Category Archives: Management

Is life balance for managers a joke?

You are a manager. You get paid ‘The Big Bucks’. You get paid to get the job done. But do you get paid to give up Life Balance?

Doing long hours is often held as a ‘Badge of Honour’. People who aren’t seen to be ‘doing the long hours’ are seen as people who are effectively cheating the system. In other words, not doing long hours is frowned upon.

My work brings me into contact with people in management roles. The vast majority of them work very long hours.  They make a lot of sacrifices for their work. Some don’t take holidays for fear that work will get out of control while they are away. Others take on extra roles when organisational restructures occur. In fact I recently had a friend who is a senior manager at one of Australia’s largest organisations inform me that he was now doing the role of three senior managers due to two of his colleagues having had accepted redundancies. He expressed his frustration that his normal management practice of maintaining strong relationships with his direct reports had been negatively impacted because he simply had too many direct reports as a result of the re-organisation and he couldn’t keep up with what needed to be done, let alone effectively communicate at an individual level with his team members. The amount of work that he had to do, which included getting his head around what each of the two additional roles required was immeasurable. He was originally requested to take on the extra roles for a month. He was into his fourth month of the new arrangement when he spoke with me. Oh, and hadn’t received any extra compensation either. What impact do you think this was having on his home life?

Sound familiar?

People say, “Well, that’s just the way it is. If you want to be successful then that is the sacrifice you have to make. If you get paid the big bucks then your company ‘owns’ you. If you don’t like it, then get out.”

I find this perspective interesting. What if the organisation actually wants the talent that the person is bringing to their role? What if they want their talent fully utilised? Also, who decides what is in a job and what isn’t? It seems to me that the amount of work that goes into a management role is simply made up. If the manager speaks up about being over-worked then they are seen as being soft or not a hard worker. So, from my experience, managers just put up with it. And make huge life balance sacrifices along the way. They do longer and longer hours in the office and then, when they are home do even more hours trying to ‘catch up’.

I have recently been to two funerals of friends and colleagues. One was 58 years old and the other was 46 years old. Both men were highly successful from a work perspective. What struck me at their funerals was despite their business and work success, very little was mentioned about their work lives. In other words, these two men were far more than their work titles. It was their character, their love of family and community and their deeds of helping other people that were mentioned.

These two men were also very proactive to take charge of life balance for themselves. They didn’t seek permission from employers to spend time with their families. They just did it. They worked hard too and produced results. But they did not let their employers ‘own’ them.

If you are a manager, is the concept of life balance a joke? If so, why? What can be done about it?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

If you think that 8M Australians with poor job skills means you are guaranteed a great career, think again!

A report by Australia’s Industry Skills Councils to the Australian Federal Government has warned that up to eight million Australians don’t have the necessary numeracy and literacy skills to train for a trade or a profession.

The Report provides both bad & good news

The report also notes that over the next five years Australia will experience an estimated shortage of 215,000 skilled workers.

On the surface this may look like statistics that are extremely positive for current professionals and skilled employees. Why? Because the statistic highlight how poor the competition for skilled and professional jobs is at this point in time.

There is little to argue against this fact.

However, skilled workers and professionals need to think again. The lack of a skilled workforce and the extremely high number of people with low numeracy and literacy skills will increase the pressure on current skilled workers and professionals. Why? Because they are going to be the ones leading and managing the rest of the workforce. So the requirement for highly developed leadership and management skills are going to be paramount.

Getting and job and staying in employment for skilled workers and professionals will be virtually guaranteed (providing you are prepared to go where the work is located), however this doesn’t guarantee a great career. You will absolutely need to continue to develop your skills and employability so that you have the skills sets to lead and manage the rest of the workforce. These skill sets will continue to grow in demand and it is the people who really know how to lead and manage, and can demonstrate their skills through their track record will be the ones who will be “guaranteed” a great career.

What are you doing to enhance your leadership and management skills even if you have been leading and managing for a long time?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Why Creative Tension Trumps Problem Solving

Creative Tension involves three simple concepts that, when put together, create a structure that provides the energy for effective action. Many of you will have seen me refer to the ‘elastic band’ metaphor (see TEDx Talks – Creating a Plan For Personal Success) that enables us to create the life we desire.

You see, Creative Tension is about creating what we want. Problem Solving, on the other hand, largely focuses on what we don’t want.

Artists tend to use Creative Tension while people in business tend to use Problem Solving. My argument is that business people should follow the practices of artists and also focus more on using Creative Tension rather than Problem Solving.

Artists
Imagine that Pink has decided to write a new album. What approach do you think would provide Pink with the biggest probability of creating an album full of smash hits.

a) To take the approach that at the start of the writing process that she has a problem to resolve. The problem is, “I don’t have any new songs ready to put on my album.”

To resolve this problem Pink may recruit a bunch of her musician friends and brain-storm a heap of ideas that they believe would be likely to eventually generate the ‘right’ songs for her album. As each song is recorded Pink’s problem would reduce because she would now have some songs for her album. Finally Pink would finish her album and release it to the public.

b) To take that approach that an album is a work of art and that the art requires some form of inspiration. Focusing on the quality of the album that she wishes to create, Pink would generate a number of experiences to enable her to fully picture what the album will be like.

Once the ‘direction’ of her album is clear, Pink would then recruit artists to help her to bring her ‘picture of success’ into reality. The number of songs on the album and the length of the songs would all fit into Pink’s vision of what the album was going to look like. Eventually, Pink would ‘create’ the album that she desires.

Music, art and films are all treated as creations to be made rather than problems to be solved. Alfred Hitchcock is famously reported to have refused to let his writers ‘close out’ a story line too early. Instead, Hitchcock would prefer to ‘hold the tension’ of an unfinished storyline so that true creativity amongst he and his writers could be inspired. The result; Hitchcock became one of the greatest film directors of all time and is still known today for creating stunning plots, scenes and movies.

Business people
Business people want to be successful, just like artists do. However business people are trained to see problems and to focus on fixing those problems. Common problems that business people try to fix include:

* The problem of under-performance
* The problem of low motivation in employees
* The problem of maintaining efficiencies
* The problem of low supply and high demand
* The problem of high supply and low demand
* The problem of not enough resources
* The problem of poor communication
* The problem of poor internal service
* The problem of poor external service

Really, this list could go on and on, but I think you ‘get’ the picture.

Business people use the same approach to these problems as described in ‘a’ above for the artists. They gather a group of colleagues, brainstorm a bunch of ideas to resolve the problem, select the ‘best’ answer and then implement that answer in the hope that the problem is resolved.

Usually the ‘best answer’ does have an impact on the problem and it does reduce in its intensity. As this occurs and the original problem is less of a problem, less effort is put into resolving the problem. Why? Because now other, more serious problems require focus. And so the process goes, on and on and on. A bit like a dog chasing its tail!

What if, on the other hand, business people learnt to focus on what they are really trying to create? Rather than focusing on problems that need to be resolved, what if business people focused on the customer experience, the employee experience, the community experience of their service or product? And what if this focus was present at all levels of the organisation?

There is a difference between art and business
Art is generally not released to the public until it is created. In many ways art is created in a vacuum. Once created it is then released. Business is different. Much of what goes on in a business can’t be placed into a vacuum until it is created. The way the world works simply won’t allow it. In business we ‘change the wheels on the bus while the bus is driving down the road’.

It is for this reason that problem solving, in a business context is still relevant. There are some problems that simply have to be resolved. Such as an unhappy customer ‘right now’. However, what if problem solving in a business was provided within the context of Creative Tension? In other words, what if the experience that we are trying to create for our customers, or the experience and culture that we are trying to create for our employees was the guiding force for our strategy, actions and problem solving?

Creativity is challenging because of the tension that is generated when we become clear of what we want, but have no idea of how to bring what we want into reality. Artists experience this tension all the time and have learned to embrace it. Business people on the other hand are scared out of their minds when they don’t know ‘how’ to bring the future they desire into reality. This is why most business people focus on Problem Solving rather than Creative Tension. Problem Solving is simply more comfortable. “We know ‘how’ to problem solve. We don’t know ‘how’ to create.”

If you are not sure of what I mean you might like to view the video The Gates (below). As you watch the short video, consider the power of Creative Tension that went in to bringing the vision of art on such a large scale into reality.

How present is Creative Tension in your organisation? What are your examples?

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan is a founding Director of Organisations That Matter and can be most easily contacted at Gary.Ryan@orgsthatmatter.com .

I would like to recognise Robert Fritz whose writing over the past two decades has inspired my thinking and practice on this topic.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com