In my last post I mentioned that if you are a manager/leader that in order to be good at your job, or more importantly to be effective, the 50 hour work week is mandatory. It’s interesting that since that post I have been running into, and reading a lot, about how we should be cutting back our hours at work. I will also say I have gotten a lot grief over that comment. The standard quote is “Nobody ever looked back at their life and said I wish I had spent more time at the office.” Now don’t get me wrong that quote is definitely true, but let’s consider that there is a balance between going home to other responsibilities and interests, and making sure the job is done before we leave.
When I started my career in the mid 80’s fresh out of Virginia Tech, and then in the early 90’s fresh out of graduate school with an MBA, you had to work the 80-90 hour work week to be considered successful. If you were not working those kinds of hours you were not working enough, and part of the definition of success was whether or not you worked more hours than the other guy. I had always thought that was ridiculous. I discovered that those working in my company at the time that did the most bragging about the late hours they were working, spent most of the “daylight” hours lounging around chit chatting. I discovered that if I did not chit chat I accomplished more in 50 hours than they did in 80.
The mid 90’s began the age of not working more than 40 hours a week and that family and other interests were more important than your career. In the 70’s and 80’s and even before that career was everything. “From the Earth to the Moon” is an HBO mini-series on the race to the moon and how it was accomplished. One of the episodes concerns the engineers at Grumman sitting around waiting to hear if they got the contract for the Lunar Excursion Vehicle or LEM, later to be shortened to just LM for Lunar Module. When the call comes, Tom Kelly the chief engineer says to his crew, “Call your families and tell them that you will not be seeing them for awhile because we got the contract!” and a big cheer goes up. In today’s world it seems as if the attitude would be “great we got the contract but that does not mean I am going to work any harder.”
The attitudes towards work in this day and age have been reversed since the days of the Apollo moon landings. Now the attitude seems to be “I am going to work a set amount of time whether or not the job is done”, where it used to be “I am going to work more hours than need be to get the job done.” Both attitudes are ridiculous but the first is the most concerning. The ones working too many hours at least got the job done, but it seems as if the new generation is not so concerned with getting the job done as they are other interests in their lives. Other interests are fine but do not think for a minute that you can be an effective leader/manager if you leave before you work responsibilities are fulfilled.
Leaders/Managers, at least the good ones, know better. They understand that there is a balance. There is a home life and there is a work life. Without the work life you cannot afford the home life. And without the home life what’s the point of the work life. Leaders/managers understand that to be an effective leader/manager you have to be at work to support those under your supervision, and also to accomplish what you need to do during the day. There is just absolutely no way you can do that in a 40 hour week. If your followers are working 40 hours it will take you at least that amount of time to support them plus you still have to accomplish the work your supervisor asks you to complete. As a side note, you cannot check to make sure their work is complete until they complete it and go home.
Here is my point, if you are a leader/manager and you do not need to work more than 40 hours a week, and your followers are accomplishing everything you are asking them to, then you are not doing enough. You need to go to your supervisor and ask for more responsibility. Why? Because if everything is going smoothly and you are only working 40 hours then pretty soon your supervisors are going to start believing they do not need you. The other reason is that you can be doing more, and should be doing more. I do not mean go to the 80 hour work week, but 50 a week is not a big deal. You can still get in at 8 and leave at 6, or 7-5, and have quality family time, weekends off, and be an effective, indispensable manager. But if you are leaving at 40 hours whether or not the job is done because there are other things more important, then you need to find another job where you do not have supervisory responsibilities. It is extremely hard to set the example of getting the job done efficiently, if you are not getting the job done yourself. You will become the manager that does not do any work and leaves it for everyone else. You know who the manager is I am talking about; we have all worked for them.
The younger leaders/managers will never learn the work ethic if you do not teach it to them. If you do not show them and set the example they will always believe that it is about them and not the people in their charge. You have to teach them balance, not too many hours, work hard, work efficiently, get the job done, and go home, but don’t go home until it’s done.
