted? Like - Leadership / mentoring / professional skills. Maybe you have a goal to change the world in some way (Save the environment / fight crime / help people / help animals / etc..) - Does this workplace help you to achieve this goal?

Career [ ]

This group is a little bit different from the other three because it splits into two parts: common and field related.
Common: Are you satisfied with the career path you chose? Does the current work push your career forward?
Field related: This part may vary depending on your profession or field. As a fullstack developer I can say that the question that I've chosen is - Does the tech stack I am working with keeps me aligned to the market's demands?
Let's say I am working mainly with technology A (I don't want to take a real one because some people may feel offended so I prefer to keep it generic and anonymous) and slowly this technology is dying - In 2/3/5 years I might find myself in a pretty bad position if I'll start looking for a new job.

• If you are not a programmer you'll have to think of a question that is related to your specific field.

Step 2 (Mirroring)

How to understand the results?

Now write down / paint / imagine or any other way your result. (For example - 🟢🔴⚪️🟢)
Look at the result and imagine that someone gave you this result and asks for an advice - What would you suggest he do?
Why? Because as humans it's much easier for us to tell someone else what to do than doing it ourselves.
That is why it's called 'mirroring' it just reflects the image back to you. It might take you some time to process it and that is ok.

Step 3 (Extra step)

In case Step 2 is still confusing or you are having a hard time deciding what is the right status you're in, this extra step might be helpful.
Order the groups by their importance to you when 1 is the most important and 4 is less important. (but keep in mind that even though you ordering the groups, they still have an equal amount - 25%)
For example let's say that currently your friend's main focus is on his career path, the salary is much higher than his previous job but the co-workers he is working with are not the kind of people he would want to work with but his interaction with them is really low. Also this is not the 'dream job' he wants but he has to get experienced there to get to his dream job.
If I'll use step 2 for the above situation I'll get this result - 🟢🔴⚪️🟢
But if I'll order the result according to your friend's case (Career -> Compensation and benefits -> People and community -> Self fulfillment) I will get the following result:
🟢
🟢
🔴
⚪️

Q&A

Why are there only 4 groups?
As I mentioned before - The whole idea is to keep it simple.
Let's say my result was - 🟢⚪️🔴⚪️
If I'll start breaking down the groups I might get the following result - 🟢⚪️🔴🟢🟢⚪️🔴🔴🟢⚪️
Which one is clearer and simpler?
For me personally the first one is much clearer, but if the second one is more clearer for you - then go for it.

Is there an app that I can use instead of writing/imagining?
While writing this post the idea of an app came to my mind, and I've already started working on it. I'll update this post whenever it'll be ready - so stay tuned :)

Can I move some of the amount of a group into another group?
"Let's say that currently my main goal is to earn a fortune and I don't really care about the people that I am working with - Can I take half of the amount from the 'People and community' group and move it to the 'Compensation and benefits' group?".
The 4 groups that we've created at the intro have an equal effect on you (25%), even if you think that some of the groups are less important for you right now sooner or later it'll come out, that is why I wouldn't recommend doing it.

Conclusion

Like everything else in the world PNN mirroring is not perfect and there might be scenarios in which it won't be able to help, but in the overall it might be very helpful (some of my friends that used it already were really happy that PNN mirroring helped them. Some of them said few bad words - but in the good way :D ).
You are welcome to ask questions in case you have any, share (only if you want) any thoughts that came up and of-course if PNN mirroring helped you in any case I'll be very glad to hear (or read) about it. (You can write a PM if you want).
Good luck and remember - 'Experience' is mostly the mistakes you've made and learnt from and only a bit of the successful things you did.