Work Life Balance

Many tried and have yet to achieve their intended outcome.  I recently watched the movie, “The Devil Wears Prada.”  The Art Director, Nigel, told Andy Sachs that when her whole life is up in smokes it means it’s time for a promotion.  Many executives struggle with that balance.  I know how torn they are.  All of them want to have a meaningful family life but are constantly drawn away by the demands of their work.  They want to be successful at work and successful at home.  Can the balance be ever achieved?

In a TED presentation, Nigel Marsh talked about work-life balance.  He mentioned a number of interesting thoughts.  One is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family.  What troubled me most is when he said that one will achieve balance when you don’t have work or don’t have a life.  I am troubled because of its truth. 

Given these scenarios, do we have a chance at achieving work life balance?  There is a ray of hope.  Nigel Marsh also said that “If you don’t design your life, someone else may design it for you and you may not like their idea of balance.”

When I started my career the work was demanding.  I was fortunate that it didn’t take me away from my family for long periods of time.  In fact, I could only remember one occasion that I had to travel for a 3-week period.  I could spend my evenings with my family and didn’t have any conference calls.  While I worked in shifts, it still meant that I am home for the major portion of the day.  Work was stressful but when I left the office, I didn’t have to bring any home.  Well I did occasionally.  This is when the top brasses of the company are visiting and we had presentations to make.  Laptops were not in fashion and too expensive.  So any computer work is left on the table top in the office.  Come to think about it, the laptop may be a reason why we had to extend our work hours to the home.

When I got promoted, the company gave me a laptop and a mobile phone.  They call them tools of the trade.  These are the handcuffs that constantly connect you to the office.  There is no escape.  You are within reach with 11 key punches or less.  As the company grew and become global, my time and my family time reduced proportionately.  There were teleconferences that took me right to the wee hours of the morning.  We complained about these teleconferences but there is not much we can do about it.  Some conferences are useful while most were not worthy of our time.  With the ease of getting information, we are pulled into a situation where managers are pressured to providing “live” information.  This is a vicious cycle.  The easier it is to get information, the more information is required to be fed into the system.  This required many people to contribute into the information system on a continuous basis.

This is a small slice of the causes of imbalance.  The work has been redesigned to be in the office, have conference calls outside the normal office hours and for what small amount of time is left is to plan for the next day at work.  This leaves us very little or even no time for self and family.  The gravitational pull towards to requirement of the company is too large for us to resist.  As Star Trek’s Borg says to their captors, “Resistance is futile.”  We are caught up in the array of getting and sharing information that it has become our prime directives.  What can we do about it?

I didn’t have the answer to this imbalance.  However, I was more fortunate than many in that my promotions were not rapid.  When I reached a senior level within my organization, my children were late teens and requiring lesser of my time.   When I traveled, my wife accompanied me on most of the trips.  This is a worthwhile personal investment.  Regretfully, I neglected myself and the community.   In my earlier blogs I wrote about them.  One being “I goofed, you shouldn’t.”  At that time, my work and family were the most important.  I didn’t think much of dedicating time to myself and contributing to the community.  Now it is “payback” time.

I struggled with what you can gain from reading this post.  Everyone has different goals, different priorities, different situations, different challenges and therefore different ways to deal with their work-life balance.  I am responsible for my balance and its consequences.  In the end, I just left it to you, the reader.  You will have to create your own balance.  You may gain some insights from the experiences of others but it is all up to you.

For me, I position myself as the pivot of the balance.  I determine how large each piece on my balance is.  They varied from period to period.  In my early career, I had only two pieces – work and family.  In the later career years, work became larger than family and I faced the consequences as they surfaced.   So my balance varied from phase to phase in my life.  It was not easy but I had to take time to review them.  My reviews cycles were once in 6 to 8 years.  Now, work is the smallest piece, then community.  Family is now my largest piece.   I am looking forward to my next review at the end of the year.

Good luck in your work-life balance.

Planning My Next Lap

A reason for writing these articles is that it is meeting one of my goals set out for this phase of my life.  I started thinking and planning for it some 8 years ago and 2 years before I went into active retirement.  I thought it was as simple as practicing what I have learned.  First list what you want to achieve, then analyzed where you are at and finally chart out how you want to reach your goal.  I turned on my computer and tried listing.  I struggled with what I wanted to achieve.  There were so many things and it was all over.  After some time, I did the next best thing.  I listed what I didn’t want.

I didn’t want be just playing a game or traveling or enjoying a hobby.  I wanted more than that.  I wanted activities that are intellectually challenging.  I wanted to keep my mind active.  I read an article long ago that scared me into action.  In the article it stated that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop and the devil is Alzheimer.  I had personally experienced a loved one going through it and I wanted to delay or prevent this situation for as long as I can.

In 2003, I started plotting the NEXT LAP of my journey. The people who touched my life have taught me a lot.  I knew that I could rely on their wisdom.   So, after much conversations and deep thinking, I finally identified 3 things I wanted.

1. Firstly, I wanted to continue to do what I did well in my career.  I was told by my managers, peers and staffs that I am good at coaching and developing individuals.  My 32 years of work experiences and targeted trainings have given me the skills to help individuals, who want to, move to a better position.  
2. The second area is to have a more integrated life.  This is not the elusive work-life balance.  It is not taking time away from one activity to giving it to another.  For me, it is about integrating my own life, my family life, my social life and my community life.  My activities should be integrated as much as possible.  For example, how do I involve my family in my social activities or how do I involve my work in my community activities?
3. Finally, share my experiences by writing a book.  I thought that I had enough stories from my life’s challenges to fill a book.

In some future stories, I shall write about how I did in each of them.  Since this article is about planning for my Next Lap, I will focus on this.

When I started this plan, I was still working in a corporation.  If I wanted to leave the organization in a good state, I had to ensure that there is a smooth transition.  It meant identifying activities for my functions and what I needed to do for the transition.  I made sure that I included developmental activities for me.  The chart showed a segment of the roadmap I created for my role transition.  I listed all my responsibilities down a column and drew out a time line for 2004, 2005 and Retirement Phase.  I then identified the actions needed for each functional area and the amount of time required.  Since this is a 3-year roadmap, I broke each year into quarters.  You may not be able to read the details on the chart but I am sure you understand the concept.  The dark green blocks were firm activities or plans.  Those shaded yellow were being worked on or negotiated upon.  This roadmap gave all parties involved a clear idea of my transitional plan.  I used this roadmap for my career conversations with my managers, mentors and friends.  After each conversation, some of the actions were modified and all parties concerned were informed of the changes.

This method can be used not only for planning retirement activities but also for any career and role transition.

• I started with what I like to do in 2 years from now.  Well it was more like what I didn’t like to do.  I chose 2 years as I felt I had sufficient clarity to plan specific activities.  One year is too short for me to take the necessary actions for change.   You should choose a time range that you feel comfortable with to enact the change and transition.
• Next I reviewed my strengths, skills and weakness to beginning charting my activities required for the plan and the transition.
• Then I adjusted the length of time required for each activity.
• Finally, I began my career conversations.  Talk to people that you trust will give you good inputs – as many as you can.  They may be your family, your mentors, the people that you work with and others.  You will know that you have a solid plan when the time comes.  If you don’t, so what?  Plans shouldn’t be locked in concrete.  It should be flexible enough to change with conditions and time.

Although it seemed simple, there were quite a bit of work.  The most important input to the plan is the conversations I had with a number of people.  I was candid in explaining to them what I didn’t want and wanted.  I asked them for their insights and the feedback on both the feasibility and the “feel good” factor.  Usually in such conversations, more questions were raised than answered.  The additional questions gave me new insights whether I could find the answers.

So start your planning your NEXT LAP now.  Talk about your plans frequently.  Be prepared to change them even after you feel you have the best plan.  The only constant is change.  With each change you will need to modify your plan.  Finally, enjoy the process!

Who Should I Be?

The articles I have posted appeared to be a random selection of my life stories.  I hope that each story has helped you with some ideas or another option on how you can deal with your situation.  I know our situations are never identical but as long as the stories help being a catalyst to an action, I am delighted.

You may have noticed that each article has labels.  There is a structure to these labels.  The website arranges the labels in alphabetical order, but upon rearranging them, the labels look like this

• Knowing Yourself
• Aspiration
• Career Planning
• Managing Yourself
• Career Conversations
• Managing Others

When I started working, I had not figured these out.  I now have the hindsight and hopefully others can benefit from it.  Throughout my journey and until now, I have had the blessing and fortune of meeting people whom I could reach out to for help.  To these people I am thankful.  Many of them are written or will be written in my stories.  With this knowledge I have helped my coachees and those who seek my help with this process.

There are two areas that I have not touched on yet.  These are:

• Career Execution
• Constant Review

You may have your own algorithm for a successful career planning and execution.  If you do, congratulation! You are ahead of many that I have spoken to. 

For me, my career journey starts with knowing myself well.  Who am I really?  What am I capable of?  What are my strengths, my weaknesses?  How do I find out?  Knowing myself better will help me articulate my aspiration.  Sometimes a person should have more than one aspiration.  In fact I think everyone should have a plan B.  This will help make the career planning more robust.  Just like a game of chess, you may plan many moves and execute some of them.  The aim is the same – being successful.

Now that you know more about yourself, where you want to go and have made your plans to get there; the next action is to take the first step to begin the journey.  You need to manage yourself so that each step taken is aligned to your competencies and aspirations. Some steps may include gaining additional skills and knowledge. From time to time, during your journey, someone may present you with an opportunity.  How do you evaluate these opportunities?  Will the opportunity move you closer to your aspirations?  Will it help you gain additional competencies?  Opportunities may not always be presented to you.  Sometimes you need to seek them out.  How do you seek them? A good network and great career conversations will help you find out.

There will also be obstacles and derailments in your career paths.  How does you minimize these?  How do you get out of it?  Managing yourself and others well will help.  I think of others as those I come into contact with – my boss, my staff, my peers, my friends, my family members and my network.  The way you interact with them will determine your success in managing yourself and others.

Finally, one needs to get feedback constantly.  You need to know if where you are going have changed and if you have deviated from the planned path.  You must to know if you need additional tools, skills and knowledge to continue.  There are many things you need to know.  To find out, you will need to seek constant feedback and reviews to move forward.

As you read my stories, reflect on the labels (or steps) too.  I hope that both the stories and the steps can help you as you create your own exciting career journey.

Thank You for the Encouragement

I am overwhelmed by the responses to my first blog.  Your comments are encouraging and valuable.  Some have written directly on the blog while others have replied to my email.  I am deeply honored that you took the time to read the posting.  Most of you thought that the blog is fitting.  In his humorous way, Yongwoo faulted me for not advising him early in his career.

Thank you all.  Your comments bring out the fact that our situations are different and you have to manage your career conversations in a manner that is appropriate to the circumstance. For instance, TN stated that knowing your audience well is critical and that we have to assess the situation before entering into the discussion.  CL used a different strategy for her conversation.  She discussed her goals and objectives with her managers regularly.  In this manner, her managers got to know her better.

Many organizations encourage career conversations.  Unfortunately, there are some that don’t.  Even for organizations that encourage them, Mathia advised that they have to be done in an open and non-threatening manner.  The bosses and the associates need to play their parts.  It cannot be a one-sided affair.  According to SC, high potential talents must display some courage in taking on assignments given.  Taj did just that.  He had his talent spotted constantly and took on all the opportunities given.  Otherwise as VS suggested there will be missed opportunities and, as Jason said, one can end up as an “unpolished gemstone”.

Preparation is key to a successful conversation.  It may also make the conversation more comfortable.  Anjum knows its importance even when he dislikes having them.  Jason attested that communication and persuasive skills are needed.  In preparing for the conversation, Mariam mentioned the importance of a personal vision.  Tsui Chern’s “elevator speech” is a great way to get a clear and succinct message across.  In addition, Mathia asked us to take advantage of tools that can assist us in career discussions.  Anuraag reminded us to be sincere in expressing our feelings.   Finally, timing is important.  Bil noticed the need to find an opportune time to have these conversations. For those who organizations have scheduled time, you are fortunate.

I am grateful to all of you and I am encouraged to continue. So be on the lookout for the next posting -- “To disagree, first learn to agree.”