Category: Culture and the Integrated Workplace

Why Work-Life Balance is Becoming Critical

The problem of work-life balance is becoming more acute in organizations, and there is a disconnect between employers’ and employees’ perspective on this issue.

A study of the issue of work-life balance in Europe completed by Joan Lazar and published in the journal, European Research Studies (link is external), showed that competing and multi-faceted demands between work and home responsibilities have increased substantially in Europe, and the result has been many government-led policy initiatives. Her research shows that workers who feel they have some control over their working environment tend to suffer less stress-related ill-health; and turnover is less frequent.

Millennials will represent the majority of the workforce within the next few years. Employers that grasp the importance of understanding Millennials will be better positioned to adjust their employer branding strategies and employment offerings around the expectations of Millennials. Of these expectations, two stand out: Millennials rank achieving wealth below spending time with family followed by personal growth and learning. They spend a much higher value on having enough personal time. Work-life balance is critical to them.

WorkplaceTrends.com, a research and advisory membership portal servicing forward-thinking HR professionals, and CareerArc, a global recruitment and outplacement firm, announced the results of a new study (link is external)entitled, “2015 Workplace Flexibility Study.” The study was based on a national survey of 1087 professionals. The study included the following conclusions:

  • 67% of HR professionals think that their employees have a balanced work-life, yet 45% of employees feel that they don’t have enough time each week
  • 65% of employees say that their manager expects them to be reachable outside of the office
  • 64% of HR professionals expect their employees to be reachable outside of the office on their personal time
  • 87% of HR leaders believe that workplace flexibility programs lead to employee satisfaction, and 70% of HR leaders use workplace flexibility programs as a recruiting and retention tool
  • 50% of employers ranked workplace flexibility as the most important benefit they believe their employees desired, compared to 75% of employees
  • 79% of employees ranked financial support, such as tuition assistance, as being most important after time off.
  • Only 34% of the organizations surveyed currently offer outplacement assistance to their laid-off employees.

Dan Schawbel, Founder of WorkplaceTrends.com and New York Times best-selling author of Promote Yourself, said “Technology has expanded the 9-to-5 workday into the 24/7 workday, which has made it extremely difficult for employees to have personal time… In the future, every company will have flexibility program and those that don’t will lose the battle for the top talent.”

Part of the problem can be seen in the debate or push-back from employers. They are concerned that giving workers too much flexibility or “free time” will result in abuses.  At the same time, there is no evidence to support the proposition that “face-time” or “seat time” is the equivalent of engagement or productivity, which can realistically only be measured by results. There are new studies now available that show that in organizations that provide flexible work-life balance arrangements productivity actually increases.

The other perspective that becomes part of the issue of work-life balance is that of gender. With the increase in the numbers of women in the workforce, combined with the predominant expectation that they will continue to shoulder most of the responsibilities of child-rearing, the lack of work-life balance becomes more acute.

My experience in coaching CEOs and senior executives is that work-life balance is a serious and troublesome issue for them. Increasing demands on their time, and brutal meeting schedules regularly interfere with their intentions to spend time with their families. But most interestingly, many of them express dissatisfaction about not having time for themselves, because precious little time is left over.

It’s clear from recent studies such as the WorkplaceTrends.com and CareerArc study, that the issue of work-life balance is becoming more significant, particularly in light of the large influx of Millennials into the workplace. Smart employers would do well to take note and become proactive.

Post published by Ray Williams  in Wired for Success

Buddhist trained HR executive, Michael Carroll, author of the Mindful Leader: Awakening Your Natural Management Skills Through Mindfulness Meditation applies the key principles of mindfulness and how they could apply to leaders of organizations. He argues that mindfulness in leaders and their organizations can:

  • Heal toxic workplace cultures where anxiety and stress inhibit creativity and performance;
  • Cultivate confidence;
  • Pursue organizational goals without promptness;
  • Lead with wisdom, not only with ambition, relentless drive and power;
  • Develop innate leadership strengths.

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Organizations have some form of program designed to nurture high-potential employees. However a recent study by the Corporate Executive Board revealed that 40% of “high-potential” job moves  produce disappointing results.

Disengagement of employees also is remarkable: One in three emerging stars reported feeling disengaged from his or her company.
Even more striking, 12% of all the high potentials in the study said they were actively searching for a new job.Why do companies have so much difficulty in their succession planning?

The Corporate Executive Board’s research revealed that senior managers make misguided assumptions about these employees and take actions on their behalf that actually hinder their development. When dealing with high-potential employees, firms tend to make six common errors: assuming that all of them are highly engaged, equating current performance with future potential, delegating the management of high potentials down in the organization, shielding promising employees from early derailment, expecting stars to share the pain of organization-wide cutbacks, and failing to link high potentials and their careers to corporate strategy.
In other words “tune into their brains”.

Having knowledge of how our brain functions facilitates enhanced performance.

Key points to take into account are:

  • Learning should be broken down into “bite-size” to increase itsne absorbency and effectiveness.
  • Allow time for your people to integrate learning into long-term memory.
  • Fairness and respect gives brain a chemical boost.
  • Stress inhibits clear thinking.
  • Uncertainty arouses fear that decreases the ability to make decisions.
  • Employees need some ownership over situations to better accept change.
  • Engaging people in more active learning techniques improves retention.
And here are some things you should do to keep your top talent on track:

  • don’t just assume they are engaged – give them stimulating work, a chance to prosper, and recognition or they will walk
  • don’t mistake current high performance for future potential – test candidates for ability, engagement, and aspiration
  • don’t delegate talent development to line managers – this will limit the talents access to senior members
  • don’t shield talent – place talent in live fire roles
  • don’t assume top talent will take one for the team – compensate top talent differently and creatively
  • don’t keep young leaders in the dark – share strategy with them

Our modern world has become unbalanced, with little time allocated for just “being” and reflection.  Mindfulness can restore that balance to leaders and workplaces. Mindfulness, practiced  in organizations, can be a powerful antidote to the fear and aggression build-ups.
High-performance organizations, such as  Apple, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Raytheon, Microsoft, SAP, NortelNetworks, Comcast, Yahoo, Google, eBay are offering employees classes in mindful meditation and senior executives such as Bill Ford Jr., Michael Stephen, Robert Shapiro and Michael Rennie practice regular mindful mediation as part of their leadership-enhancement routines.

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Mindfulness can restore balance to leaders and workplaces

Research contests that  mindfulness-enhanced traits include the capacity to suspend judgments, to act in awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, to attain emotional equilibrium.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, describes mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” Other definitions are: “bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis,” and  “it includes a quality of compassion, acceptance and loving-kindness.”

David Rock, writing in Psychology Today argues that “busy people who run our companies and institutions …tend to spend little time thinking about themselves and other people, but a lot of time thinking about strategy, data and systems. As a result the circuits involved in thinking about oneself and other people, the medial prefrontal cortex, tend to be not too well developed.” Rock says “speaking to an executive about mindfulness can be a bit like speaking to a classical musician about jazz.”

The three fundamental elements of mindfulness are:

  • objectivity,
  • openness, and
  • observation

All together, create a threefold that enable the mind to become conscious of its mechanics and liberate it from its preoccupations of indecisiveness.

John Baldoni  a leadership consultant,and author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up, contests that creating urgency to save a sinking ship is imperative. Working long hours to do so is also critical, but working day after day for months on end without a break is a bad idea. When a team is crashing on a deadline, pulling together can be energizing. But when there is no deadline in sight, the long hours exact vengeance in the form of loss of energy as well as diminished commitment. Managers do not become more creative by working harder; they burnout more quickly. You need give people a break from the day to day flow of work.

Here are some suggestions for sustaining performance under pressure…

Set standards. The team leader must make it clear that during the crisis people are expected to assume a greater work load. The leader sets the example by taking more than his fair share of the work. Part of that work means being there for his team. At the same time, the leader does not need to decide how individuals must work. Often employees can decide how best to do their jobs. For example, mandatory meetings are fine, but every meeting need not be mandatory.
Get a buddy. One way to work smarter is to do what I have seen efficient organizations do. Team up with a co-worker to cover for you, not simply on vacations but also during times you will be out of the office. If your buddy is junior to you, then it can be a development opportunity. The leader can also buddy with a colleague or boss to stand in for him, too. Many organizations preach team as in collaboration but too few take advantage of treating teammates as partners. You can do more when individuals work together.
Mandate fresh air time. Get out of the office from time to time. This can be as simple as going out for lunch, or taking a walk in the afternoon. Clock time in the gym, too. Fitness is essential for tackling a heavy workload. The leader also sets the tone by making time for himself. When the team sees the boss taking a break (mental or physical), it gives the team permission to do likewise. Without the leader’s example, no one will follow through on making time for self.
Clocking long hours is not reserved for the corporate suite. Working in government, or even in the highest office in the land — the White House — can be grueling. President Obama vowed to make his administration family friendly, but as his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel quips, “It’s friendly to your [Obama] family.” As a result many staffers, as reported in the New York Times, are feeling stressed chiefly because they miss time with their families. Continued long stretches of working extraordinary hours will cause talented people to leave early.
Taking breaks is not the same as doing business as usual. It is an acknowledgement that people are your most valuable resource. They need rest and relaxation as well as an opportunity to reconnect with their families. Rather than diminish urgency, it heightens it. Getting outside of the bubble of work allows the mind and body to recharge and be better prepared to face the gauntlet of challenges that lie ahead.

Slumps can be devastating. They can take an otherwise productive, happy person and reduce him to a lethargic, depressed, indifferent person.

So what do you do?
If you’re like most people, you take a break from all of your projects and aspirations.
And you spend some time feeling depressed and indifferent to progress.

After a few weeks or months have passed, you exit your slump, but you do so very aware of how much time you’ve lost and how many opportunities you’ve forgone.

In the remainder of this guide, I’m going to help you to avoid that scenario. Instead of losing weeks or months to this slump or the next slump, you’re going to learn 21 ways to re-motivate yourself, refocus your life and goals, become happy and productive; and leave this slump in the distant past.
1. Take Action. Before you landed in this slump, you had goals, dreams, and lists of things you needed to do to accomplish them. At some point, you lost confidence in these ideas and stopped working on your projects and carrying out your dreams.
Well, it’s time to pursue those dreams once again. And you can do so by taking action. Ignore your feelings of lethargy and indifference and focus on making tangible progress. As you start checking things off of your “to do” list, you’ll feel better about yourself and the possibility of accomplishing your goals.
2. Ratchet Up Your Efforts. Working hard does not guarantee that you will accomplish your goals. But not working hard will undoubtedly ensure that you do not.
Be mindful of this when you’re deciding what to do for the day. Don’t simply drift along, waiting for your projects to make sense of themselves. Take control, make plans, and move towards them each day.
3. Pay Attention to People Who Have Succeeded. Just because someone else succeeded doesn’t mean you will. But it can provide a motivational example of path to your goal that has worked for someone else.
So, cast aside your doubts, stop telling yourself that you can’t do what others did–and instead take their examples for what they are: a source of inspiration and hope. And, most importantly, a means to get out of your slump.
4. Learn by Doing. If you’re faced with a complicated decision with no clear answer, one of the best ways you can move forward is to simply do, rather than thinking.
What do I mean by this? Instead of persevering on the decision, pick one of the options in front of you; and move forward with your best effort to make it work.
If you fail ultimately, at least you can eliminate that path as a dead-end and then move forward with the other path.
5. Avoid Over-thinking. Thinking hard and carefully about many things is critical to success, but if taken to an extreme, it can become pathological. It can paralyze talented, driven individuals; and prevent them from attaining the success they would otherwise have.
So, next time you find yourself paralyzed by a decision, stop over-analyzing the situation–and just pick one path or the other.
6. Re-organize Your Work Area. No matter what you do, it’s always a good idea to have everything you need organized and within close reach. Re-organize your work area, so that it is a productive environment, rather than a sprawling, disorganized heap of documents.
7. Start Afresh. One frequent source of slumps is boredom. If you’re unhappy with your current routine, it may affect your ability to work and to accomplish your goals. Consider switching your daily routine to something new that excites you and motivates you to accomplish new things.
8. Reward Yourself. Surprisingly, slumps are very common among those who work hard. Why? Because, eventually they hit a wall, can’t figure out how to get around it, and keep working until they’re thoroughly burnt out and frazzled.
So, don’t do this. Set specific goals, accomplish them, and then reward yourself by taking the rest of the night off to relax. When you come back to your work, you’ll be happy and refreshed.
9. Visit a New Place. Instead of mindlessly chugging along with your daily route, break free and visit a new place. Take a drive to the beach or to a lake. Take a walk through the woods. Drive somewhere new and relaxing. Experience the small pleasures in life to demonstrate to yourself that there are reasons to move forward, to make progress, and to indulge in life.
10. Refocus Yourself. Slumps tend to make life feel unclear, unfocused, and pointless. Take some time to refocus yourself, re-think your aspirations, and decide what goals to keep and what goals to discard.
11. Schedule Things, Rather than Letting Things Happen to You. Don’t allow your schedule to morph into an unpredictable, unmanageable blob. Take the time to record things you need to do, schedule them into your life, and tend to them carefully. This is not only a good way to prevent disasters, but also to commit yourself to getting work done.
12. Physical Activity. The cause of slumps is not always or entirely psychological. In many cases, complacency and a lack of physical exercise can leave us in a mental fog. One cure for this problem is to get some vigorous exercise. Not only will it get your blood pumping and make your thoughts clearer, but it will also release endorphins, making you feel happy and more satisfied with your life and goals.
13. Eliminate Negative Thoughts. Skepticism and self-doubt are healthy when applied in moderation, but when they prevent you from achieving your goals, it may be time to reign them in. If you constantly find yourself doubting that you an accomplish something, instead re-direct your thoughts towards considering how you can accomplish it.
14. Challenge Yourself to Accomplish Something New. If you find yourself repeating the same tasks on a daily basis, you may become bored and complacent. Find ways to challenge yourself–for instance, by seeing whether you can do some task in half the amount of time–so that you engage your work and goals, rather than becoming indifferent to them.
15. Create Artificial Scarcity. Most people work best when they have no other choice. When that project is due in two days, you buckle down, stay focused, and get it done. But one week before that, you probably sat in front of the computer, “working” on it, but truly got very little accomplished.
Next time, start on the project later, rather than sooner. Save that extra time when you wouldn’t really be working to do something fun and refreshing.
16. Change Your Diet. Another frequent cause of “slumps” is diet. If you find your busy schedule forcing you into an unhealthy diet that causes you to put on weight and feel sluggish, put an end to it immediately. Not only will this help you physically, but it will help you to avoid the mental and emotional burden that comes with weight gain and unhealthy eating.
17. Spend a Day to Improve Your Productivity. Hard work isn’t the only ingredient in success. Another critical component is productivity. You can think about productivity as the amount you accomplish in each hour. So, spend an afternoon or even a full day figuring out how you can be more productive. This might simply mean re-arranging your filing cabinet or learning how to use certain programs on your computer better.
18. Simplify Your Goals. It’s often easy to convince ourselves that our goals have to be complicated and hard to achieve. But it many cases, there are achievable, simple goals that are still very desirable. So, take some time to decide whether you can make your goals clearer, simpler, and easier to attain.
19. Take the Path of Least Resistance. Instead of taking the path you think you “should take” or “ought to take,” instead focus on what paths cause the fewest problems and present the fewest challenges. If you can find and exploit these paths, you’ll save yourself time and make it easier to finish what you set out to do.
20. Sleep More. Many hard-working individuals whip themselves up into a frenzy; and convince themselves that they should never stop working. When taken to an extreme, this can be very detrimental to their goals. Keep this in mind when deciding whether to go to sleep or to keep working late into the night. If you don’t sleep, you might get more done tonight, but you’ll definitely be tired and get less done tomorrow. So go to sleep and come back refreshed tomorrow.
21. Make an Effort to Learn from Others. Rather than always focusing on your own stories and struggles, make a concerted effort to truly understand other people and their daily trials. Learn from them, absorb their stories, and use them to motivate yourself.
No matter how depressed and indifferent you feel right now, you have the capabilities to break out of your slump. You have 21 different ways in which you can do it. It’s just a matter of taking a handful of them, living by them on a daily basis, and pushing forward.
So, don’t let your slump get the best of you. Reclaim your career, your family life, your goals, your aspirations, and your hunger for new and challenging experiences. Leave this slump in your past; and return to your productive, happy life.

James Heskett, a Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, examined the degree to which strategy, execution, and culture contribute to organizational success, via 3 key questions that reflect all aspects of competitive sucess:


1. If your organization’s performance (operating income) = 100%, roughly what percentage is accounted for by the quality of the organization’s strategy (clients we target; products, services and results we offer; the way we organize and compensate people, etc.) vs. seo data the quality of the organization’s execution of its strategy (the quality of our people, work, processes, decisions, etc.)?2. If your organization’s strategy = 100%, roughly what proportion of its effectiveness is dependent upon and accounted for by the organization’s culture (widely-shared values, beliefs, behaviors, rites and rituals, etc.)?3. If the execution of your organization’s strategy = 100%, roughly what proportion of its effectiveness is dependent upon and accounted for by the organization’s culture?

In this unpredictable economic climate, leaders must be capable to lead their companies to quickly adapt to new market forces. Business models are changing to catch up with the emerging drivers of competition.

Success hinges first and foremost on “Thinking-Ahead” strategy  and robust execution.
Because execution plays such a critical role in success or failure, especially during a crisis, many companies are turning to new technology solutions to ensure they can deliver on strategies and emerge even stronger. Any company that fails to adapt quickly and efficiently to market changes can miss important opportunities or risk their very survival.

Here are some key points to consider:

  • A new strategy is not enough – executing under these extreme market conditions is not enough, meaning you need to make sure you touch every point of the strategy timeline and product offering.
  • Align your workforce with what you want to accomplish – workforce alignment and performance is critical.
  • Be prepared to change course or rethink your strategy monthly – it is difficult to get your strategy right the first time so review religiously.
  • Leverage performance and talent management solutions for business execution – this will help you attain the top and bottom line results.
    * Key points from Workforce Magazine

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Key points for spotting emerging leaders:

  • individuals who consistently deliver ambitious results for the company
  • individuals who consistently demonstrate the ability to grow, adapt, and be more flexible than their other top performing peers
  • individuals who ask for opportunity and expand their capacity of operation and influence
  • individuals who take things to the next level (ie: imagination, creativity, product futures etc)
  • individuals who have strong powers of observation, judgment, reactions that are spot on
  • individuals who are clear thinkers and have a point-of-view that may be counter to the trend, and finally
  • individuals who ask questions that are insightful that get the thought process into a creative frenzy.

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  • Assemble a critical mass of key stakeholders.
  1. Many more than just the top 8 to 10 leaders.
  2. Should include key technologists and leading process engineers.
  3. Group should be sufficiently diverse to ensure conflict, which will get issues on the table so they can be resolved.
  4. Have to decide how it’s going to happen.
  • Do an organizational audit to generate a complete picture of how the organization really works.
  1. Understand the competitive situation.
  2. Reveal barriers to moving from “as is” to the future.
  3. Core values.
  4. Key systems.
  5. Strategic assumptions.
  6. Core competencies, etc.
  • Create urgency.
  1. A threat that everyone perceives, but no one is willing to talk about, is most debilitating to an organization
  2. Book of Five Rings  Japanese guide for samurai warriors. Written four centuries ago, directs the samurai to visualize his own death in the most graphic detail before going into battle. Idea being, once you have experienced death, there is not a lot left to fear: one can then fight with abandon.
  3. This helps explain the value of discussion about not changing and the dire consequences to a company in a difficult business situation.
  • Harnessing contention.
  1. Conflict jump-starts the creative process.
  2. Most companies suppress contention.
  3. Control kills invention, learning and commitment.
  4. Emotions often accompany creative tension, and they are often unpleasant.
  5. Intel plays rugby; your ability at Intel to take direct, hard-hitting disagreement is a sign of fitness.
  6. Many excellent companies build conflict into their designs.
  • Induce organizational breakdowns that foster out-of-the-box thinking and solutions.
  1. Breakdowns should happen by design, not accident.
  2. In trying to manage back from the future, concrete tasks will have to be undertaken; continuing on the current path will not get you there. Often you don’t know how to make these tasks occur. This will generate breakdowns, which can generate out-of-the-box thinking and solutions, if the situation is managed/lead correctly. ip info . Continuous open dialogue is key to working through breakdowns.
  3. Setting impossible deadlines is another way to encourage breakdowns and out-of-the-box thinking

 

Insights from: “The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future.” By Tracy Goss, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos.