Here’s an excellent interview with Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning, safe-cracking, bongo-playing physicist. The introduction alone is great: Feynman explains how a scientific world view doesn’t detract from, but adds to, the beauty of a flower.
I hate Cilantro (fresh coriander) too. Finally a worthwhile, global cause I can get behind.
The guy who always wears a name tag and the guy who’s trading a red paperclip for a house are both still at it. That’s life art life-art.
The cult of overwork is the prevailing belief that the more hours people work, the better for the company. That notion is not only harmful, it is dead wrong, as this story from Arlie Hochschild’s book The Time Bind demonstrates.
One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:
When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.
But Strain discovered two surprises.
First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!
Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.
Interesting, huh? They cut back work-hours but production remains the same.
A study shows that happy employees put in more hours but remain less prone to stress than uhappy employees.
What makes them happy? Easier unscheduled time off, schedule flexibility and better telecommuting options. What makes them unhappy? Too much work, their boss’s behavior and long hours.
My favorite answer is this one:
I know that it’s expected of executives to start the day extremely early, but frankly I feel I make better decisions and relate better to people when I’m well rested. So I usually get up around 8 after a good night’s sleep.
I also make sure to almost always work a standard 40-hour week and never work on the weekends. This is important to me for two reasons. First of all, I have a life outside of work. I have a family who likes to have me around and friends and hobbies that I also want to have time for. I find that the time I spend outside of work recharges my batteries, expands my horizons and actually makes me more efficient at work.
Secondly, if I’m always seen arriving at the office at 6 in the morning and leaving at 9 in the evening, not to mention taking calls and writing emails late at night and all weekend, it’s sure to send a signal to my employees that this is what the company expects, that this is “the right way”. But it isn’t.
It’s a simple fact that for most leaders and employees, the first 40 hours they work each week are worth much more to the company than the next 20, 30 or 40 hours. But those extra hours spent at work can harm your private life, your family and your health. Which in turn becomes damaging to the company.
Frankly, if you can’t structure your time so your work fits inside a 40-hour week, you need to get better at prioritizing and delegating.
Refreshing words. Guess which of the executives said that?
Come on, take a guess!
NONE OF THEM! Not one.
Instead, there’s a lot of “I get up at 5 and arrive at the office at 6” and “I work 16 hours a day” and “I take a lot of calls on the drive in to the office” and “I usually leave the office at 7 and then work a few more hours in the evening at home.”
I fully expected one of them to go “I get up at 4 in the morning, half an hour before I go to bed, and work a 27-hour day, only stopping for a 3-minute lunch break in which two assistants stuff food down my throat like a foie-gras goose.”
I know it’s normal to view people working this hard as heroes of the organization, but still I think they would be more efficient and enjoy life more if they cut down their time at work. They may find that they become more open, less stressed, have more fun AND are better role models for their employees. This cult of overwork has got to stop.
The school of “work your butt off, everything else comes second” is bad for business and bad for people. Can we please retire this tired idea once and for all?
If you liked this post, I think you’ll also enjoy these:
The time for the 8th Reboot conference is approaching. Thomas Mygdal writes that this year:
The theme for reboot8 is “renaissance?” – as in renaissance-question-mark. As in renaissance = rediscovery and revitalization. Question mark because it’s a big word and a question to explore whether it’s real, but renaissance because it seems as a healthier and more challenging perspective than the current bubble easy-reality buzzwords currently flowing around. So reboot8 is like reboot7 a journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas. Applied towards us as individuals, citizens, teachers, culture workers, entrepreneurs, creators and change makers.
It feels like we more should think a lot about the emerging new models and how we can help shape them, instead of focusing on how the new models are superior to the current models.
Explore renaissance question mark at http://reboot.dk/wiki/renaissance
I think it’s really cool to open the conference planning and the format to the participants, rather than do all of that behind closed doors. I’ll try to get on the program to present my idea on Open Source Politics.
If you’re asking yourself “What the heck is Reboot all about” you’re in good company. Lots of people love it, few can define it. It’s kind of a tech conference but it’s not really about the tech. There are a lot of geeks there, but few real geek sessions. It’s mostly about the internet and what the internet does (not how it does it). At any rate, it’s great!
Easter’s here and I’ll be taking the rest of the week off (I need a vacation after my last vacation :o). Meanwhile, here are some cool links:
Depressed monkeys. Yep, macaques can get the blues too. Research in this can increase our understanding of depression and open new possibilities for research.
The Slow Leadership blog offers excellent tips on how to kill creativity. It’s depressingly(!) easy.
Video of the most amazing Rube Goldberg-like devices. Now that’s creative. A word of warning: Turn down the sound, or the repetitive, japanese, childrens-tv-theme will drive you to desperation inside of 45 seconds.
Are you the kind of person who always takes charge?
Whether it’s the next crucial corporate project or just the sunday family barbeque, are you always in the thick of it, organizing, planning and making decisions?
That makes you a natural leader, but how are you as a follower?
Leaders can’t always lead. Once in a while we all need to take the backseat and let someone else drive. Their way.
And here’s the thing: Good leaders can be true pests as followers. If they aren’t careful, they end up taking over. Of course, the real fun comes when there are two or more compulsive leader in a project, fighting each other to take over and do things their way.
Apart from good leadership, leaders must display good followership when this is called for, which is difficult because it goes against their nature.
Leaders who also know how to follow can use these situations to inspire followership in others by being good followers themselves, but it means that they must take extraordinary care to stay in the backseat and not inadvertantly take over. Here’s how to do it.
Let them do it their way
It may not be your way, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Hey, it may work even better than what you have in mind.
Let them fail or succeed
Remember that even when you’re 100% positively sure they’ll fail – they might still make it work.
Accept their truth
You may see the task differently, but you may be wrong. Wait and see who turns out to be right.
Volunteer for the crappy tasks
Andy Reid of What If Innovation, the highly successful London-based innovation agency, told me that their executives are not above doing menial office tasks like cleaning the toilets. This sends a powerful message, and raises everyones motivation to just get the boring stuff done – as opposed to having interminable office feuds over who should do it.
Simply put, leaders should be even better than regular followers and take even more care not to lead too much.
When leaders practice followership they also teach the people around them leadership (remember this simple formula), by giving them a real, un-interrupted chance to lead and learn.
Great leadership requires great followership. And for most leaders, good followership takes practice.
The wonderful girlfriend and I hit the slopes in Alpe d’Huez 2 weeks ago and just kept on hitting them. I expected her to improve, this being only her second time skiing. I did not expect her to start tackling red and black runs with total abandon. Gotta be those swiss genes.
I also did not expect myself to turn into a total off-piste hound. Untill now I’ve been your normal, polite, never-stray-outside-the-slopes snowboarder. Now it’s more like “Hey look: Powder! I’m going over there.”
The steepest slope in Alpe d’Huez is called Le Tunnel. You take the lift to the top of the mountain (at 3.330 meter), then ski down a 200 meter long tunnel they drilled straight through the mountain top. On the other side, this view greets you:
Yep, I did that. Didn’t even blink :o)
I had more trouble dealing with what has to be the world’s largest cappucino:
It’s been great and it’s just as great to be back.
A special, great big thank you to Traci Fenton for guest blogging while I was away. Traci, you rock!
If you stand up for too long you may pass out, as this video demonstrates. Am I a bad person for finding this hilarious?
The band Arctic Monkeys became hugely popular by giving their music away. This make more sense to me than, say, signing your music over to a record company for next to no money.
David Myers has a lot of great articles on happiness.
A couple of weeks ago I posted this list of the top 10 mistakes managers of geeks make, which instantly became one of the most read posts on the site.
Mike Wagner (of Own Your Brand) has a lot of experience working with geeks, and he emailed me his take:
Some of the mistakes I remember making with Geeks or seeing others make are:
1. Treating their work and its results like a hammer when Geeks see it as a work of art. Managers must respect the different perspective each brings to IT development. Business managers see it as a tool. Geeks see it as a work of art. This is one reason Geeks often feel undervalued in the corporate culture. Geek temperament is really an artistic temperament.
2. Building on this; managers must understand the cynical feelings Geeks have towards commerce in general. Like artists who resent people putting a dollar value on their art, a Geek feels that all the business manager wants to do is make money. This is big time Geek turn off.
3. Geeks respond to critique and suggested changes of their “creations/code” like an artist. When a manager or client says we want you to change the functionality or code – it is like saying “can’t the Mona Lisa have blonde hair instead? Blonde tested better with the focus group.”
All of this can be worked with in a positive way IF the manager can practice empathic understanding – but if not, well…that’s the rub.
Great insights, Mike! People are increasingly approaching their work as art. It’s not that their painting or sculpting at work, it’s just that the nature of work has changed, so that the way people approach work is looking more and more like the way an artist approaches art.
This is true for geeks and for many other employee groups, and it profounfly changes the nature of work. Thanks Mike, for your great (as usual) input.
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