Work/Life Balance

The phrase that makes up the title of this post is one of those pieces of corporate jargo-speak that both stings and leaves a mark.

I guess the phrase started gaining popularity in the 90s...wait a second...a Wikipedia entry says that it first popped up in '86...close enough. That's over 20 years of listening to managers, executives and front-line corporate employees bemoan the distortion their careers demand; that their lives are diminished by the very things they do for a living. This is a cruel irony, if there every was one.

But, what have we...all of us who work in and around the world of corporate business...done about it?

Has all this talk about work/life balance made a difference?

In the main, no.

These thoughts were occasionsed by this blog post by my friend Grant McCracken. In it, Grant, writing about the relationship between a Daniel Liebeskind building in Toronto and the challenges faced by the modern corporation (that's the kind of thing Grant does in his excellent blog), says:

And all of them [corporations] are now obliged, on pain of their own obsolescence, to break the walls down and let the world in.  Every corporation nows aims for porous boundaries.  Every corporation, profit or not-for-profit, wants contemporary culture to run through it, now around it.

Oddly, the corporation has always defined itself as somehow other to the cultural changes taking place outside its walls. I remember having an odd reaction when I'd hear leaders proclaim with pride about their organizations: this is not a democracy! "Hmm," I'd think, "Is this something to be proud of? Is it really so smart to rub plutocracy in the noses of 'the masses'?"

Of course the corporation isn't a democracy but to define itself as being against one of the founding tenets of the culture within which it has flourished always struck me as peculiar. What leaders seemed to be forgetting is the fact that Grant is pointing at in his post: corporations exist in context; "employees" are citizens of their world first, workers, second. As dissonance grows between those two worlds (a dissonance we allude to when we speak of work/life "imbalance") we are asking employees (or, as we euphemistically tried to re-define them, "associates" or "partners," as if we could shroud the realities with a coat of high-gloss verbiage), people become increasingly dissatisfied.

In these circumstances, the most adventurous, who are sometimes also the most talented, begin to look for alternatives to living lives that feel unnatural. They begin looking for a workplace that doesn't just "permit" them to live a more complete life, but demands that they do so.

But, what are we talking about when we talk about work/life balance? In most companies, the phrase simply means this: please don't make me spend more than 12 hours a day here in order to be seen as someone dedicated to our, and my, success. But that is a thoughtlessly superficial view of the true nature of work/life balance. In fact, what most young people yearn for when they think of their work is work/life integration. That means, simply, being allowed to be who they are regardless of where they are. This kind of integration is never total, of course, but, the point is to maximize it wherever possible.

This is why the modern corporation is in such trouble: due to the degree of dissonance between "life-self" and "work-self" required in most companies, given a choice, most talented young people would rather not work in one. This underlying unease with corporate life has recently been characterized as a generational flaw; too "high maintenance"; the result of too much selfishness, bred by fawning parents and too many soccer trophies.

But the truth is deeper. The truth is that the more corporations prattle on about work/life balance the more clear the reality becomes to those who hear what's really being said: we're all trapped in a failing system that we've created but don't know how to undo.

But, change is afoot. More and more, corporations will have to confront what I'm beginning to think of as the "Google Effect." Now, I'm as wary as can be of corporate self-promotion, but watching videos like this one on YouTube over the past several months has convince me that Google "gets" work/life integration. 

Does this mean that people who work at Google work 9-5? Of course not; far from it. What it means is that they are working on things that matter to their lives and do so in ways that make them feel better about their lives rather than worse. At the end of the day, what's important isn't so how much time we work; what matters is how we feel about that time. If what we do is meaningful...if it's integrated within the broader context of the individual's life...("projects you're passionate about," as the fellow in the Google video puts it) then the issue of "balance" becomes irrelevant.

No matter the industry, no corporation can afford not to take Google's challenge seriously. Integrate work and life, or be ready for talented people to leave whenever they can.

Comments

[Ken G.]

A key line in the video comes just before the end when one of the women says, "... as long as you have time to dedicate..."

Yes, Google is a great company to work for, and all the people they show are excited about their work, and that's half the battle (at least), but there's still no balance.

What happens to the family and friends and non-work life is that it's reduced to "Quality Time" - one of the most vile bits of happy talk to ever be thrust upon the public.

Having to make the most "quality" out of the reduced time you give to your own world does not make for work/life balance or work/life integration. It makes for work, enjoyable or not.

[Tom Guarriello]

Well, remember Ken, this is a company that wants its employees to spend up to 20% of their time on projects of their choice. So, "...as long as you have the time to dedicate..." doesn't mean, "...any time left in your life after everything you have to do at work..."

Ever talk to a farmer about work/life balance? How about an entrepreneur? Teacher? Physician? The idea that work and life are separate is an industrial age concept. When work became mechanical, it became tedious. When pride was removed from work, it became punishing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting everyone can do work that is soulful, but, for me, that's a more important measure than the balance-sheet-oriented "work/life balance" approach.

As for "quality time," I do agree that the notion that five minutes of good conversation can substitute for an hour of good conversation is nonsense. Problem is, most people use that hour on something other than good conversation. In those cases, it's five minutes versus nothing.

Thanks for your thoughts, as always.