Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Welch is still alive and must love today’s optimized millennials, who were raised to constantly strive and never stop working. Burnout would be no problem, since he could simply fire them.
In spite of that I doubt he could manage them; neither they, nor their elders, would take kindly to his style.
In fact, Welch’s approach is actually the fastest way to produce a bumper crop of weeds.
I’ve disagreed with Jack Welch many times going back to the start of this blog. In December 2006 I wrote Men Want A Life, Too in response to Welch’s comment.
“We do acknowledge that work-life balance is usually a much harder goal for women with children. For them, there is about a 15-year period in their careers in which the choices they make are not about what they want from life professionally and personally but about what is right for their kids. It can be a fraught time, since choices and consequences are more complex. That, however, is a topic for another column.”
It took two-and-a-half years, but he did return to that topic recently at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference telling them that women need to choose between raising kids and running a company.
“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” (The article is from the Wall Street Journal and is the first link on this Google search page.)
Putting the comments together we have a high profile x-CEO who believes that the way to the top is for both men and women to make the tough choice and put their family second to their career.
Just let relatives, nannies (if you can afford them), daycare, schools, friends, gangs and the internet raise the next generation.
Why do comments like these come primarily from old, rich white guys?
What planet are they living on? More importantly have they bothered listening to today’s workers—and I don’t mean just Millennials.
As long as this is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that runs companies that attitude will translate to corporate action and companies will face problems staffing. The recession won’t go on forever and demographically there’s a serious people shortage at every level and in every field.
If you really want to attract the best and brightest men and women then you need to recognize that their priorities have changed and if forced to choose the company will, in most cases, come in second.
And those candidates who do choose company over life may lack the empathy needed to innovate and market, let alone lead, the current workforce.
There are plenty of companies that already know this and have adjusted their culture accordingly, but most will be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality once the economy turns around, demographics rears its ugly head and they have no choice.
As you probably guessed, Jack Welch has been on my mind, mainly because I was stuck having lunch with a retired executive who went on and on about what a great role model Welch is.
When I disagreed, with specific examples, he informed me that he expected my reaction because I was a woman.
Huh?
Wow. I’m really glad this guy is retired, because he sure doesn’t relate to today’s workers no matter their age.
But nothing replaces high EQ, empathic, humane (not just human) bosses.
Not processes, not technology, not AI, and definitely not robots.
No matter what big and little tech want, believe or tell us, people are analog and always will be. For that matter, the real world is analog and always will be.
So, for the foreseeable future, the management and leadership skills needed to grow strong, creative, highly productive workers will be found in those who understand the limits of digital and can move freely and successfully in an analog world filled with analog people.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Jack Ma is the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He recently extolled the virtues on social media of working long hours, calling it a blessing..
Ma took to social media recently to voice his support of an intense work culture known as “996,” which refers to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. That all-consuming, life-force-sucking schedule is reportedly common among the country’s big technology companies and startups and Ma is okay with that.
And you thought the US was bad.
US startups have always been famous (infamous?) for working 80+ hour weeks and pulling multiple all-nighters conferred even more bragging rights.
More bragging rights, no matter the size of your company.
Sometime in the last 20 years, with the rise of giant tech companies, unicorns, unicorn wannabes, and other new(ish) companies, long hours got baked into startup culture and continued long after the company qualifies as a “startup.”
But even the Chinese government disagrees with Ma’s 996.
“The mandatory enforcement of 996 overtime culture not only reflects the arrogance of business managers, but also is unfair and impractical.”
Working excessive hours damages/destroys family, friendships, productivity, creativity, and a host of other things, but the first thing to suffer is sleep.
Besides the damage that lack of sleep does in the present, the long-term damage, while different, is as dangerous as football.
Considering how the tech world worships health, longevity and the possibility of extending their lives well past 100 they may want to rethink those long hours.
Not because I say so, but they might want to listen to Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the book “Why We Sleep.”
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Last Wednesday I noted with the year three quarters over people were likely to start obsessing and stressing about accomplishing the goals they set last January. I also said I would discuss goals further today.
Topping the list of choosing goals is the need to identify whose goals are — as explained in this post from 2009. Next Monday I’ll share one more bit of insight about goals from way back in 2006.
This might come as a shock, but there is no Eleventh Commandment stating, “Thou shalt place thy career above all things in thy life and draw all sustenance, mental and spiritual, as well as economic, from it.”
“The issue of work-life balance is about what kind of a life you want to have. Work plays a part in that. Decisions that you make about life determine how much work and what kind of work you do. Spending time getting clear about who you are and how you are talented is time well-spent. You may not even like the answer at first. It may conflict with expectations from you, your family, the community, and even society at large.
Maybe that’s the place to start. For those who work best with a label, perhaps Life Integration would offer a better target than Work-Life Balance.”
I like that—Life Integration.
Very few people choose how to die, but too many don’t choose how to live.
They allow the expectations of parents, educators, friends, colleagues, movies, society-in-general and the ever ubiquitous ‘they’ to choose for them.
Most will deny this publicly, but anyone who honestly remembers the power of peer pressure in school will privately admit that it doesn’t cease to exist upon graduation; in fact the pressures increase dramatically while becoming more covert.
Few successful people care to admit that the goals for which they are working and even how they spend their non-work time are more about fitting in than personal desire.
They chase the goals and do the things that ‘everybody’ is doing in the name of being ‘with it’. And that includes “work/life balance” and “having it all right now.”
So the net time you are ready to tear your hair out STOP; stop, take a step back and honestly determine whose goals you are trying to reach.
I have been pretty busy lately and am not proud of it. Most of my time is taken up with mundane tasks, but they do keep me occupied.
I have small children so a successful day involves my wife and I getting a chance to catch up on laundry and dishes.
I also have the demands of work, which is good, because wouldn’t you rather have that than no work at all?
However, busy is also a euphemism that whatever you’re working on isn’t truly that important.
When I have work or friends that ask for my time and I say I am busy it is typically a polite way of saying I don’t want to do it or they are not a priority.
In aggregate, we see this as a society where there are silos of people who have only a few select relationships and follow a set pattern.
Those workaholics who are always at the office are often celebrated by society and condemned by those that work for them. I had a boss years ago who worked all the time and expected those below them to do so as well. I hated it.
However, I have followed a pattern lately where I am in that same condition.
I work a lot but feel like nothing is getting done.
I have been in this place before and typically the way I get out is by setting small priorities that I can work towards and build upon that.
How do you get out of the hamster wheel of work and become productive?
I read something today that made me take pause. It mentioned that in the early days of the internet, hen chat rooms were prevalent, you would tell people you were taking a break and would be back soon.
It was announced when you wouldn’t be there, because you had to literally sit at a computer to chat. Nowadays, we don’t need to do that as we are always on and always connected.
Until I read that post it didn’t occur to me how true that is. We can be at work, home, the beach and still be connected.
This is a topic touched on quite a bit and I have been intrigued by it for some time. When we are younger we can go to work and then home. They are separate entities. I had a job working at Pizza Hut as a teen. I can recall not once did I get home thinking about work or responding to emails. ( I did love it though, as I’m a huge pizza fan).
One result of that job was that I didn’t learn the lesson that sometimes work does need to be done at home or after hours. And now, as a professional, I struggle to figure out a balance to it all.
I had a CEO tell me one time that work and life are actually a blend.
There will typically not be a true balance, but both bleed into each other. As a father I find myself on my phone too much at home. Sometimes it’s work and sometimes not.
The blend idea teaches that the most important thing is to be present in the moment. It will pay dividends in the long run.
Being present may be the most important lesson I have learned on this topic.
And perhaps if we, as a society, put it in practice then work-life balance would not be such an issue.
I don’t believe there is one simple solution, but that would be good start.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Anyone who reads this blog knows I hold very specific views when it comes to MAP and how people conduct themselves — some would even call me opinionated and I wouldn’t argue. But opinionated or not, I do my best to evaluate based on what is, as opposed to what I wish.
So it was with major regret that I realized this post is no longer what is — at least in Silicon Valley, other startup ecosystems, too many parts of corporate America and large swaths of the public (dis)service, AKA, politicians — it’s what I wish.
I recently had the opportunity to spend time speaking with Dave Crenshaw to discuss his new book, “The Power of Having Fun”.
The topic of the book can be a bit incomplete when looking at it without context, so let me expand on it. The book alone is not simply a guide for how you can have fun but more a lesson on how incorporating fun into your daily life will enhance productivity and lead to true happiness.
That can be a bold statement that a single book will somehow transform your life in some profound way, but Dave does a great job in providing concrete steps to help achieve a balance with work and life.
A little background on Dave Crenshaw to give some insight into how he realized a book on how to have fun was required.
Dave is a coach and speaker who has spent considerable time with high-performing folks in business. After he graduated from Brigham Young University he realized that he wanted to be an entrepreneur and coach. After working with a firm he decided to set out his own shingle and started hustling to form his own successful business.
I say all of this to point out that this book is not some theoretical novel written by a guy who sat in an ivory tower, Dave has been in the trenches and fully understands that life requires balance.
The premise of the book is simple enough. As work and home life start to blur we can become focused on ever more productivity, efficiency gains, and the bottom line. People have started to sacrifice taking vacations let alone spending a quality hour around the dinner table at home with family.
Careers have a tendency to become more and more demanding as we rise the ladder. Dave isn’t saying that should be abandoned, he is merely stating that an oasis, as he calls it, should be observed.
The first thing that stood out to me is the guilt that people feel when having fun.
A lot of times you see people take a great vacation or buy a new item they had lusted after, only to feel guilty for it after. As a society, we are taught that our reward comes after the hard work.
From a religious perspective, this is inherent, “our reward is in heaven” is a phrase you will hear often. As a result, we are wired to not take pleasure in fun until we have completed the task at hand.
Dave takes a different approach to this. His idea is to set up a block of time where we have determined that a fun activity will occur. This oasis allows you to relax and recharge, while also not skewing over to just wasting time.
Have you seen the business owner that cannot take a vacation out of fear that his employees will resent him? Or perhaps you have brought the laptop with you to Tahiti so you can remain connected to the office while forsaking family commitments.
Does this really advance us as a society?
Maybe in certain cases, but most humans need a balance to live.
One thing I like to always understand is how can we quantify this?
The simple answer here is to run an A/B test.
Go a week where you build in an oasis and then go another week without. See what the two outcomes are and determine if incorporating them into your life makes sense.
I am personally in a place where I have little kids and a busy wife. I feel guilty if I go out to lunch let alone go out for a night on the town because I know my wife struggles to have any time for herself.
When speaking with Dave about this he agreed that it can be tough. His solution though is to ensure my wife has her own oasis of time. Build it and plan them out and both parties can be happy without the guilt.
Now, you may be thinking that this book is only addressing a first world problem for high income earning folks. I would disagree.
An oasis of time does not require an elaborate trip to the Bahamas. It can simply be reading a book for thirty minutes or going out for a meal rather than cooking.
The idea is that a balance and time to recharge are required, but you should not put yourself in debt doing so.
The book addresses a range of topics from specific steps for how to build an oasis to how to deal with the emotional baggage that we all carry. The one takeaway Dave told me he would like people to have is this. “Fun is a priority, it must be planned because it’s easy to neglect.
From a tactical standpoint, the book is a fun read, has some great workbooks, and can be incorporated into your life immediately.
From a strategic view, this book has the ability to address long-standing guilt that we as a society have accrued.
I encourage those that are trying to find a balance in life to read it. The busy mom, the lonely workaholic, or the college grad. It is applicable to all and was a true pleasure to read.
His book is available now on both Amazon.com as well as national book retailers. To learn more about Dave visit his website.
In the 20th century we measured work done by the number of hours each employee logged. (…) This was perpetuated by managers and CEOs who had no other norms and never considered that managing this way was actually less effective than the alternatives.
Blank recommends three actions to start building a better measurement system than hours.
Define the output you want for the company getting input from each department/division
Define the output you want for each department
Ensure that the system does not create unintended consequences
As Labor Day approaches, and a single day of rest from all the hours we Americans spend on the job is upon us, people can’t seem to stop talking about the crazy hours they work.
One of the most-read articles on the Wall Street Journal’s web site last week was a piece about how 4 a.m. — a time so ungodly there’s even a TED Talk about how surreal it is — has become the most productive hour for go-getters.
That’s in spite of research that excessive hours quell innovation and creativity, reduce productivity, increase errors and can cause serious health problems.
Yet research, time and time again, shows the problems with overwork — on people’s health, on turnover, on absenteeism, on productivity. Studies have shown that after about 50 hours a week, productivity actually decreases, and it plummets after 55 hours, leaving no detectable difference between those who work 56 hours and those who work 70 — or 130, as Mayer suggested may be needed for successful startups.
Many years ago a smart senior manager, who became a serial entrepreneur, commented that the need for 50+ hour weeks was a sign of bad management.
I can already hear the arguments, because I’ve been hearing them for years (decades, actually).
So here’s proof from someone who’s not an academic or researcher who doesn’t understand, because they don’t work in the real world.
Last Wednesday, Amazon announced it was preparing to launch a pilot program in which a few dozen employees would log only 30 hours each week. In return they would receive 75% of their normal salary and retain full benefits. (…) By offering employees more flexibility, Amazon sends the message that life outside the workplace matters. The new policy also indicates that the world’s second-largest retailer is acknowledging the limits of human cognition, whether or not that was the Amazon’s intent.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
