Work-Life Balance and Bad Bosses
HarvardBusiness.org content director Paul Michelman continues to seek insight into the modern manager's struggle for a work-life balance. After his much-discussed piece on why he's ditching Facebook for business use Michelman follows up by examining the crumbling barriers between private live and work life brought on in part by applications like Facebook and technology like BlackBerrys. He seems to think this trend is accelerating.
In "I Want My Private Life Back," Michelman notes that even expert commentators on the Harvard Business site see the breakdown between work and non-work life as a natural, and possibly positive change. Contributors like Tammy Erickson suggest that the scheduled work week is an artifice of a pre-information economy world. Erickson asks the question "">Do we need weekends?" Michelman finds this discomforting. (So do I).
"Frankly, I'm getting burned out," he writes. "I work seven days a week. Not all day, every day; most Saturdays and Sundays it's only an hour or two. No one forces me to do this, but somehow it just sort of happened. When you combine an obsessive compulsive personality like mine with constant access to work, you get, well, my situation."
In his defense of the artificial barriers between work and home, Michelman seems to be apologizing for not being "on board" with the new reality. I bet he gets more sympathy for his viewpoint than he expects.
This post is the continuation of a series of good ones related to social networking and its role in work and life. After Michelman ditched Facebook, John Sviokla provided a breathless endorsement of LinkedIn over Facebook as a business app, and as a viable business itself.
Finally, take a break today to read David Silverman's treatise, "11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had." Then share some of your worst boss stories. My favorite boss's bad habit submitted by a reader: "Direct deposit a decent holiday bonus, only to void the transaction and replace it with less than half that amount 'because we changed our minds.'"
I don't think that person will be working weekends.
By
Scott Berinato
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July 30, 2008; 9:54 AM ET
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Posted by: Hot Mommas Project | July 30, 2008 10:27 PM
Bosses absolutely influence an employee's experience with balance or imbalance. Calls on weekends or afterhours will increasingly encroach on personal responsibilities and time. Many employee's, especially younger generations, never signed up for 24/7 access although the Blackberry or Treo the company handed the employee should have been a sign of the level of expectation.
I am the founder of a company (www.attacheservices.com) that helps women with work-life balance issues. We've found that women are becoming less and less tolerant of work-life imbalance and are finding ways to achieve balance inside and outside their corporations. We offer them a personal assistant, known as a Personal Attaché, and a Life Management Consultant to help navigate the murky waters of work-life balance. We also encourage professional women seeking balance to also visit our blog called Pink Pearls at http://attacheservices.blogspot.com.
Posted by: Alicia Anderson | August 1, 2008 2:15 AM
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We at the Hot Mommas Project are just starting to release the results of our survey on our blog which indicates that women (our survey group) who are high driving but balanced report greater feelings of success than others with more moderate levels of balance (link below). It's worth fighting for. Stewart Friedman's new book out of Harvard Business Press (Total Leadership) is a good resource.
http://hotmommasproject.blogspot.com/2008/07/hot-mommas-project-work-life-balance.html