In the corporate world, work-life balance
is a raging debate these days, because as we know, work and life are two
completely distinct and mutually exclusive things. One requires concentration
and intense application of mind, while the other wants you to drift in and out with
most of your faculties shut down. Perhaps not completely shut down, because
work does require you to swipe your ID.
Various ‘stakeholders’ – in the corporate
world, anything that has a name is called a stakeholder; such as your
customers, your underworld contacts, your step-mom and your snot – have
different ways of dealing with the issue. A boss, for instance prefers a clean,
one-step approach:
Boss: You! Yes, you. I hear YOU have some work-life balance issues
You: Err..umm.. I mean, let me… uh, I did feel the balance could be
umm.. marginally better
Boss: No worries, let’s sort this out quickly. Why don’t you make these
five other presentations? That’ll set your balance right. And then I can go
home early, which will set my balance right. Good night and spend the next 12
hours doing this. I’ll see you in the morning. And hey, don’t kill yourself
over this – you know, work-‘life’ balance. Ha ha!
You: Ha ha! I’ll get right down to it.
HR, on the other hand, is more likely to come
up with innovative solutions:
HR: In order to improve work-life balance, we have organized an
off-site.
You: Yay! Where to?
HR: Because of cost issues, it’ll be in the basement of this building.
You: You mean NOT in my cubicle? Yay!
HR: Yes. Of course, you will pay for it since we do not have the
funds.
You: Of course, anything for a break from work.
HR: Err, about that; since we cannot let work suffer, the off-site
will be on the weekend.
You: (In a drastically softer voice) yay.
HR: Oh, and we can’t let this opportunity go waste. Since the firm is
doing so much for you, you will have to make a 100-slide strategy presentation
to the team.
You: I can already feel my work-life balance changing.
After all, whoever said the right balance
is the same as equal weight to both?
The problem is that every ‘stakeholder’ has
a different perspective. What you need is someone who has a broader vision, an
understanding of the big picture, somebody who can abstract a generality from
several specific situations. So next time there is a company meeting, perhaps
you should ask questions of the CEO.
CEO: So what I’m saying is, this year our strategy is to put customer
first and focus on service delivery.
Right-hand
man: As you can see, it is quite different from
last year’s strategy: Treat customers as priority and make service delivery
your mission.
CEO: Any questions? I guess not, so let me…
You: Wait! Question. How can we improve our work-life balance?
CEO: Good question. We’ve debated this issue a lot, we’ve done early
morning calls and late-night meetings. I think the right approach, if I may say
so, is to put customer first and focus on service delivery.
You: But what does that mean in everyday, practical terms? Should I
leave early?
CEO: That’s a great way of putting things. In essence, how it
translates to every day situations is that you make a list of priorities, make
sure customer is top of that list, and then you focus on doing those things,
and make sure service delivery is your focus.
You: May be I’m just too stupid to understand senior-talk
CEO: Yes, but if you put customer…
You: I’m leaving. Screw work-life balance, I’ll just spend all my time in
office and stop worrying about this.
Right-hand
man: See? This is how we solve problems.
CEO: True, but we must still focus on service delivery.
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