Reintegrating the business/life split
"My father imposed upon me the greatest discipline: he trusted me." Robert Galvin, Motorola
Experts from James Autry on reintegrating the business/life split
To find a balance between life and work- that's the wrong question. What we should be looking to find is a balance within, not between, life and work. The two ideas are falsely separated, part of the error of dualism.
In the days of the First Wave, people's work and life was inseparable — farming. It was uncommon to hear a farm wife say to her husband, "Honey, we need to talk. Your work is interfering with our relationship." The splitting of business from life is one of the things wrong with our lives. It legitimizes uncivilized behavior at the office so long as one is civilized at home. It is important that we find ways to reintegrate our parts into a single whole.
Business is not just a way of reaping financial rewards; it is also a way to achieve psychological and spiritual goals. It enables us to meet and work with others; to create products and services that are useful to others; and to help others achieve their goals of survival and fulfillment. Create loyalty to a purpose (not to persons, to bosses and managers). Appreciate the idea that all shares the success of an enterprise. Indulge in honest talk with others. In day-to-day affairs, amid all this willingness to be unkind, there is a paradoxical unwillingness to confront the plain truth — in the name of kindness. "It's easy to be honest with compliments, but the other side is not so easy: 'Jim, you are not doing a good job.' ". Trust is the air successful teams and organizations must breathe together. Without the confidence that your colleagues are not out to get you, you can't advance. "If you're looking ahead, there's no time to check your backside."
Our careers cry out to be about something. We need to believe that we are not engaged in a mindless, absurd rat race, that life is not a bitch and then we die. Our quest in life is not happiness but the desire to have it make sense. (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl). The trick to balancing work and life, says James Autry, is not to avoid biting off more than we can chew; it is to avoid biting off more than we can savor.
Experts from James Autry on reintegrating the business/life split
To find a balance between life and work- that's the wrong question. What we should be looking to find is a balance within, not between, life and work. The two ideas are falsely separated, part of the error of dualism.
In the days of the First Wave, people's work and life was inseparable — farming. It was uncommon to hear a farm wife say to her husband, "Honey, we need to talk. Your work is interfering with our relationship." The splitting of business from life is one of the things wrong with our lives. It legitimizes uncivilized behavior at the office so long as one is civilized at home. It is important that we find ways to reintegrate our parts into a single whole.
Business is not just a way of reaping financial rewards; it is also a way to achieve psychological and spiritual goals. It enables us to meet and work with others; to create products and services that are useful to others; and to help others achieve their goals of survival and fulfillment. Create loyalty to a purpose (not to persons, to bosses and managers). Appreciate the idea that all shares the success of an enterprise. Indulge in honest talk with others. In day-to-day affairs, amid all this willingness to be unkind, there is a paradoxical unwillingness to confront the plain truth — in the name of kindness. "It's easy to be honest with compliments, but the other side is not so easy: 'Jim, you are not doing a good job.' ". Trust is the air successful teams and organizations must breathe together. Without the confidence that your colleagues are not out to get you, you can't advance. "If you're looking ahead, there's no time to check your backside."
Our careers cry out to be about something. We need to believe that we are not engaged in a mindless, absurd rat race, that life is not a bitch and then we die. Our quest in life is not happiness but the desire to have it make sense. (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl). The trick to balancing work and life, says James Autry, is not to avoid biting off more than we can chew; it is to avoid biting off more than we can savor.
