Winning (28 page)

As the HR director at a New York company told me, “It’s always my weakest people who want the most flexibility from the company. That’s frustrating—to put it mildly.” (Not surprisingly, he also said, “Don’t use my name if you quote me on this!”)

So before you open your mouth a fifth time to ask for limited travel and Thursday mornings off, or occupy your boss’s time with concerns over your child-care arrangements, know that you are making a statement, and no matter what words you use, it sounds like, “I’m not really into this.”

Look, only you can figure out your values and priorities. Only you know what trade-offs you are willing to make, and only you can envision their consequences. Only you can organize your schedule and your life, at work and at home, for the balance you have chosen.

That is why, at the end of the day, most bosses correctly believe work-life balance is your problem to solve, not theirs.

Now, some managers are very adept at helping their people go through the process of sorting out priorities and selecting tradeoffs, and even in coming up with scheduling solutions that work equally well for their employees and the company. In fact, they see that activity as an integral part of their jobs.

But helping people find work-life balance is really a special skill. Not every manager has it, and not every manager wants it. Some managers feel, “What the heck am I supposed to be now, a mother and a therapist? Forget about it!”

But many do not. In my speaking and consulting engagements over the past several years, I’d estimate about half of all managers want to actively work with their employees to help them achieve some form of balance. That’s a lot more than five years ago.

There can be no question that negotiating work-life balance arrangements adds a layer of complexity to a manager’s job. But your manager should welcome the challenge. It gives him another tool to motivate and retain great performers, just like salary, bonuses, promotions, and all other kinds of recognition.

But along the way, you can and should help yourself. The work-life balance debate has now been out there long enough that a handful of best practices have emerged. Most experienced bosses know about these techniques. In fact, many use them, and they wish you would too.

Here they are.

Best practice 1: Keep your head in whatever game you’re at.
We’ve already established that work wants 150 percent of you, and so does home. To alleviate angst and distraction, and to enhance your performance no matter what you are doing, be focused on where you are and whom you are with.

In other words, compartmentalize.

No one wins when you routinely run your family’s carpool logistics from your office phone or e-mail customers from the soccer field.

Compartmentalizing isn’t easy, obviously. Sometimes you must call a customer from the gym or check on a sick child between meetings. But the more you blend your life, the more mixed up, distracted, and overwhelmed you feel and act.

Technology is a real two-edged sword on this. On the one hand, you can be home for dinner three nights a week when you have the ability to check e-mail on your BlackBerry from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. On the other, you can give yourself a real ulcer by encouraging your office to call your cell phone while you are skiing.

The absolute ideal is to draw crisp boundaries around your activities. Then, when you are at work, keep your head in work completely, and when you are at home or play, keep your head there, and only there. I realize this is something of a fantasyland. There will always be pressures on whatever rules you set, but the smaller and less frequent the interruptions are, the more balance you will actually feel.

Best practice 2: Have the mettle to say no to requests and demands outside your chosen work-life balance plan.
Eventually, most people come up with a work-life balance arrangement that works for them. The trick is sticking to it.

That takes discipline. Saying no is hard, especially for business-people who have gotten ahead precisely because they have said yes so often. I will always be impressed by Bill Woodburn, who was running GE’s industrial diamond business in the 1990s. We asked him to run a division several times that size, but he had the clarity about his priorities to say no, despite our efforts to persuade him. He had a daughter with two years to go in high school, and he didn’t want to uproot her. Today, Bill’s daughter has long since graduated, and he has been promoted twice. He’s now president and CEO of GE’s infrastructure business.

Usually, however, you don’t need to say no to something as large as a promotion to get the balance you want. You just need to say it to smaller stuff—a request that you join yet another nonprofit board, a plea to coach yet another kids’ sports team, and the like.

If you say yes to everything, you won’t get balance. You’ll get
off
balance.

Saying no is incredibly liberating. Try it on anything and everything that is not part of your deliberately chosen work-life plan.

Best practice 3: Make sure your work-life balance plan doesn’t leave you out.
A really killing dynamic in this work-life balance thing is the everyone’s-happy-but-me syndrome. Very competent people figure out a perfect work-life balance plan that allows them to deliver enough of themselves to the workplace, enough of themselves to family, and enough of themselves to one or two volunteer organizations.
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The problem is, this perfect plan creates a kind of fun-free vacuum for the person at its center.

Of course, work-life balance involves making trade-offs, and decent people are obliged to deliver on their commitments to home and work. But if you craft a work-life balance plan where you are having no fun, chances are you won’t be able to sustain it.

You have to make sure your work-life balance plan fulfills your dreams and passions. If that means working a lot, do it. If that means being home every night, let that happen too. Yes, you have to be responsible to those around you, but you can’t live someone else’s concept of your life in the name of balance.

Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. It almost always backfires.

We all know outwardly happy-looking people who juggle huge career and family demands only to suddenly stop and make drastic changes to their lives. They’ve just had enough of hanging on by their fingernails.

One person we met recently at a cocktail party explained her decision to “throw it in” this way: “I hadn’t really had a good laugh for fifteen years. I hadn’t read the newspaper with a cup of coffee or played with the dog or called an old friend. It felt like every single minute, I was struggling with logistics in order to meet everyone’s needs but my own.

“Technically, I was a good enough wife and mother, and I was good enough at my job. Everyone else was OK, but I was miserable. I had to quit or I was going to collapse.”

Today, this woman works from home. Her family has less money, and she will tell you she misses her old life as a professional. But at least she can breathe—and laugh.

Work-life balance is not a decision you make alone. You have to confront how your choices affect a myriad of others.

But if you don’t fulfill your own joy with your plan, all the balance in the world is just duty. One day, you’ll wake up and find yourself in a special kind of hell, where everyone is happy but you.

And that doesn’t do anyone any good.

When you get right down to it, there are only a few things you need to know if you want, as the title of this chapter says, to have it all.

Outside of work, clarify what you want from life.

At work, clarify what your boss wants, and understand that, if you want to get ahead, what he or she wants comes first. You can eventually get what you both want, but the arrangement will be negotiated in that context.

Make sure you work in a supportive culture where performance matters and you can earn flexibility chits with great results.

Earn a lot of chits. Redeem as needed; replenish often.

Achieving work-life balance is a process. Getting it right is iterative. You get better at it with experience and observation, and eventually, after some time passes, you notice it’s not getting harder anymore. It’s just what you do.

20. HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE

The Questions That Almost Got Away

B
ACK IN THE INTRODUCTION
, I said that I was inspired to write this book by the questions I received traveling around the world over the past several years. Most of those questions, and my answers to them, ended up fitting into the nineteen chapters preceding this one.

A few questions, however, just couldn’t be wedged into one topic area or another, be it leadership, hiring, change, strategy, or work-life balance. They were too broad, narrow, specific, or unusual. They just defied categorization.

And yet these questions actually call to mind several of the themes that run through this book—the importance of candor and positive energy, for instance, the effectiveness of differentiation, the importance of voice, the power of authenticity and meritocracy, and the absolute necessity of change and never letting yourself be a victim.

So I’m going to end this book with the “questions that almost got away,” hoping that they cover any territory I’ve missed, and perhaps even remind you of some of the major signposts of the territory we’ve covered so far.

This question was posed at a working dinner in Mexico City, attended by about thirty CEOs from various industries:

We spent the last ten years bringing our company up to speed with training and process improvements, and with our low-cost labor, we were extremely competitive. But now we’re getting killed by China. How can we stay alive?

I’ve heard some form of this question everywhere—except China, of course.

When I was in Dublin in 2001, for instance, a couple of months after Gateway announced it was closing up shop, an Irish technology executive anxiously asked, “Does this mean the end of the long boom for us?” In Milan in 2004, I spoke with a German manager who wondered if his company’s only hope was to sell out to an Asian company that wanted his European distribution capability. At a conference in Chicago the same year, a machine parts manufacturer based in Cleveland described in agonizing detail how the Chinese kept lowering and lowering the price of their competing products. “Will there be any manufacturing jobs left in Ohio?” he asked.

There is no easy answer to the China question. Yes, you hear about China’s problems—its scarcity of middle managers, for instance, and the massive number of poor farming families moving into unprepared cities with not enough jobs to support them. Lumbering, bureaucratic state-owned enterprises still make up most of its economy. And the country’s banks are saddled with bad loans.

But for China, these aren’t mountains to be scaled, they’re blips to be flattened by the giant, high-speed bulldozer that is its economy. Increasing prosperity from spectacular economic growth over the past twenty years has given the Chinese enormous self-confidence. But China has so much more: a massive pool of low-cost, hardworking laborers and a rapidly expanding number of well-educated engineers.

And then, there’s its work ethic, which may be its single biggest strength. Entrepreneurship and competition are baked into the Chinese culture. Consider the executive who hosted me during a weeklong visit to Shanghai and Beijing last year. She said she’s at the office from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., goes home for dinner to join her husband and son until 8:00 p.m., and then returns to work until midnight. “This is very typical here,” she said, “six days a week.” And she works for a U.S. multinational!

So, faced with the inevitability of China, what do you do?

First and foremost, get out of the tank. The sense of bleakness that I heard from Mexico to Milan and across the United States is perhaps understandable, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

It’s not as if the developed economies of the world are in shambles. The developed world has large consumer and industrial markets, all thirsting for products, with great brands and distribution mechanisms to serve them. Its economies have open and mature legal systems. They are transparent societies, with democratic governments and good education and social systems. Its businesses have fully developed management processes. The United States has the added advantage of a large, thriving venture capital market with the capability to provide seed capital for just about any good idea.

The list of the developed world’s competitive advantages could go on and on.

So think positively. At the very least, a can-do attitude is a place to start.

Remember my description of the Japanese threat in the early ’80s? At times it felt like we were dying, and everyone seemed to agree. Journalists and political pundits predicted the imminent demise of industrial companies like GE, and you couldn’t blame them, given the circumstances. Inflation was double digit, and the prime rate peaked at more than 20 percent. In Syracuse, we were making TV sets that cost more coming out of the factory than the Japanese were selling them for in a mall less than two miles away.

It sure felt like the worst of times.

But that’s the point, really. In the heat of battle, it always feels like the worst of times. Low-cost competitors are not new. Hong Kong and Taiwan have been in the game for over forty years, and Mexico, the Philippines, India, and Eastern Europe have been a factor for some time. Even in the late ’90s, when the wind was at everyone’s back and making money was easier than it had been in decades, work felt really hard. Big companies were labeled dinosaurs, and it became conventional wisdom that technology start-ups would soon rule the world. In fact, it was said whole industries were going to be obliterated by the Internet.

Then the bubble burst. Many of those little companies that were going to rule the world disappeared. Others, like eBay and Amazon, not only survived, they thrived. But so did the so-called dinosaurs—because they changed. They grabbed the new technology and transformed themselves, emerging stronger than ever.

And change is what China demands of us now.

How?

First and most obvious, bring out the three old warhorses of competition—cost, quality, and service—and drive them to new levels, making every person in the organization see them for what they are, a matter of survival.

Take costs. Everyone needs to be searching everywhere, inside the company and out, for best practices. Hard calls need to be made about where and how every single process should be performed to ratchet up productivity. Don’t think about reducing costs by 5 to 10 percent. You have to find the ways to take out 30 to 40 percent. In most cases, that’s what it will take to be competitive in the China world.
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On quality, you just can’t have a ship-and-fix mentality. Getting it right 95 percent of the time is not good enough. Use Six Sigma or any methodology you like. But get rid of defects.

Service is the easiest advantage to exploit. China is thousands of miles away from most developed markets. Remember Gary Drug, the tiny pharmacy in our neighborhood where not only do they know your name, they deliver to your house within an hour? It’s standing strong against its China—the big, shiny chain-store pharmacy three blocks away. And think about the Mexican CEO who asked this question to start with. His country’s proximity to the United States gives it a huge advantage in response time.

Again, your challenge is not just to improve. It is to break the service paradigm in your industry or market so that customers aren’t just satisfied, they’re so shocked that they tell strangers on the street how good you are. FedEx and Dell come to mind as examples of this.

While you have to innovate to improve cost, quality, and service, go beyond that. Take a new, hard look at your market. Search out untapped opportunities; find new niches. Just don’t keep pounding out the same stuff.

That market you’re serving may seem saturated, but it is filled with plenty of demand for exciting new products, services, or technologies. That’s what Procter & Gamble discovered recently. There was no company more set in its ways than P&G. But in less than five years, the company instilled a whole new vigor into its innovation efforts. It broke its NIH syndrome and scoured every corner of the world for “garage” inventors with cutting-edge ideas. And they didn’t stop there. Their search for new ideas led them to create networks into other companies, suppliers, universities, research labs, and venture capitalists. They took some of the ideas they found and fine-tuned them, and used still others to reinvent their existing products. For instance, P&G took the tried-and-true electrostatic technology used to paint cars and applied it to its cosmetics business—transforming the way its makeup products go on the skin. With a new can-do attitude, the company also revitalized in-house R & D. The result was products like Crest Whitestrips and the Swiffer cleaning products, which literally invented whole new mass-market categories.
*

And finally, while you are innovating and searching for new products, markets, and niches, come to terms with the fact that China can be much more than just a competitor.

Think of China as a market, an outsourcing option, and a potential partner.

Unlike Japan in its early development, China’s huge market is relatively open to direct investment. Many can go it alone there, ideally selling their product in the Chinese market while sourcing product for their home market.

Alternatively, you can join forces with a local business. Needless to say, Chinese joint ventures aren’t easy. In my experience, to make them happen you have to make sure the Chinese partner feels as if it has gained a lot, perhaps more than you. But there are ways to craft win-win deals. When GE Medical formed a joint venture in 1991, its Chinese partner brought great local market know-how. That was a big factor in the new company’s achieving the No. 1 market share in imported GE high-end imaging products. At the same time, the joint venture’s Chinese engineers designed and built low-cost, high-quality products that were exported through GE’s global distribution network.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna about China. Its presence is a real game-changer in business today. And even if trade restrictions get enacted, its currency is allowed to fluctuate, and intellectual property laws are passed, no political solution in the world is going to make it go away.

But China is a classic case of the glass half empty or half full, isn’t it?

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

Pick the latter. You can’t win wringing your hands.

This question was posed by an audience member in London, at a conference attended by about three thousand middle and senior managers:

Norway just passed a law mandating that half of every corporate board be comprised of women. What is your opinion of that?

It’s ridiculous.

Obviously, I’m not against women directors. They’ve made major contributions to thousands of boards around the world. In fact, one of the best directors I’ve ever known is a woman who served on the GE board, G.G. Michelson, the former director of human resources at R.H. Macy & Co. and past head of Columbia University’s board of trustees, whose people insights and general wisdom guided me for two decades.

Nevertheless, I just don’t like quotas in the boardroom or in the office. Winning companies are meritocracies. They practice differentiation, making a clear distinction between top, middle, and bottom performers. This system is candid and fair, and it’s the most effective way for an organization to field the best team.

Quotas undermine meritocracies. They artificially push some people ahead, independent of qualifications. That can be demotivating to the top performers who are passed over, and it doesn’t do much for results, either, when unprepared people are thrust into important jobs.

So what does work?

Return for a minute to the “Getting Promoted” chapter; its advice is color-and gender-blind. If you want to get promoted, your best bet is to overdeliver on your results, manage your subordinates as carefully as you manage your boss, get on the radar screen by supporting major initiatives early, relish the input of lots of mentors, and always, always have a positive, high-energy approach to life and work. At the same time, don’t make your boss use his or her political capital to champion you. And when setbacks occur, and they will, don’t let them break your stride.

I’m not saying women and minorities haven’t had a tough go of it in the business world. They have, and they do need mechanisms to give them a higher profile in the system.

One such mechanism is diversity groups, like GE’s Women’s Network or its African American Forum. These groups have created an opportunity for successful women and minority executives to serve as role models. Just as important, they provide a setting to talk about the ways women and minorities can increase their experience and skills, and thus their visibility in an organization. They promote the concept that success is a function of talent, energy, and drive—just as meritocracies are.
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But the whole subject of diversity is more nuanced and complicated than I am making it out to be.

At GE, the African American Forum was a grassroots effort that started in 1990. It was bumping along without a lot of momentum until a senior vice president, Lloyd Trotter, grabbed it by the neck and gave it a whole new energy with seminars, conferences, and mentoring programs. With Lloyd in charge, every African American in the company wanted to get on board, and all of Lloyd’s peers wanted to jump in to help. The group really took off, and in time so did promotions for African Americans.

On the other hand, in the mid-1990s I would have dinners twice a year with high-potential women where we would discuss the work-life issues they were facing. In 1997, after a long give-and-take, I challenged the group to create their own version of the African American Forum. They seemed enthusiastic, but much to my surprise, over the next few weeks, I found that some of our top women were balking at the idea. They felt they had made it without any label. They didn’t want to be thought of as successful women, they wanted to be thought of as successful executives. After a couple of years, much of that faded, as even the most reluctant grew to enjoy their mentoring and its positive impact on the progress of women in the company.