Achieving LifeWork

By Jamie Anderson & Ayelet Baron

After many year of climbing the corporate ladder to what she thought was success, a senior executive who we will name Eileen was invited to an airline event to celebrate the top 100 flyers in the San Francisco Bay area. As she looked around the exhausted and (what she perceived to be) unhappy faces in the room, she found herself deeply disturbed. She realised that she had certainly broken the glass ceiling in terms of career progression, but at what cost? In the months before the event she had divorced, and the endless stress and travel was having a damaging impact on her health.

Eileen is not alone. Many people in business reach a level of high professional achievement only to realise that the commitments and tradeoffs required are excessive. It is one thing for people to not achieve their dreams – but it is another for them to reach their professional goals and then to realise that in doing so they have sacrificed so much of what gives life meaning.

During the experience of Covid19 this realisation has become a common and shared experience. Many have been pushed into a new way of working and then discovered that it enables them to achieve a better life balance.

But what will happen in a post-pandemic world? Will people still be willing to make the same sacrifices and tradeoffs? And is there an alternative?

The linear career path

Many of us from Generation X who have achieved professional goals had the opportunity to gain a tertiary education. We were instilled with the belief that our education would provide us with the opportunity to pursue a successful career and, if we attended one of the top-tier universities or business schools, then high-achievement – defined as career and income progression -- was almost a birth right. This universal definition of success was not only instilled from educational institutions but the media and wider society, as well as families.

Many people were benignly guided away from their passions in pursuits such as sport, music and art, at a relatively young age with the advice that such interests were unlikely to lead to a “good” job and successful life.

A career professional who we will name John experienced just this advice as an elite junior cyclist in his mid teens, before being guided towards the “rational” career path of a university degree. Eileen, our other example, always had a passion for acting and directing, and at the age of 18 was accepted to study an undergraduate degree in theatre arts, before she too was re-directed onto a more “rational” path.

Since the turn of the twentieth century the higher education systems in much of the Western world have worked towards standardising learning according to the functional division of labour. By the age of fifteen or sixteen, and even earlier in some countries, individuals are put on an educational track that leads them into increasingly specialised learning paths. As students progress the more functionally specialised their learning tends to become. This linear educational path often then sets an individual onto a more or less linear career path – law students become lawyers, engineering students become engineers and accounting students become accountants. And once in an organisation, career paths often unfold in an equally linear way – first as an individual contributor within a functional department, then team leader and on to middle and sometimes senior management in the same function.

Something else starts to happen on this linear educational and professional track – as we progress we are ranked and compared to others, typically according to a narrow range of performance criteria. First are academic grades, and then organisational performance indicators such as productivity or sales results. Indeed, achievement of these metrics often provides the basis for the next stage of progression. As we progress, we start to accrue artefacts of recognition – degree certificates and job titles, for example. So it is not surprising that many career professionals start to define their success – and sometimes their identity – through the accrual of these artefacts. For some these become important indicators of social status and position, and become a kind of career snobbery whereby one evaluates the value of another according to their academic and career achievements. 

Being the best

High-achievers bring energy and focus to their roles, and this is often rewarded with recognition and promotion. Many organisations single-out these people for special development, and they are shepherded towards high potential career tracks. Being picked and rewarded becomes increasingly gratifying, but can mean that motivation becomes increasingly outside-in rather than inside-out. Professionals often spend a large part of life waiting to be validated and picked.

Business mentors and corporate HR professionals are more than ready to set out the exciting path ahead – but this is typically defined in the narrow context of your relationship with the organisation. Rarely does this future take into account wider life goals such as fulfilling private relationships and parenting, the pursuit of personal passions, health and wellbeing. Of course, many people still hold the underlying belief that if they achieve career success, then these other things will follow.

All too often the result is that the quest to “be the best” becomes narrowly defined around career achievement. What often starts as a belief in the need to temporarily subjugate other life goals, to be able to invest in achieving a high level of professional achievement, becomes habitual and permanent. At the same time as experiencing meteoric career success, and recognition and financial rewards for their commitment to the organisation, people can find that their personal relationships, parenting commitments, health and private passions start to suffer. 

This stress is particularly acute for career professionals who have a young family. Juggling job, family and self becomes almost impossible. And the result is far from happiness for most people as they desperately try to deal with the conflicting pressures. The first to be abandoned is often the self – the luxury of pursuing one’s own interests and passions -- and of course rest. The result is often weight gain, illness and stress. Guilt is also a feeling that many start to experience as they try to reconcile loyalty and commitment to the organisation with commitment and loyalty towards partner and children.

The balance fallacy 

As many high-achievers start to experience conflicts, they endeavour to make changes. One of the authors recently attended an annual employee event of a top international consultancy firm, and as part of the gathering one of the firm’s senior partners had produced a mini-documentary on achieving work-life balance. The film started with a 6am wake-up, followed by step-trainer work-out and shower before 35 minutes with her husband and two pre-school children who were then taken to day-care and kindergarten by the family’s live-in helper. Then came the commute to work (attending a phone conference on the way) and meetings with clients until around 7pm. This was followed by a commute home, one-hour dinner with family (prepared by live-in helper) and a 10-minute bedtime story. Then came a glass of wine with her husband, before another few hours of email and proposal writing. The behaviours demonstrated by the partner of this consultancy firm are part of a repertoire of tactics adopted by high-achievers who are aiming to achieve a “work-life balance”.

The work-life dichotomy was a mid-1800s industrial age invention. The goal was to have workers separate work and social life to maximise operational efficiency. In the industrial age advances in technology drove incredible leaps in human productivity and economic prosperity. But there was a massive gulf between the technological resources of organisations and private individuals, and factories and offices were designed around providing access to technology – whether it was machinery or mainframe computing, or communication tools such as the telephone and facsimile machine.

While access to certain specialised technologies is still important in many industries, the degree to which people need to travel to work to access these technologies has changed dramatically - a fact that has come to the forefront during the Covid19 pandemic.

Rather than relying on dedicated human resources, the boundaries of organisations have also became more permeable as firms have looked towards outsourcing and consultancy. More recently there has been an even more dramatic shift – in some sectors organisations have started to employ interim management at even the most senior levels. 

There has been an explosion in the number of “free agents” who desire to collaborate openly with other individuals and institutions. Free agents are knowledge workers who determine their own work portfolio and often integrate their own work/life tradeoffs, without a contractual commitment to a single employer - collectively termed the gig economy.

Some of these people have chosen this path, while others have been forced into free agent status after losing their jobs. Before the pandemic, about 36% of workers in the US were involved in the gig economy, while in Europe the figure was around 32%. But given the recent upheavals in the labour market, these figures are sure to have increased.

Underlying organisational processes and cultural norms have been much slower to shift. As the experience of the pandemic has shown, most people can be productive almost anywhere at anytime, whether they are working individually or in teams. And yet most organisations have doggedly adhere to regimented start and end times to the workday.

While there might be good reasons for this in terms of job or sector specific activities requiring manual work, face-to-face collaboration and/or schedule-dependent activities, it is not required for the vast spectrum of non-manual and non-concurrent tasks engaged in by knowledge workers - as recent experience has shown.

Up until now, the reason why organisations have been slow to rethink the concept of work-life is due more to cultural inertia than any other factor. The industrial-age assumptions about technology, organisation and processes have become deeply ingrained within society, and reinforced through general and business education and the media.

In most organisations these deeply entrenched assumptions have become orthodoxy, and this is why the question of work-life balance remains. Some enlightened organisations have made progress, especially with regard to virtual working and flexible working time, but in most cases these initiatives only patch the much deeper underlying problems.

The continuing adherence to the industrial-age mind-set means that up until now it has been almost impossible for high-achieving knowledge workers to achieve a true work-life balance in most established organisations.

Therefore, we propose an alternative philosophy to purposeful living that should and can be implemented post the pandemic – what we call lifeworking. This is an approach that does not try to separate life and work into two distinct and seemingly incompatible spheres, but instead meshes both into a new way of thinking about a life journey. We propose three possible paths for high achievers:

1.                Re-negotiate the terms of engagement with the existing organisation to better integrate other life goals. This requires a track record of high performance during the pandemic(i.e. an ability to demonstrate one’s value to the organisation), trusted relationships with senior management and peers, and willingness for the organisation to be output rather than input focused. The organisation and the individual need to rethink performance targets and rewards to boost intrinsic motivation, and in some cases to accept that promotion to wider levels of responsibility is not an objective – at least for the time being. The shift might also require the individual to continue developing skills in collaboration as the transition to lifeworking within an established organisation typically involves greater task sharing with others.

2.                Create or join an organisation (often small) that rejects industrial-age work orthodoxy. Such organisations reject a philosophy of scarcity in favour of embracing abundance, and are comfortable in providing individuals with a greater degree of autonomy over how they achieve performance goals.

3.                Join the gig economy by becoming a free agent, and offer knowledge as a consultant, advisor or interim manager based upon one’s most valuable skills and capabilities. This approach delivers a key element of lifeworking – autonomy. But it requires deep insight into where the individual’s skills really lie, as well as self-belief, resilience and a commitment to lifelong learning. In our experience, it might also require the individual to learn how to network with other free agents, monetise their skills, configure Outlook email on a SmartPhone, network a printer and set-up webinars on ZOOM.

Whatever choice they make (and sometimes people choose more than one option), individuals need to be the ones driving the shift towards lifework, and not wait for organisations to create the necessary environment. But in our experience there are two barriers that prevent individuals from doing so – defining purpose and addressing fear.

Defining purpose

At the moment Eileen realised that her quest to ‘be the best’ had become narrowly defined, she stepped back to reflect. This began a process whereby she started to question the meaning of success, and to create purposeful goals that went beyond promotion and generating value for the organisation. She felt a great affection for many of the people she worked with, and felt they needed her in her role as an advocate for her younger colleagues and female co-workers. But she realised that she had lost a sense of purpose, and made the dramatic decision to step-away from the corporate environment to take time to define what success really meant for her.

Eileen’s definition of success did not come quickly. She experienced a period where she lacked direction, but that was to be expected after more than twenty years on a linear career path. On a trip to the Amazon Rainforest, she had the time to reflect and realise that her real passion was for supporting individuals and organisations to be more creative about the journey towards lifeworking – the very journey she found herself on. This period of reflection provided the platform for her new life as a speaker, blogger and advisor to leaders on how to build 21st century organisations.

John was also pursuing a similar path at this time, but his exploration of the meaning of success was a team effort. To develop the concept of their lifework project John and his wife Anne-Marie spent many hours talking together, and these discussion culminated in a drawing exercise. In late 2009 the two sat together with a large sheet of paper and co-created a hand drawn picture of what success really meant. The pencil and ink sketches that they created revealed a much wider definition of success – they aspired to have a loving relationship and to live in a semi-urban environment in which their three children could play and be free. They desired more family leisure time, and the opportunity to actively participate in their children’s social, artistic and sporting activities. Both John and Anne-Marie wanted to work, but to engage in professional activities that they enjoyed and which still provided the opportunity for occasional international travel. John also dreamed of returning to elite-level competitive cycling.

Overcoming fear

When the two professionals who are discussed in this article embarked on their respective journeys towards lifework they both recognised the need to confront a number of deep-rooted fears. The first set of fears were personal, and for John these related primarily to financial security. He had grown up with six siblings, and as a child money was scarce. Financial stability meant a lot to him, and the fear of economic uncertainty for his family weighed heavily on his mind.

So a critical element of his lifework project was to calculate how much money his family really needed to live a fulfilling life – and the result was much less than he expected. He also needed to step back and realise that he still had at least twenty years of productive working years ahead of him. Eileen had a fear that if she stepped away from her linear career, then she could never go back. But the more she thought about this, and the more she talked about it with others, the more she realised that the value of her qualifications and experience would not perish within a year or two.

The second set of fears related to the respective social and professional environments in which they found themselves. Eileen’s anxiety stemmed from coming from a family where both parents valued education and career success. When she dropped out of her PhD studies in her twenties, her father was so disappointed that in a moment of anger he told her that she would never amount to much. To her parents, who started with nothing, success meant having a prestigious education and career, and to move in the “right” social circles. So the fear of disappointing those she loved was one of the biggest fears she had in pursuing her lifework project.

Fear of the possible reactions of bosses, peers and colleagues also weighed heavily on the two career professionals. Both had been mentored through their careers by leaders who had chosen to follow linear career paths, and now they were telling those mentors that they wanted a different path. The reaction from some of these people was shock and disbelief, and in some cases manifested itself in a sense of betrayal. John was called to a meeting with senior management after resigning his position and offered a significant increase in salary. Both John and Eileen were exposed to hurtful gossip.

In the end John and Eileen realised (and as we have discovered through conversations with countless other professionals who are pursuing a lifework agenda), one needs to accept that not everyone in a given social or professional circle will understand the decision of a non-linear career path choice. The people who matter the most are close friends and family – as they are the ones who will live with the consequences, and need to have their own fears addressed.

Career adventures

As a non-linear career progression, anyone who pursues the path of lifework needs to acknowledge that certain givens are no longer valid. For example, most of us expect that our income will increase year by year throughout our career, and that our reputation or status will steadily grow. Indeed, if this is not the case then most people feel insecurity and fear. But embarking on a non-linear career adventure often requires an investment in time and money as one builds new skills, explores new contacts and networks, and creates the platform for lifework. The further away from one’s core expertise that lifeworking entails, the greater the investment needed.

When Eileen left her corporate job she joined a small start-up, but after a few months realised that she simply needed to take some time off to focus on her health and wellness. It was a big step to simply take time off to reflect and reprioritize her needs. The first goal she met was losing 30 pounds and incorporating exercise and movement as part of her life. She was no longer racing through international airports, finding ways to fight jetlag and be productive. She purposefully made the time to make being healthy part of her life.

Eileen had been working online since the late 1980s and was among the first systems operators for CompuServe. She decided to examine her passion for building thriving virtual communities, and connected with different people to simply listen and learn. After many conversations and immersing herself in the literature of modern careers she discovered her passion for writing and speaking about lifeworking. She wrote her first book , and started to build her brand as an expert on the future of work and creating twenty-first century organisations, giving herself the title of “Chief Instigator”. 

This led her to engagements with a number of organisations, including an interim role as ‘Innovator in Residence’ with the pharmaceutical company Roche, where she introduced alternative ways of working and helped create a new methodology to build connected networks of knowledge workers. She has written her second book, and is building her reputation as an international speaker and advisor.

When John stepped away from full time academia and consultancy to pursue his lifework goals his income level dropped by more than 70 per cent in the first two years. After several months of reflection and exploration he decided to focus his professional activities on becoming a keynote speaker, but to do so he recognised the need to write a book, take acting lessons, connect with speakers agencies and create a website. At the same time he needed to engage much more actively in family life and ride his bicycle. The decline in income meant that his family needed to adjust their living expenses – but this became much easier when John realised he had been earning money to buy things he didn't really need, to impress people he didn't always like. 

John let go of his academic titles, no longer conducted applied academic research, discontinued attending academic conferences, and dramatically reduced long-haul business trips. Be he had not stepped away from academia completely as he still loved teaching and the intellectual stimulation of a business school environment – he worked as a free agent with a number of institutions, including his previous employer. He also established himself as an international keynote speaker, working with a number of top-level speaking agencies. He raced his bike regularly and went on to win medals at major international events for Masters athletes.

Success re-defined

Lifeworking is an approach that meshes life and work into an integrated existence, but most importantly it is a way of living in which the individual and not the organisation defines the meaning of success.

There is nothing wrong with career success – we are all for it due to the fact that professional achievement often provides a platform for subsequent life choices. But the reality is that the responsibilities that accompany high achievement in most established organisations place an overwhelming emphasis on loyalty to the institution ahead of wider life goals.

This is due to the fact that today’s dominant organisational model is based upon industrial era thinking, and has not evolved in alignment with wider techno-social shifts. To achieve lifework high achievers need to first understand what success really means for them, and then systematically address the fears that stand in the way of change.

The existing organisational model, and the way the associated terms of engagement that it places on high achievers, is fundamentally at conflict with lifeworking. And we are not convinced that this will change dramatically post the pandemic when it is likely that very many organizations will fall back into established patterns and expectations.

This means that post the pandemic individuals will need to push towards re-negotiating the terms of engagement, create or join organisations that have rejected industrial-age thinking, or become a free agent. And in all of these cases the individual will typically be required to make trade-offs in terms of income, formal status and/or scope of responsibility. You can't have it all.

Most importantly one needs the inspiration and fortitude to drive the shift towards lifework, and not expect that the organisation will ever create it for them.

Do you have the courage to re-define success? The authors of this article did – Jamie is the career professional we named John, and Ayelet is Eileen.

*An abridged version of this article originally appeared in the London Business School Review. https://www.london.edu/think/achieving-lifeworks