A new decade for organizations

I. 

“How was your break?” 

It’s a line that graced the first few minutes of countless Zoom rooms this week. But this year, somehow more than most, the word “break” doesn’t sit right with me. Sure, “break” can refer to relaxation amidst periods of intense and focused effort. But thinking of time away from work as a “break” elevates our working lives to our primary, default mode as humans, and relegates time focused on ourselves, family, and friends as a “time out”, or secondary intermittent mode. It assumes “time off” from work is merely to recharge our batteries, with the sole purpose of pushing harder when we get “back to work”. 

In other words, is the zebra white with black stripes, or black with white stripes? Is a “break” a stripe painted upon a life of work? Or is work layered upon the skin of our lives?

In a time when notions of home and work are entangled more as soup than salad, when time stretches on and we’re more likely than ever to ask ourselves, what is it all for?, we must be careful our subtext is not, “Did you use your break to ready yourself again for work? Great—back to the grindstone.” 

None of this is to say people don’t want to work hard (they do), nor that businesses shouldn’t expect output and impact (they should). But it is an outdated notion that one’s performance should hold primacy over their humanity. 

In fact, the highest performing organizations I know sing with humanity. Take Target’s bold investment in its people in a time of crisis, or how Airbnb laid off 25% of its workforce with incomparable empathy and compassion and respect. Patagonia is famous for inviting its people to bring their humanity to work with their on-site daycare being one example. And personally, I adore that I feel comfortable leading team meetings at SYP sitting cross-legged on my bed, in workout gear, with my daughter dancing in the background. Sharing my own humanity not only feels great to me, but I sense it improves psychological safety on our team, as well as our performance.

Further, the notion of work as extractive and time away from work as restorative is indicative of a larger issue with our society's relationship to our professional lives. Hard, meaningful work should feel good—providing challenge, nourishment, and growth. And anyone with young kids knows time off of work rarely feels break-like. 

What if the corporate model of “companies try to squeeze the most from employees and get away with paying as little as possible while employees choose the highest paying job for the work they hate the least” is wrong? 

II.

We’re living in Jamaica for a few months and recently had a day at the beach. My husband, Brad, was saying to a friend, “It was so nice to have a day to do nothing.” His friend responded, “Nothing?! When was the last time you had lobster for lunch and swam so vigorously in the sea? You did everything!”

Of course, by “nothing”, Brad was referring to having done no work—the measure of how productive we are for business or society. It is a work-centered and frankly US-centered lexicon—one that many of us know well.

III.

My first job out of college was teaching 7th grade math. I was hungry, devoted, and ready to pour all of my time and energy into my work. Seemed like the right thing to do.

A man named Lyle Hatridge was my mentor that year—a sage if I ever knew one. He said to me, “Bree, one of the best things in life is learning how to both save and savor the world.” I’ve scribbled that turn of phrase in countless notebooks over the years.

IV.

Recently I’ve become enamored with the work of Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. He writes, “May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path, of the third way, of the broken binary…”

I hope those broken binaries include...

• I am working // I am on a break
• I am productive // I am doing nothing
• I am doing business // I am doing art
• I am saving time // I am spending time
• I am working // I am living
• I am giving // I am getting
• I am doing // I am being

Dr. Akomolafe continues, “May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited.”

We must invent new ways to design our organizations such that humanity and performance are not something to be balanced in tension like a tug of war, but balanced in reinforcement like two playing cards forming a tent /\ holding each other up. 

At SYPartners, we believe organizations designed for humanity and performance create unprecedented impact—in fact we have seen it with our own eyes and work to create more of these enlivening organizations every day.  

Well, the days we're not swimming in the sea.

P.S. If you’re thinking, “Got it. Love it. Wanna do it. But how?” I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned in a monthly series of short-form articles that I’m committing to by typing this sentence. (Future Bree, I’m looking at you.) I hope you’ll share what you’re learning, too.