November 20, 2024 • 48 mins
Can we truly have thriving careers without sacrificing family life?
In this episode, Verena Hefti MBE speaks with Brigid Schulte, author of Overworked: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, about the pervasive issue of overwork and its impact on individuals and families.
Brigid emphasises the importance of redefining what success looks like in the workplace, advocating for a shift from measuring productivity by hours spent to valuing meaningful output.
They discuss practical steps for individuals to take, even in unsupportive environments, highlighting the need for boundaries and prioritising what truly matters. The episode offers insights into how both personal choices and organisational changes can foster a healthier work-life balance, ultimately benefiting everyone involved.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Show Notes:
- Brigid's book Overworked is now available in bookshops and via Amazon.
- Connect with Brigid on LinkedIn.
In this episode you will learn:
- Work culture often rewards overwork and long hours, negatively impacting family time and well-being.
- Individuals should define their values and prioritise what truly matters to them at work.
- Leadership beliefs significantly shape workplace culture, influencing policies around work-life balance.
- Organisations should measure success not just by output, but also by employee well-being.
- Small changes at work, like asking for flexible hours, can lead to significant personal benefits.
- Creating a supportive work environment requires collaboration with employees to understand their needs.
Our multi-award-winning Leaders Plus Fellowships support parents committed to career growth while enjoying family life. Expertly designed to keep parents on the leadership path, our programme tackles gender pay gap issues and empowers parents to thrive. Learn more here: Leaders Plus Fellowship.
Find out more about the work of Leaders Plus by signing up to our Newsletter.
More BCSC episodes we think you'll love:
- Dr. Malissa Clark - How to Set Boundaries as a Workaholic & Learn to be More Present as a Parent
- Jane Green - How to Approach Your Employer for Reduced Working Days and Tips on Transitioning to a Flexible Role
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Big CareersSmall Children Podcast. My name is
Verena Hefti. I believe thatno one should have to choose between
becoming a CEO and enjoyingtheir young children. For much too
long, amazing people like I'msure you listening right now have
found themselves stuck on thecareer ladder when they have children
(00:22):
and that leads to genderinequality in senior leadership because
those people don't progress tosenior leadership and the same stale,
often male middle class peopleleading our organizations. We must
change this together and Ihope that many of you listening right
now will progress to the mostsenior leadership roles that you
like where you can make thedecisions that make our world a better
(00:44):
place. Outside of the podcast,I am the CEO and founder of the Social
enterprise Leaders Plus. Weexist to help working parents progress
their careers to seniorleadership in a way that works for
you and for your families. Wehave free events and resources on
leadersplus.org where you candownload helpful toolkits such as
(01:05):
on returning from maternityleave, shared parental leave, securing
a promotion, dealing withworkload challenges, or managing
as a dual career couple. Wealso have an award winning fellowship
community which is global forworking parents who have big dreams
for their careers but don'twant to sacrifice their family. You'll
join an absolutely wonderfulgroup of people, a very tight knit,
(01:29):
supportive group of parentswho have your back. Together you'll
explore what your careeraspirations are and you'll get advice
from senior leaders who arealso working parents about how to
achieve those aspirations.You'll get new ideas to combine your
hopes for your careers withyour hope for your family. And you
are supported by people whoare experiencing what you're experiencing
(01:50):
yourself. I'm really delightedthat a larger majority of our fellows
have made tangible changesfollowing the program. Be that becoming
more senior in their roles,working shorter hours, having better
flexible working arrangement,they always impress me so much with
the courage that they instillin each other to do what is right
for them without apologizingfor having a family or apologizing
(02:14):
for wanting that top job.Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship.
Today I'm chatting to BrigidSchulte, author of the book Transforming
the Daily Grind in the Questof a Better Life. The two of us are
chatting about how to changethe work culture so that there's
(02:38):
room for care. I reallyenjoyed my conversation with Brigid.
I hope you do too.
So my name is Brigid Schulteand I'm a longtime journalist, an
author, writer and I directthe Better Life Lab at New America,
which is a nonpartisan thinkTank where we use the power of story
and journalism research and toreally push for narrative change
(03:01):
to bring about work, familyjustice, gender equality. And we
think about that very broadly,not just women in the public sphere,
but also equality for men inthe private sphere and being able
to have time and space andsupport for care. And we also look
at how we can elevate thevalue of care, both paid and unpaid
(03:22):
care, across the life cycle.And so much of my writing and the
books I've written, two booksnow, are really centered on that
question of how can we have agood life and how can we make it
widely available, equitablyavailable, across race and class
and gender? And really, howcan we create the public policies,
(03:43):
the workplace practices, andthe cultural norms that enable us
to have meaningful work, timefor love and care and connection,
and also time for leisure andjoy and play. And right now, that's
really difficult. Andunderstanding why it's difficult
and what needs to change tomake that happen. And then you'd
asked about my family, and Ithink that's a lot of what motivates
(04:04):
me. I'm. I'm a daughter, I'm asister, I'm a wife. I have two amazing
children. So I'm a mother.It's one of the most important roles,
I think, in my life. I'm afriend, I'm a neighbour, I'm a voter.
I think that having time forall of these different identities
in our lives is reallyimportant. I'm a runner, although
(04:25):
I'm injured now, you know, soI think it's. But I will be again.
howcan wehaveagoodlifeandhowcan wemake itwidely available,equitably
available,acrossraceandclassandgender?
Beautiful.
And I'm going to ask you aquestion that we ask of all our guests.
What did you used to believeto be true about combining a big
career with young childrenthat you don't believe to be true
anymore?
(04:50):
Well, I think it's reallyclear. I went through an evolution.
So I, you know, I kind ofgraduated from College in the 1980s,
and that was a time when therewas this sort of like, you can have
it all, you can do it all. Youknow, you can be anything you want
to be. Sort of this lipservice. And so I sort of initially
(05:11):
believed you could do it alland everything would work fine. Then
I got into work and I didn'tsee how anybody was doing it. I didn't
have any role models, and Ibegan to think it wasn't possible.
And then I went on thisjourney to write my first book, trying
to understand, well, why doesit feel so impossible to combine
a big career or a meaningfulwork really with, you know, the kind
(05:35):
of parent you want to be, tohave the time and space to. To have
not just quality time, butquantity of time too, and not be
so stressed. And in my firstbook I say I just felt totally inadequate
at work and completelyinadequate at home as well. And I
just felt like a huge failure.And I wanted to try to understand
why and does it have to bethat way? And I suppose that has
(05:59):
really changed what I believeit's like, no, it does not have to
be that way. And that there'sa lot of things that we can do, both
small and large at theindividual, the organizational, the
public policy, the culturallevel, to really make a change. And
we need to, and we should,because it should not be this hard.
(06:19):
Very well said. I'm sure a lotof listeners will really agree with
that, as do I. You mentionedabout culture linked to overwork.
Can you say more about that?
So one of the things that Ifound really driving a lot of that
feeling of overwhelm and likesort of never feeling that there's
(06:39):
enough time or enough time todo your work, enough time for your
family, enough time for muchless leisure time, most people feel
like that's just a luxury theycan't afford. You know, in terms
of time, there's this sort ofa time scarcity or time pressure
that a lot of us feel. And sofor this newest book, I really saw
(07:00):
that a lot of it originates inour work culture. The way we think
about work, the way weorganize it, the way we do it. And
in many workplaces, what'sreally happened, and you can trace
it in the data and theresearch over the last 30 or 40 years,
that work itself has becomewhat economists call greedy, that
(07:21):
your employers will expectmore and more and more. I mean, think
about it. Give your all, give150%, go above and beyond that. That's
what we reward. And ratherthan thinking above and beyond and
giving 150% is all about kindof the output or the impact that
you have, we've tended tomeasure that by input by how many
(07:46):
hours you spend, like sittingat a desk or how many hours you spend
at an office or if you'resending late night emails. And that's
for sort of the professional,the managerial class. And for shift
workers or hourly workers, theexpectation is now that they will
always be available, sort ofon call, drop everything at the drop
(08:06):
of a hat and come in when somealgorithm says we need you at the
store. And then if we send youhome without any pay, you know, because
the algorithm says, oh, wewere wrong, you know, to just put
up with that. So there's thisgreediness affects all workers kind
of across the socioeconomicspectrum. And one of the things that
(08:27):
really struck me is that wehave these narratives that hard work
is valuable and hard work paysoff. And, you know, I'm a big believer
in hard work. I mean, I lovewhat I do and I work hard and I.
So this is not anything aboutlike, let's all be slackers. But
what's really happened when,again, when you look at the data
(08:47):
is that hard work is notpaying off. Like it's like we expect
it to. For knowledge workers,for desk workers,we expect people
to overwork in one job, thisideal worker norm, that the best
worker comes in early andstays late. And who's able to do
that, that's somebody withoutany care responsibilities, so that
(09:09):
immediately cancels out mainlywomen who are still primarily responsible
for care responsibilities, butalso any man who wants to be more
involved. Because again, theresearch shows that men are punished
in work cultures for wantingto violate that ideal worker norm.
And women, you can work thosehours, but if you have children,
(09:32):
you are also punished becausethe expectation is, well, you should
be home with your kids. So ifyou're trying to compete at work,
we're going to think you're abad person and you're not going to
get that promotion. So you'resort of, you're hit in a, you know,
sort of a double whammy forwomen, so to speak, for low wage
workers. You know, in theUnited States we have like 44% of
(09:53):
the workforce is consideredlow wage, which I think surprises
a lot of people. And theexpectation there is, you know, you
have to overwork in a seriesof jobs or a couple side hustles
just to make ends meet. Sothat's sort of. The second book is
really looking at how workisn't working for so many people
(10:13):
and how it can. There's noreason that we have to organize work
this way. You know, this is aresult of a series of choices that
we've made either in publicpolicy or at the organizational level.
And we can make different choices.
There's so much I want to pickup on. We have a community of fellows,
so working parents who want toprogress their careers and who also
(10:37):
want to change the culture ofwork, although I have never heard
them use that word, but Ithink that's what they're trying
to do, trying to shape adifferent world for the future generations
and themselves. But thestories I hear are sometimes quite
tough because they might bethe only woman with children who
will need to leave on time,who will need to try to still do
(10:58):
as much as everybody else whocomes in at 7:30 leaves at 7:00 if
it's in financial services. Ifyou are in that position and you're
that lone outlier, do you havea role to change the culture or should
you just change your organization?
So such a good question, youknow, and that's a lot of why. In
(11:18):
this recent book, I've got anappendix at the end, sort of like,
all right, here are 10 thingsthat you can do as an individual.
Here's 10 things you can do asa middle manager, or if you're running
a team or if you're a leaderof an organization. Here's 10 things
we should think about in termsof public policy, because we need
change on all of those levels.And sometimes as much as we like
(11:40):
to argue for big culturalchange or even organizational change,
it's out of our hands. And soI do want people to feel a sense
of agency, like, what can I dotomorrow? What can I do when I go
to work today to make thingsdifferent? And I think that there
are a couple things, thingsthat you can do if you're in one
of those greedy professions,which are, you know, finance or tech
(12:03):
or law, those are some of themost famously greedy- or medicine,
the long work hours cultures.One of the first things that I ask
people to think about, andthis is really something that I learned
from looking at a lot of theCOVID disruptions, that there were
all sorts of experiments thatpeople had to, that organizations
had to go through to figureout how to do work in a different
(12:26):
way. Really interestingefforts to redesign work before the
pandemic. And then also thisgrowing short work hours movement
that you see, there's some inthe UK, you know, some pilots there,
some in the US There arelarger kind of across the country,
like in Iceland, they've gone,I write about that in one of the
chapters. They've gone to a 32hour work week and given an awful
(12:49):
lot of flexibility todifferent organizations and teams
to figure out how to make thathappen. And so I think that there's
a lot to learn from thoseeffective Covid experiments, from
the short work hours from workredesign. And that is really kind
of turning that whole overworkquestion really on its head and really
(13:09):
thinking about rather than thelong work hours that you put in and
trying to compete on theinput, really thinking, going through
a process of thinking, what'sthe most valuable work that I can
do? You know, what's the mostmeaningful to me, what creates the
most value for my organizationor my team and being really clear
about that. And then you know,again, as an individual contributor,
(13:33):
talking about that with yourdirect manager, with your team, so
that there's a transparencyand you get buy in from that. You
know, this is what we'retrying to do. This is the most important
thing. So this is what I'mgoing to focus on and really define
that. And so then workbackwards from there. So these are
the things that I need to doto make sure that I get to this output.
(13:54):
And that doesn't mean comingin at 7 in the morning and leaving
at 7 at night. That meansbeing focused on what the value is
that I'm creating, being veryclear and communicating that. And
so that's one of the thingsthat I love about moving to a more
flexible work culture whereyou know, you have a lot more control
over the time, the manner andthe place of work. Like if you have
(14:19):
an output or performance basedculture, it doesn't matter how long
you're sitting at a desk, itshouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter
where that is because you'vegone through the process of figuring
out what's most important andthen how you get there rather than
just putting in long hours andsort of what I call performing work.
That is often what getsrewarded. And so that part of the
(14:42):
issue then is making it clear.I mean, there's research that shows
that if guys take smokingbreaks with their bosses, they're
more likely to be promoted. Imean, that's based on nothing. That's
not based on performance,that's based on like you know, kind
of bro culture or confirmationbias or hanging out. And I think
trying to make so much more ofthat clear, make that more transparent.
(15:05):
And especially if you're amanager, you know, there's so many
times, and I've seen this inso many work but workplaces, when
it comes to a new assignmentor kind of like a growth assignment,
it's called hey you tasking.You look up and somebody walks by,
it's like, hey you, can you dothat? Or maybe it's somebody that's
that reminds you of you. Andso then you kind of give them more
(15:26):
preference. So this is whereit's really important to track that,
use data. And then, you know,if you're a manager, really use some
discretion about how you giveout those sort of plum assignments
and, and really measure howpeople are doing rather than just
what it looks like. Because Ican tell you one of my favorite stories
(15:46):
when I was working at theWashington Post, this really large
newspaper in the UnitedStates, and one editor had, this
very top editor had thisnotion that the best workers were
working all the time. And soit was like 11 o'clock at night or
some ungodly hour and allthese people were still at work.
And this editor comes out ofhis office and you know, he says
(16:10):
to a friend of mine who's alsothere, unfortunately late at night,
and he said, I can tell whoall the best workers are because
they're still here. And myfriend looked around and half the
people were playing solitaire.You know, they weren't working, they
looked like they were working.And I think that's what we need to
be much more aware of. That'swhat we need to shed more light on.
(16:32):
And managers, it's easier,it's easier to manage by whose, who's
there or hours or who shows upat a meeting. And it's harder to
figure out, well, what's thevalue we're creating and how do we
get there? But that's theimportant work that's going to lead
to more value for the companyor the organization as well as much
(16:52):
more flexibility for you as aperson with care responsibilities
and honestly create much moreequitable systems for who, who's
promoted and, and who can riseto the top.
Agreed that word value is veryimportant. Last week we had an event
where we brought together someof our alumni and mentors and we
looked at how we can designthe future of work so that it is
(17:16):
more actually that everybodycan progress to a senior level and
you don't exactly like you'resaying you don't have to sacrifice
your life. And that pointaround value came out as a really
important one. But then thequestion was, okay, so it's relatively
easy to measure value and tocompare productivity when you are
a banker. I'm imagining Imight be wrong. But how do you do
(17:37):
it with a journalist? I mean,it's not about number of words written,
I presume. How do you. Or wehad one organization in the room
was Global Witness, which is abrilliant campaigning organization
around making the world a moreenvironmentally friendly place. But
that is so hard to measure.How do you do that?
(17:58):
Yeah, no, that's a reallyimportant question and I think it
is hard. And it's going to bedifferent for every different organization
for different sectors. It'seven going to be different over time,
you know, as the worldchanges, which it always is. And
there are good ways to try tocome up with measurements and there's
bad ways. And I can tell you,having been at, you know, in journalism
(18:19):
for most of my career, thereare lots of bad ways to do it. And
at one point they were doingbyline counts. So you could do like
a really short story aboutsome break in maybe three paragraphs
and that counted the same aslike maybe a huge project that you
took three months on. Sothat's an example of a bad way of
(18:40):
trying to measure value. It'snot like there's a silver bullet
or a blue pill from the matrixthat we can take that makes it all
better and that we can figureit out. It is hard work. And it's
up to each organization, eachteam, to figure out what that value
is that you create. What's themost important thing that you do?
You can tie it to your missionstatement. You can tie it to, you
(19:03):
know, whatever creates themost value. It is up to each organization
to figure out what that is.But it's not impossible. Andrew Barnes,
who started the, you know,kind of kicked off this global four
day workweek movement, he's inthe financial services business client
facing where they had had alot of rewarding long hours and,
(19:24):
you know, and they figured outhow to create that sense of value
and create the systems thatthen lead to that value. And a lot
one of the things that you dofind in some of these work redesigns
and shorter work hoursmovements is they really interrogate.
Do we really need all thesemeetings? You know, there's heavy
meeting culture. Is there adifferent way to communicate? Could
(19:48):
we use communication moreeffectively? Because when you look
at how technology has changedwork already and it will continue
to change it, there's a lot oflayering on and making work more
complex. So now you have emailand slack and instant message and
you have internal and externalways of communicating. And you've
got the meetings, and nowyou've got zoom meetings or virtual
(20:10):
meetings. And so it reallyrequires going back and asking, do
you need all of this? Andrecognizing if you have five people
coming into a meeting, aweekly meeting for an hour, that's
a lot of time that they couldbe doing something else. So is that
the highest and best use ofeveryone's time? And those are, those
(20:31):
are. And some weeks it is andsome weeks it isn't. And so it really
requires being veryintentional about thinking through
two things, time andattention. Where do we spend our
time and where do we put our attention?
Exactly. And I think whatyou're talking about is there are
skills. If we want to havesociety, a culture, a work culture
(20:52):
where we don't have overwork,where we can have caring responsibilities
and be the CEOs, we needdifferent skills. And I think that
skills of identifying what isactually really important and what
is not, and when do you need.To meet and when do you not.Those
are important skills, and Idon't Think anybody is teaching them.And
not many people have theminnate because it's so much easier
just to be present and turn. Imean, sometimes it's quite relaxing
to be at a meeting becauseit's a break from doing actual work.
(21:22):
Yeah, right. How many meetingshave you been to where everybody's
sort of secretly answeringtheir emails and then at the end
of the. The end of themeeting, nobody's really quite sure
what you've done during themeeting. And your emails aren't even
all that good because you'renot really paying attention. You
know, you're sort of splittingyour attention. I think that you're
absolutely right. And youbring up a really important point,
(21:43):
which is , these are all aboutskills and developing skills. And
when you think about it, whodo we promote into management? We
promote sort of individualcontributors who are really good
at what they do. And then wethink, oh, let's put you into management,
and then we give you notraining and we just turn you loose.
Managing is really hard. It isan incredible skill. It's an art
(22:07):
and a science, and it's hardenough to do in sort of like the
factory model that we have,which is the walking around. And,
you know, you must be workingbecause I can see you, you know,
which is really what you havea lot of. And you saw that even in
the pandemic, those are sortof cultures that don't trust their
workers. And if I can't seeyou, then I'm going to buy all this
(22:28):
surveillance equipment andsurveil you electronically. You saw
just a spike in surveillanceequipment. And I think what's important
for managers to recognize isin those surveillance cultures, they
don't perform as well ascultures of high trust. The morale
is lower, the productivity islower. People feel less loyalty or
motivation to be engaged inthose kinds of work environments.
(22:52):
So developing skills andcreating cultures of trust are incredibly
important. As we move into anew era of work, you know, we talk
about the future of work.Well, it's already here, you know,
you know, AI, you know, so, somuch of technology is already changing,
and it's going to continue tochange. And so where do we have our
(23:13):
most value is in our humanity.And a huge part of our humanity is
our desire and need to care,care for ourselves and care for other
people that we're not robots.And so we need work to change to
make room for that care.
I completely agree. Let's talkabout the difficult stuff, which
(23:36):
is how to actually change froma culture of overwork. So even someone
is listening and they thinkthey have actually got a chance to
influence their employerbecause they're in quite a senior
position and the employeelistens to them practically. What
experiments could they suggestto change the work culture?
(23:58):
Well, you know, and I thinkthat's what's exciting is that when
you look at how changehappens, it can happen in a lot of
different ways. One key thingthat I found in my book is how important
leadership mindset is. Whatleaders believe tends to be the culture
that they create. When youlook at all of these return to office
fights all over the world, alot of it is not based on data or
(24:23):
evidence. In fact, the dataand evidence are absolutely completely
different. Hybrid work is muchshorter, people are much more productive,
people are happier, healthier,much more well being, the profitability
is better. And yet we have allof these sort of fights from on High
because CEOs or top leaders,they worked, you know, and became
(24:45):
successful in those overworkcultures. And so they have that firm
belief that it's. Thatoverrides the data. And so I think
that's an important thing tounderstand is the power of leadership
belief. But if you have theear of someone like that, if you
are in a position where youcan influence someone, recognize
that there have been changes,people have changed their mind. I
(25:09):
was at a roundtable discussionand there were some quite senior
leaders who said, yeah, andafter the pandemic sort of eased,
I wanted everybody back in theoffice. And then my team came and
showed me the data and I hadto really rethink. Okay, well, maybe
I'm not comfortable with this,but maybe let's give it a try. So
to kind of move from a hard noto an experimental mindset, I think
(25:33):
that's really important. Itreally goes back to a lot of what
I was saying about the COVIDdisruptions and the short work hours,
movement and successful workredesigns is really taking that experimental
mindset, talking to the peopleclosest to the work and not only
figuring out what are theirpain points, you know, people with
(25:54):
care responsibilities, what doyou need? What would Work better.
How could we reorganize thingsso that you had time for the most
important work and you alsofelt supported and you had time and
space for your care, for yourlife. And so design with people.
You know, so many of the COVIDdisruptions or the work redesigns
(26:15):
that fail, are these top downsort of edicts from on high. This
is how you do things. And thenpeople are like, what? You didn't
ask me anything. This doesn'treflect my life life. This is not
what I'm struggling with. Orthis is a really dumb idea. Who came
up with this? And so the mostsuccessful ones sort of share power,
if you will. It's really allabout power when it comes down to
(26:37):
it. You really try tounderstand both the challenge on
the one hand and the, and sortof the vision on the other, what
would work better? And thenhow can we get from here to there
and then run experiments? It'slike, you know, let's gather data,
let's run it as a, let's runit as a pilot. Let's start small,
gather the data, kind of getthe, get the buy in from the leadership
(26:59):
of like, let's just try this,let's see if this works better. And
I think that so much of thatwas happening during the pandemic
under such trying situations.I mean, think about it. Childcare
facilities were closed,schools were closed. People were
incredibly productive whilethey were trying to, you know, homeschool
their children. I mean,unbelievable difficulties. I mean,
(27:22):
going to the grocery store wasfun. You know, you're taking your
life into your hands andpeople not only managed, but thrived
in that. And so much of thatwas because they, they felt even
if they were putting in longerhours, they had more control over
it. And you could still have,you know, time to take your children
to the park or have dinnerwith the family. And so there was
(27:43):
a, there was a sense ofpayoff. It's like, okay, I'll work
really hard, but then I, I getto have my life too. And so that's
a lot of what the return tooffice is sort of like people feel
kind of a sense of betrayal.Like, look, I showed you it could
work. You know, why don't youtrust me? Why don't you believe me
anymore? And now you want totake away... Sometimes some of the
(28:04):
workers that I talk to, theytalk about sacred time, this sacred
time with my family. And so Ithink that's what I would say to
people who have some kind ofpower, middle managers, people with
an ear to leaders, just Keeppushing and start small.
(30:40):
You must have seen in anincredibly number of organizations
as part of your research forthe book over transforming the daily
grind into the quest for abetter life. And I'm interested,
are there any innovations atthe moment that you're really excited
about? Any experiments thatyou've seen that give you butterflies
(31:03):
in the stomach?
Well, I've seen some reallyexciting things, I have to say, you
know, and one of the excitingthings, there's a company that I
profile in the book. It's acompany named Blackbaud. And they
had been a traditional hightech software firm that had bricks
and mortar sort of offices.And then to succeed, to progress
(31:24):
up, like many corporations,particularly in the United States,
the idea was if you wanted toprogress into management, if you
wanted to move into the Csuite, you had to physically move
to a headquarters office. And,you know, again, if you look at the
research, a lot of familieseither are not able to do that, or
(31:47):
it tends to be the man who'sable to pick up and move and move
the whole family and sort ofdisrupt the whole family. And women
tend to be what they call thetrailing spouse. Very few, like,
when you look at the data andthe research, it tends to be very
few families who move becausethe woman has a better opportunity.
(32:09):
And so that really, it sort ofreinforces traditional gender roles.
It reinforces men asbreadwinner, sort of prioritizing
the man's career. A lot oftimes, if women don't have kind of
like an ability for digital orremote work, then their career often
stalls or you find somethingsort of secondary, you know, so it's
(32:31):
just, it's not a good systemfor the way that so many families
live, which are out ofnecessity, tend to be two income
families, you know, just topay the bills. So I think what was
exciting is during thepandemic, Blackbaud went through
that very process that Italked about, you know, really working
with the people kind ofclosest to the work. Like, what are
(32:53):
your pain points? Where areyou suffering? What would work better?
And again, really redefiningthe value. What is it that we're
doing? What's most important?What is more important than sitting
in an office in some city, youknow, what is the real work that
we're doing? And then whatthey did is they found that they
were so, so innovative. Theyweathered the pandemic so well that
(33:14):
they actually ended up goinginto- They call it a remote first,
and I like to call it digital,digital first or networked first
kind of work environment. Andthe Reason I like to use words like
digital or networked isbecause if you use the word remote,
you're still implying that thereal work is done someplace. And
(33:34):
if you're going to be a trulydigital or a truly networked environment,
it doesn't matter. The realwork is being done in a lot of different
places. And so I thinklanguage really matters in that,
in that instance. And so whatwas exciting is when they decided
to go digital first, you know,you didn't have to go to a certain
bricks and mortar city justto, you know, to get onto a management
(33:57):
or leadership track. And whatthey found is over time their leadership
ranks became much morediverse. All sorts of different people
could rise because you didn'thave to move, you didn't have to
be a trailing spouse. Youknow, there were so many more opportunities
open. And I think that that'sreally exciting to me to see. When
you kind of blow up oldsystems that don't really make any
(34:20):
sense, it's better, you know,you get better work for the company,
but you also create so muchmore opportunity for not just workers
with care responsibilities,but workers with disabilities, workers
of color, all sorts ofdiversity, which is what you really
want. You know, that's goingto make your organization better.
It's going to be morereflective of the population and
(34:42):
that's also how we get to amore equitable society.
Yeah, that makes a lot ofsense. I want to talk about people
in positions of real, well,seniority, I guess. So last week
we had a day with our group ofsenior fellows. So they are exec
(35:04):
directors, senior directors,even a CEO amongst them. And we talked
and they were struggling withoverwork as much as everybody and.
But they also recognized thatit was partly because of the way
that they were used toworking. But obviously there's no.
They don't have a boss apartfrom the board. But also the work
never stops, really doesn't.And the buck does stop with you.
Sohow do you, if you're inthat type of situation, how do you
change your own workingapproach from overwork, which is
feels safe, sometimes workinglong hours feels really safe, to
stopping, setting boundaries,trying to focus just on value added
work, if you know what that is.
(35:48):
Yeah, yeah, it's such a goodquestion. And you know, look, you
know, I struggle with overworkas well. You know, I mean, I wrote
this book while working fulltime at the Better Life Lab. That
was probably really dumb. Thatwas a lot of work. So recognizing
that sometimes there will bewhat some people call code red, there
(36:08):
will just Be times of I willnot always be writing a book and
working full time. Theremight, there might be some big project,
there might be some deadline,you know, so there will be those
periods where it will spike,where it will feel like, this is
important, we have to do thisnow. So I recognize that. I think
a lot of it though, is you.It's not always, it doesn't always
have to be like that. Youknow, it's not always a life or death
(36:32):
emergency. It's not alwayslike, pitch in for let's work 24/7.
And when you look at the data,when you work that way, maybe you
can last for about six weeks,but the data shows that after that,
working those long hours,you're less productive over time
than if you had worked sort ofa rational schedule all along. So,
(36:54):
you know, yes, code red, fine,I get it. But don't think it's going
to last for more than sixweeks because then it's going to
start being counterproductive.And I think that's an important thing
for people to recognize. Isthat what the research shows is that
the longer you work and youkind of like drive yourself, you
know, you're pushing yourselfand it's like, ah, the work never
(37:14):
ends. I've just. And just onemore thing, and one more thing, and
one more thing, you get tothis point of diminishing returns.
Like some people call it theproductivity cliff. Like after about
50 hours a week, yourproductivity just falls. Because
what happens? You get tired.We're human beings, we need rest,
we need recovery. Yourthinking gets fuzzier, you make more
(37:35):
mistakes, you have to go backand repeat stuff, you have to redo
it because you didn't do itwell the first time. And so I think
that's the important thing toremember too. It's like it might
feel like the work neverstops. And I get that. I mean, I
understand. And particularlyif you work in places where, you
know, you're not making acertain number of widgets, you know,
a lot of knowledge work, whendo you know when you're done? That's
(37:58):
hard, you know, and so I thinksometimes it just does come down
to putting boundaries aroundsetting expectations that aren't
too high. You know, sometimeswe start the day, it's like, I'm
going to do these 70 thingsand I think we have to pare it back.
What's one thing? What arethree things? You know, maybe three
big things that are the mostimportant that I'm going to work
(38:19):
on this week, that I'm goingto focus on. You can call them the
big rocks or the, you know,the most value, but find a time to
schedule them into yourcalendar. I mean, we did some research,
and it was. It was amazing howmany people we talked to would say,
I've been busy all day long.I've just been flying and running
to different meetings andanswering emails. And then I get
(38:40):
to the end of the day and Ihaven't even started the most important
thing. And so then they takework home and it steals time away
from their family. They don'trest or they'll, you know, work over
the weekends. And a lot ofthat is because, you know, if you've
got something big to do, youdon't put it on your calendar. Well,
when are you going to do it?We just sort of assume it's going
(39:02):
to happen. There's a realvalue to being very intentional about
creating an intentionalschedule based on taking that moment
to just stop and pause. What'sthe one thing, the most important
thing, and where am I going todo it? And kind of create that space
in your calendar to make ithappen and something as simple as
(39:24):
that. It's amazing how manypeople don't do that and just assume
the work's going to get done.But I write about sort of thinking
about work in three ways. Sortof the work, the real work, that
gives you a sense of, youknow, fulfillment and meaning, that
creates the most value.There's the work around the work,
the emails and the meetingsthat should support that real work,
but that oftentimes becomesthe work. You know, that's sort of
(39:47):
like rushing around. Itdoesn't really lead you anywhere.
And then the third sort ofconcentric circle that I think of
is the performance of work,where that busyness of, like, rushing
around and going to meetingsmakes it look like you're being productive.
And so then you kind of get acharge out of it or you get rewarded
for it. But it takes you, Imean, it takes you further and further
(40:09):
away from the core of what youwant to do, where you feel like you
could grow, and also what the,What the organization really needs.
So we've sort of created theseperverse incentives to do the wrong
kind of work and spend a lotof time doing it, then robs us of
our lives. So that's what Iwant people to kind of begin to disrupt
(40:31):
those cycles and see how youcan do it individually. And then
in your organizations,especially if you lead a team, you
know, even as a middlemanager, you have a real opportunity,
opportunity to create acompletely different Experience for
yourself and for your team.
Very well said. I'm interestedin the topic of making time for care
(40:58):
and family care throughculture.And I think that's quite
a.That's quite an importantone. Whenyou write in your book
how important it is to, well,that we can only be present with
our families if we are able towork in a way that allows us to do
that. But what can employersdo practically? So the board. What
do you want on the board'sagenda to be? To change things? Ideally,aside
from getting them to read yourbook. But if we had a society where
people could do big jobs, butthey could also care for family members,
for elders, what should boardmembers do?
(41:38):
Yeah, it's so interesting. I'mso glad that you asked that question.
I was just reading a storythis morning in the Wall Street Journal
about looking at all of thesefamily friendly policies and sort
of the public policy. And theylooked at Norway and they looked
at Hungary and they stillsaid, but why is the birth rate falling?
You can have all of thesepublic policies and all for that.
(42:00):
I think, you know, the more wecan do to support families across
the life cycle, the better.You know, I think people think of
care as parenting and that isintensive and very important. But,
you know, we've got agingsocieties. We need to take care of
our, you know, aging parentsand loved ones. Many of us have disabled
or ill adult children and weourselves get sick. So we need to
(42:24):
think much bigger about whatthat, you know, that care is that
we want to do and that we needto do. So I was just thinking a lot,
reading that Wall StreetJournal story, like there was puzzled,
like, well, why do thesepublic policies, why is this not
enough? And it's not enoughbecause we need to change our work
cultures as well. And Iremember in the first book, I spent
(42:45):
some time in Denmark and thentalking to some women there, like,
well, you've got all thesegreat policies. Why is that not enough?
Why are you not at genderparity? And one of the main reasons
why is because they haven'tdone the work to change work. And
that was what was sointeresting, like going to Iceland.
They are beginning to do that.They are trying to figure out what
(43:05):
do we need to do to change notjust public policy, but work itself.
And so that's where I wouldsay, you know, to the board and to
the CEOs, you have so muchpower to make things better for people
all across the, you know, allacross the life cycle, you know,
with care responsibilitiesacross the lifecycle. And it Goes
(43:25):
right back down to, you know,figuring out what's most valuable
and dispensing with kind ofthe performance and the busyness
culture and rewarding thewrong things. You know, it's interesting.
You could make well, beinghuman well being and work life balance
performance metrics. Thatcould be one of the things that you,
(43:50):
you know, that shows yourvalues. Like, well, you know, yes,
you got this big project done,but did everybody quit, you know,
or they did everybody, youknow, is everybody so burned out,
did they not see theirchildren, you know, for five weeks?
There are ways that you caninfuse equity and care and human
wellbeing into the metricsthat you use for what makes for a
(44:12):
successful company,organization and even country. I
mean, I think that's one ofthe things that's interesting too.
We use growth and GDP as waysthat we measure the wealth of nations.
And what if we turned that onits head and instead started measuring
human wellbeing and thequality of life? Because isn't that
(44:35):
why we're all here and ourbrief lives on Earth to make that
the opportunity to live a goodlife much more equitable and available
to much more, to many more people.
Beautifully said. I'm going tochallenge you.
You've Been challenging me all along.
(44:58):
So I'm.
Going to keep really making methink here.
So.
No, it's awesome. It's great.
So I, I'm going to challengeyou. To imagine someone listening
to this who thinks, well, myorganization just, I'm fighting for
the smallest things. I have toput in an appeal just to be allowed
to pick up my children an hourearlier. They'redefinitely not excited
about creating a changing thework culture. SoI'm interested for
that person, what smallactionable steps could he or she
take today to begintransforming their own daily grind,
even if their workplace isn'tentirely supportive of change?
(45:42):
Yeah, that's a good question.You know, kind of going back to that,
like, what can you control asan individual? Well, first of all,
it goes back to reallydefining what's valuable to you and
also recognizing that a careercan be long. Just to go back to my
own experience, when mydaughter was born, my second child,
(46:03):
I really just wanted moretime. I wanted more time with my
kids. I just, you know, as anolder mom, I was tired, but I also
just, you know, I also hadsome fertility issues. It wasn't
clear that I was ever going tobe able to have children. I just
really wanted more time withmy kids. And so I asked for a four
day work week And I was toldby the powers that be at the time
(46:27):
that if I did, I would ruin mycareer. And, you know, I remember
being so angry with that and Ijust said, well, you know, that's
just a chance I'm going tohave to take. So I would, I did not
have the support to try tohave more time with my kids. And
it was so important to me thatI'm like, well, I'm just going to,
I'm going to take that chance.They're little for such a short period
(46:47):
of time. And I remember Iwould, I still wrote important stories.
I still did like big projects.And I remember, I remember there
was one editor who kind oflike sort of muttered under his breath.
It's like, oh, she did that ona four day work week, you know, as
if I like, all of a sudden mybrain fell out of my brain, you know,
out of my head or something,you know, and it was frustrating.
(47:08):
I was mommy tracked, no doubtabout it. And I saw, you know, my
star diminished. You know, Idid, I violated the ideal worker
norm at my newspaper. And thatwas hard for a while. That really
was hard. But now my kids arein their 20s, you know, I've just
written my second book. Ididn't ruin my career. It took me
(47:29):
on a different path and I'mreally glad it did. And I just, I
am grateful every moment thatI had. I took Mondays off and we
called it Mommy Mondays. Andwe would just do fun, weird things,
you know, and that is timethat I will never get that back,
you know, and so I thinkthat's where, that's where it's important
to think, think about the longgame. And there are plenty of people
(47:51):
who did, who, you know, whodidn't work the four day work week,
even though if they wanted to.And they're still slogging away.
And my husband keeps remindingme of that. It's like, yeah. And
you know, how many of themwould give their right arm to have
just written a second book?It's like, yeah, I'm really, I did
what I wanted with my kids andI'm doing what I want with my life
right now, even though Ididn't play by the rules. And I ended
(48:13):
up leaving the Washington Postbecause it was a super structure,
it was super rigid and itdidn't work for me. And I worked
flexibly when it wasn't, whenyou weren't supposed to, you know,
but I showed that you can, youabsolutely can do it. Sometimes you
can be transparent about it.Sometimes you have to Be a little
stealthy. And I was superstealthy. But then I found a lot
(48:34):
of other people were reallystealthy. Like guys that, you know,
had reputations of being theselike monster, you know, ideal workers.
And they'd say like, yeah, I'mout on a story. But they'd be at
their daughter's soccer game.I love that. And I think that that's
what we need to recognize isthat you can do big and important
(48:54):
stuff and go to yourdaughter's soccer game and work a
four day work week when yourkids are little or when it makes
sense for you, you know youcan do both of those things.
Absolutely. And where canpeople find out more about you or
your book?
So my book has been publishedby Holt. It's called Overwork, Transforming
(49:15):
the Daily Grind and the Questfor a Better Life. And it's available
wherever you want to buybooks. The first book is called Overwhelmed
Work, Love and Play. When noone has the time, it really looks
at time pressure and genderroles. I direct the Better Life Lab
at New America. So we have awebsite and a newsletter you can
subscribe to where we shareour latest research and news about
(49:37):
work, family justice andgender equity and care. I have my
own website. I am on socialmedia, sort of. I try to be better
about that, but I love beingin conversation, conversation with
people, I love hearing theirstories. As a reporter, that's a
lot of what I do. And that thebook is really a story of. It's a
lot of journalism, a lot ofother people's stories and I think
(50:00):
there's such power in that.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Bridget.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me.
I really appreciate youlistening. Thank you so much. And
I always love to hear from ourlisteners. If you want to connect
with me on LinkedIn, just goto Verena Hefti and I'd be delighted
to hear your feedback and yoursuggestions or just have you say
(50:24):
hi. Likewise, if you do feelpassionately about gender equality
and you want to support afemale led podcast, then please do
leave a review and share itwith a friend. Just because at the
moment podcasting is still avery, very male dominated environment.
Most of the top chargingpodcasts are led by men. I really
(50:45):
love all the people who'vejoined from the podcast, our fellowship
program. And if you want to dothe same, then please head over to
leadersclass.org/Fellowship inorder to get access to a community
of support to help you combinean ambitious career with young children
together with people who haveyour back. See you next week.
Welcome to the Big CareersSmall Children Podcast. My name is
Verena Hefti. I believe thatno one should have to choose between
becoming a CEO and enjoyingtheir young children. For much too
long, amazing people like I'msure you listening right now have
found themselves stuck on thecareer ladder when they have children
(00:22):
and that leads to genderinequality in senior leadership because
those people don't progress tosenior leadership and the same stale,
often male middle class peopleleading our organizations. We must
change this together and Ihope that many of you listening right
now will progress to the mostsenior leadership roles that you
like where you can make thedecisions that make our world a better
(00:44):
place. Outside of the podcast,I am the CEO and founder of the Social
enterprise Leaders Plus. Weexist to help working parents progress
their careers to seniorleadership in a way that works for
you and for your families. Wehave free events and resources on
leadersplus.org where you candownload helpful toolkits such as
(01:05):
on returning from maternityleave, shared parental leave, securing
a promotion, dealing withworkload challenges, or managing
as a dual career couple. Wealso have an award winning fellowship
community which is global forworking parents who have big dreams
for their careers but don'twant to sacrifice their family. You'll
join an absolutely wonderfulgroup of people, a very tight knit,
(01:29):
supportive group of parentswho have your back. Together you'll
explore what your careeraspirations are and you'll get advice
from senior leaders who arealso working parents about how to
achieve those aspirations.You'll get new ideas to combine your
hopes for your careers withyour hope for your family. And you
are supported by people whoare experiencing what you're experiencing
(01:50):
yourself. I'm really delightedthat a larger majority of our fellows
have made tangible changesfollowing the program. Be that becoming
more senior in their roles,working shorter hours, having better
flexible working arrangement,they always impress me so much with
the courage that they instillin each other to do what is right
for them without apologizingfor having a family or apologizing
(02:14):
for wanting that top job.Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship.
Today I'm chatting to BrigidSchulte, author of the book Transforming
the Daily Grind in the Questof a Better Life. The two of us are
chatting about how to changethe work culture so that there's
(02:38):
room for care. I reallyenjoyed my conversation with Brigid.
I hope you do too.
So my name is Brigid Schulteand I'm a longtime journalist, an
author, writer and I directthe Better Life Lab at New America,
which is a nonpartisan thinkTank where we use the power of story
and journalism research and toreally push for narrative change
(03:01):
to bring about work, familyjustice, gender equality. And we
think about that very broadly,not just women in the public sphere,
but also equality for men inthe private sphere and being able
to have time and space andsupport for care. And we also look
at how we can elevate thevalue of care, both paid and unpaid
(03:22):
care, across the life cycle.And so much of my writing and the
books I've written, two booksnow, are really centered on that
question of how can we have agood life and how can we make it
widely available, equitablyavailable, across race and class
and gender? And really, howcan we create the public policies,
(03:43):
the workplace practices, andthe cultural norms that enable us
to have meaningful work, timefor love and care and connection,
and also time for leisure andjoy and play. And right now, that's
really difficult. Andunderstanding why it's difficult
and what needs to change tomake that happen. And then you'd
asked about my family, and Ithink that's a lot of what motivates
(04:04):
me. I'm. I'm a daughter, I'm asister, I'm a wife. I have two amazing
children. So I'm a mother.It's one of the most important roles,
I think, in my life. I'm afriend, I'm a neighbour, I'm a voter.
I think that having time forall of these different identities
in our lives is reallyimportant. I'm a runner, although
(04:25):
I'm injured now, you know, soI think it's. But I will be again.
howcan wehaveagoodlifeandhowcan wemake itwidely available,equitably
available,acrossraceandclassandgender?
Beautiful.
And I'm going to ask you aquestion that we ask of all our guests.
What did you used to believeto be true about combining a big
career with young childrenthat you don't believe to be true
anymore?
(04:50):
Well, I think it's reallyclear. I went through an evolution.
So I, you know, I kind ofgraduated from College in the 1980s,
and that was a time when therewas this sort of like, you can have
it all, you can do it all. Youknow, you can be anything you want
to be. Sort of this lipservice. And so I sort of initially
(05:11):
believed you could do it alland everything would work fine. Then
I got into work and I didn'tsee how anybody was doing it. I didn't
have any role models, and Ibegan to think it wasn't possible.
And then I went on thisjourney to write my first book, trying
to understand, well, why doesit feel so impossible to combine
a big career or a meaningfulwork really with, you know, the kind
(05:35):
of parent you want to be, tohave the time and space to. To have
not just quality time, butquantity of time too, and not be
so stressed. And in my firstbook I say I just felt totally inadequate
at work and completelyinadequate at home as well. And I
just felt like a huge failure.And I wanted to try to understand
why and does it have to bethat way? And I suppose that has
(05:59):
really changed what I believeit's like, no, it does not have to
be that way. And that there'sa lot of things that we can do, both
small and large at theindividual, the organizational, the
public policy, the culturallevel, to really make a change. And
we need to, and we should,because it should not be this hard.
(06:19):
Very well said. I'm sure a lotof listeners will really agree with
that, as do I. You mentionedabout culture linked to overwork.
Can you say more about that?
So one of the things that Ifound really driving a lot of that
feeling of overwhelm and likesort of never feeling that there's
(06:39):
enough time or enough time todo your work, enough time for your
family, enough time for muchless leisure time, most people feel
like that's just a luxury theycan't afford. You know, in terms
of time, there's this sort ofa time scarcity or time pressure
that a lot of us feel. And sofor this newest book, I really saw
(07:00):
that a lot of it originates inour work culture. The way we think
about work, the way weorganize it, the way we do it. And
in many workplaces, what'sreally happened, and you can trace
it in the data and theresearch over the last 30 or 40 years,
that work itself has becomewhat economists call greedy, that
(07:21):
your employers will expectmore and more and more. I mean, think
about it. Give your all, give150%, go above and beyond that. That's
what we reward. And ratherthan thinking above and beyond and
giving 150% is all about kindof the output or the impact that
you have, we've tended tomeasure that by input by how many
(07:46):
hours you spend, like sittingat a desk or how many hours you spend
at an office or if you'resending late night emails. And that's
for sort of the professional,the managerial class. And for shift
workers or hourly workers, theexpectation is now that they will
always be available, sort ofon call, drop everything at the drop
(08:06):
of a hat and come in when somealgorithm says we need you at the
store. And then if we send youhome without any pay, you know, because
the algorithm says, oh, wewere wrong, you know, to just put
up with that. So there's thisgreediness affects all workers kind
of across the socioeconomicspectrum. And one of the things that
(08:27):
really struck me is that wehave these narratives that hard work
is valuable and hard work paysoff. And, you know, I'm a big believer
in hard work. I mean, I lovewhat I do and I work hard and I.
So this is not anything aboutlike, let's all be slackers. But
what's really happened when,again, when you look at the data
(08:47):
is that hard work is notpaying off. Like it's like we expect
it to. For knowledge workers,for desk workers,we expect people
to overwork in one job, thisideal worker norm, that the best
worker comes in early andstays late. And who's able to do
that, that's somebody withoutany care responsibilities, so that
(09:09):
immediately cancels out mainlywomen who are still primarily responsible
for care responsibilities, butalso any man who wants to be more
involved. Because again, theresearch shows that men are punished
in work cultures for wantingto violate that ideal worker norm.
And women, you can work thosehours, but if you have children,
(09:32):
you are also punished becausethe expectation is, well, you should
be home with your kids. So ifyou're trying to compete at work,
we're going to think you're abad person and you're not going to
get that promotion. So you'resort of, you're hit in a, you know,
sort of a double whammy forwomen, so to speak, for low wage
workers. You know, in theUnited States we have like 44% of
(09:53):
the workforce is consideredlow wage, which I think surprises
a lot of people. And theexpectation there is, you know, you
have to overwork in a seriesof jobs or a couple side hustles
just to make ends meet. Sothat's sort of. The second book is
really looking at how workisn't working for so many people
(10:13):
and how it can. There's noreason that we have to organize work
this way. You know, this is aresult of a series of choices that
we've made either in publicpolicy or at the organizational level.
And we can make different choices.
There's so much I want to pickup on. We have a community of fellows,
so working parents who want toprogress their careers and who also
(10:37):
want to change the culture ofwork, although I have never heard
them use that word, but Ithink that's what they're trying
to do, trying to shape adifferent world for the future generations
and themselves. But thestories I hear are sometimes quite
tough because they might bethe only woman with children who
will need to leave on time,who will need to try to still do
(10:58):
as much as everybody else whocomes in at 7:30 leaves at 7:00 if
it's in financial services. Ifyou are in that position and you're
that lone outlier, do you havea role to change the culture or should
you just change your organization?
So such a good question, youknow, and that's a lot of why. In
(11:18):
this recent book, I've got anappendix at the end, sort of like,
all right, here are 10 thingsthat you can do as an individual.
Here's 10 things you can do asa middle manager, or if you're running
a team or if you're a leaderof an organization. Here's 10 things
we should think about in termsof public policy, because we need
change on all of those levels.And sometimes as much as we like
(11:40):
to argue for big culturalchange or even organizational change,
it's out of our hands. And soI do want people to feel a sense
of agency, like, what can I dotomorrow? What can I do when I go
to work today to make thingsdifferent? And I think that there
are a couple things, thingsthat you can do if you're in one
of those greedy professions,which are, you know, finance or tech
(12:03):
or law, those are some of themost famously greedy- or medicine,
the long work hours cultures.One of the first things that I ask
people to think about, andthis is really something that I learned
from looking at a lot of theCOVID disruptions, that there were
all sorts of experiments thatpeople had to, that organizations
had to go through to figureout how to do work in a different
(12:26):
way. Really interestingefforts to redesign work before the
pandemic. And then also thisgrowing short work hours movement
that you see, there's some inthe UK, you know, some pilots there,
some in the US There arelarger kind of across the country,
like in Iceland, they've gone,I write about that in one of the
chapters. They've gone to a 32hour work week and given an awful
(12:49):
lot of flexibility todifferent organizations and teams
to figure out how to make thathappen. And so I think that there's
a lot to learn from thoseeffective Covid experiments, from
the short work hours from workredesign. And that is really kind
of turning that whole overworkquestion really on its head and really
(13:09):
thinking about rather than thelong work hours that you put in and
trying to compete on theinput, really thinking, going through
a process of thinking, what'sthe most valuable work that I can
do? You know, what's the mostmeaningful to me, what creates the
most value for my organizationor my team and being really clear
about that. And then you know,again, as an individual contributor,
(13:33):
talking about that with yourdirect manager, with your team, so
that there's a transparencyand you get buy in from that. You
know, this is what we'retrying to do. This is the most important
thing. So this is what I'mgoing to focus on and really define
that. And so then workbackwards from there. So these are
the things that I need to doto make sure that I get to this output.
(13:54):
And that doesn't mean comingin at 7 in the morning and leaving
at 7 at night. That meansbeing focused on what the value is
that I'm creating, being veryclear and communicating that. And
so that's one of the thingsthat I love about moving to a more
flexible work culture whereyou know, you have a lot more control
over the time, the manner andthe place of work. Like if you have
(14:19):
an output or performance basedculture, it doesn't matter how long
you're sitting at a desk, itshouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter
where that is because you'vegone through the process of figuring
out what's most important andthen how you get there rather than
just putting in long hours andsort of what I call performing work.
That is often what getsrewarded. And so that part of the
(14:42):
issue then is making it clear.I mean, there's research that shows
that if guys take smokingbreaks with their bosses, they're
more likely to be promoted. Imean, that's based on nothing. That's
not based on performance,that's based on like you know, kind
of bro culture or confirmationbias or hanging out. And I think
trying to make so much more ofthat clear, make that more transparent.
(15:05):
And especially if you're amanager, you know, there's so many
times, and I've seen this inso many work but workplaces, when
it comes to a new assignmentor kind of like a growth assignment,
it's called hey you tasking.You look up and somebody walks by,
it's like, hey you, can you dothat? Or maybe it's somebody that's
that reminds you of you. Andso then you kind of give them more
(15:26):
preference. So this is whereit's really important to track that,
use data. And then, you know,if you're a manager, really use some
discretion about how you giveout those sort of plum assignments
and, and really measure howpeople are doing rather than just
what it looks like. Because Ican tell you one of my favorite stories
(15:46):
when I was working at theWashington Post, this really large
newspaper in the UnitedStates, and one editor had, this
very top editor had thisnotion that the best workers were
working all the time. And soit was like 11 o'clock at night or
some ungodly hour and allthese people were still at work.
And this editor comes out ofhis office and you know, he says
(16:10):
to a friend of mine who's alsothere, unfortunately late at night,
and he said, I can tell whoall the best workers are because
they're still here. And myfriend looked around and half the
people were playing solitaire.You know, they weren't working, they
looked like they were working.And I think that's what we need to
be much more aware of. That'swhat we need to shed more light on.
(16:32):
And managers, it's easier,it's easier to manage by whose, who's
there or hours or who shows upat a meeting. And it's harder to
figure out, well, what's thevalue we're creating and how do we
get there? But that's theimportant work that's going to lead
to more value for the companyor the organization as well as much
(16:52):
more flexibility for you as aperson with care responsibilities
and honestly create much moreequitable systems for who, who's
promoted and, and who can riseto the top.
Agreed that word value is veryimportant. Last week we had an event
where we brought together someof our alumni and mentors and we
looked at how we can designthe future of work so that it is
(17:16):
more actually that everybodycan progress to a senior level and
you don't exactly like you'resaying you don't have to sacrifice
your life. And that pointaround value came out as a really
important one. But then thequestion was, okay, so it's relatively
easy to measure value and tocompare productivity when you are
a banker. I'm imagining Imight be wrong. But how do you do
(17:37):
it with a journalist? I mean,it's not about number of words written,
I presume. How do you. Or wehad one organization in the room
was Global Witness, which is abrilliant campaigning organization
around making the world a moreenvironmentally friendly place. But
that is so hard to measure.How do you do that?
(17:58):
Yeah, no, that's a reallyimportant question and I think it
is hard. And it's going to bedifferent for every different organization
for different sectors. It'seven going to be different over time,
you know, as the worldchanges, which it always is. And
there are good ways to try tocome up with measurements and there's
bad ways. And I can tell you,having been at, you know, in journalism
(18:19):
for most of my career, thereare lots of bad ways to do it. And
at one point they were doingbyline counts. So you could do like
a really short story aboutsome break in maybe three paragraphs
and that counted the same aslike maybe a huge project that you
took three months on. Sothat's an example of a bad way of
(18:40):
trying to measure value. It'snot like there's a silver bullet
or a blue pill from the matrixthat we can take that makes it all
better and that we can figureit out. It is hard work. And it's
up to each organization, eachteam, to figure out what that value
is that you create. What's themost important thing that you do?
You can tie it to your missionstatement. You can tie it to, you
(19:03):
know, whatever creates themost value. It is up to each organization
to figure out what that is.But it's not impossible. Andrew Barnes,
who started the, you know,kind of kicked off this global four
day workweek movement, he's inthe financial services business client
facing where they had had alot of rewarding long hours and,
(19:24):
you know, and they figured outhow to create that sense of value
and create the systems thatthen lead to that value. And a lot
one of the things that you dofind in some of these work redesigns
and shorter work hoursmovements is they really interrogate.
Do we really need all thesemeetings? You know, there's heavy
meeting culture. Is there adifferent way to communicate? Could
(19:48):
we use communication moreeffectively? Because when you look
at how technology has changedwork already and it will continue
to change it, there's a lot oflayering on and making work more
complex. So now you have emailand slack and instant message and
you have internal and externalways of communicating. And you've
got the meetings, and nowyou've got zoom meetings or virtual
(20:10):
meetings. And so it reallyrequires going back and asking, do
you need all of this? Andrecognizing if you have five people
coming into a meeting, aweekly meeting for an hour, that's
a lot of time that they couldbe doing something else. So is that
the highest and best use ofeveryone's time? And those are, those
(20:31):
are. And some weeks it is andsome weeks it isn't. And so it really
requires being veryintentional about thinking through
two things, time andattention. Where do we spend our
time and where do we put our attention?
Exactly. And I think whatyou're talking about is there are
skills. If we want to havesociety, a culture, a work culture
(20:52):
where we don't have overwork,where we can have caring responsibilities
and be the CEOs, we needdifferent skills. And I think that
skills of identifying what isactually really important and what
is not, and when do you need.To meet and when do you not.Those
are important skills, and Idon't Think anybody is teaching them.And
not many people have theminnate because it's so much easier
just to be present and turn. Imean, sometimes it's quite relaxing
to be at a meeting becauseit's a break from doing actual work.
(21:22):
Yeah, right. How many meetingshave you been to where everybody's
sort of secretly answeringtheir emails and then at the end
of the. The end of themeeting, nobody's really quite sure
what you've done during themeeting. And your emails aren't even
all that good because you'renot really paying attention. You
know, you're sort of splittingyour attention. I think that you're
absolutely right. And youbring up a really important point,
(21:43):
which is , these are all aboutskills and developing skills. And
when you think about it, whodo we promote into management? We
promote sort of individualcontributors who are really good
at what they do. And then wethink, oh, let's put you into management,
and then we give you notraining and we just turn you loose.
Managing is really hard. It isan incredible skill. It's an art
(22:07):
and a science, and it's hardenough to do in sort of like the
factory model that we have,which is the walking around. And,
you know, you must be workingbecause I can see you, you know,
which is really what you havea lot of. And you saw that even in
the pandemic, those are sortof cultures that don't trust their
workers. And if I can't seeyou, then I'm going to buy all this
(22:28):
surveillance equipment andsurveil you electronically. You saw
just a spike in surveillanceequipment. And I think what's important
for managers to recognize isin those surveillance cultures, they
don't perform as well ascultures of high trust. The morale
is lower, the productivity islower. People feel less loyalty or
motivation to be engaged inthose kinds of work environments.
(22:52):
So developing skills andcreating cultures of trust are incredibly
important. As we move into anew era of work, you know, we talk
about the future of work.Well, it's already here, you know,
you know, AI, you know, so, somuch of technology is already changing,
and it's going to continue tochange. And so where do we have our
(23:13):
most value is in our humanity.And a huge part of our humanity is
our desire and need to care,care for ourselves and care for other
people that we're not robots.And so we need work to change to
make room for that care.
I completely agree. Let's talkabout the difficult stuff, which
(23:36):
is how to actually change froma culture of overwork. So even someone
is listening and they thinkthey have actually got a chance to
influence their employerbecause they're in quite a senior
position and the employeelistens to them practically. What
experiments could they suggestto change the work culture?
(23:58):
Well, you know, and I thinkthat's what's exciting is that when
you look at how changehappens, it can happen in a lot of
different ways. One key thingthat I found in my book is how important
leadership mindset is. Whatleaders believe tends to be the culture
that they create. When youlook at all of these return to office
fights all over the world, alot of it is not based on data or
(24:23):
evidence. In fact, the dataand evidence are absolutely completely
different. Hybrid work is muchshorter, people are much more productive,
people are happier, healthier,much more well being, the profitability
is better. And yet we have allof these sort of fights from on High
because CEOs or top leaders,they worked, you know, and became
(24:45):
successful in those overworkcultures. And so they have that firm
belief that it's. Thatoverrides the data. And so I think
that's an important thing tounderstand is the power of leadership
belief. But if you have theear of someone like that, if you
are in a position where youcan influence someone, recognize
that there have been changes,people have changed their mind. I
(25:09):
was at a roundtable discussionand there were some quite senior
leaders who said, yeah, andafter the pandemic sort of eased,
I wanted everybody back in theoffice. And then my team came and
showed me the data and I hadto really rethink. Okay, well, maybe
I'm not comfortable with this,but maybe let's give it a try. So
to kind of move from a hard noto an experimental mindset, I think
(25:33):
that's really important. Itreally goes back to a lot of what
I was saying about the COVIDdisruptions and the short work hours,
movement and successful workredesigns is really taking that experimental
mindset, talking to the peopleclosest to the work and not only
figuring out what are theirpain points, you know, people with
(25:54):
care responsibilities, what doyou need? What would Work better.
How could we reorganize thingsso that you had time for the most
important work and you alsofelt supported and you had time and
space for your care, for yourlife. And so design with people.
You know, so many of the COVIDdisruptions or the work redesigns
(26:15):
that fail, are these top downsort of edicts from on high. This
is how you do things. And thenpeople are like, what? You didn't
ask me anything. This doesn'treflect my life life. This is not
what I'm struggling with. Orthis is a really dumb idea. Who came
up with this? And so the mostsuccessful ones sort of share power,
if you will. It's really allabout power when it comes down to
(26:37):
it. You really try tounderstand both the challenge on
the one hand and the, and sortof the vision on the other, what
would work better? And thenhow can we get from here to there
and then run experiments? It'slike, you know, let's gather data,
let's run it as a, let's runit as a pilot. Let's start small,
gather the data, kind of getthe, get the buy in from the leadership
(26:59):
of like, let's just try this,let's see if this works better. And
I think that so much of thatwas happening during the pandemic
under such trying situations.I mean, think about it. Childcare
facilities were closed,schools were closed. People were
incredibly productive whilethey were trying to, you know, homeschool
their children. I mean,unbelievable difficulties. I mean,
(27:22):
going to the grocery store wasfun. You know, you're taking your
life into your hands andpeople not only managed, but thrived
in that. And so much of thatwas because they, they felt even
if they were putting in longerhours, they had more control over
it. And you could still have,you know, time to take your children
to the park or have dinnerwith the family. And so there was
(27:43):
a, there was a sense ofpayoff. It's like, okay, I'll work
really hard, but then I, I getto have my life too. And so that's
a lot of what the return tooffice is sort of like people feel
kind of a sense of betrayal.Like, look, I showed you it could
work. You know, why don't youtrust me? Why don't you believe me
anymore? And now you want totake away... Sometimes some of the
(28:04):
workers that I talk to, theytalk about sacred time, this sacred
time with my family. And so Ithink that's what I would say to
people who have some kind ofpower, middle managers, people with
an ear to leaders, just Keeppushing and start small.
(30:40):
You must have seen in anincredibly number of organizations
as part of your research forthe book over transforming the daily
grind into the quest for abetter life. And I'm interested,
are there any innovations atthe moment that you're really excited
about? Any experiments thatyou've seen that give you butterflies
(31:03):
in the stomach?
Well, I've seen some reallyexciting things, I have to say, you
know, and one of the excitingthings, there's a company that I
profile in the book. It's acompany named Blackbaud. And they
had been a traditional hightech software firm that had bricks
and mortar sort of offices.And then to succeed, to progress
(31:24):
up, like many corporations,particularly in the United States,
the idea was if you wanted toprogress into management, if you
wanted to move into the Csuite, you had to physically move
to a headquarters office. And,you know, again, if you look at the
research, a lot of familieseither are not able to do that, or
(31:47):
it tends to be the man who'sable to pick up and move and move
the whole family and sort ofdisrupt the whole family. And women
tend to be what they call thetrailing spouse. Very few, like,
when you look at the data andthe research, it tends to be very
few families who move becausethe woman has a better opportunity.
(32:09):
And so that really, it sort ofreinforces traditional gender roles.
It reinforces men asbreadwinner, sort of prioritizing
the man's career. A lot oftimes, if women don't have kind of
like an ability for digital orremote work, then their career often
stalls or you find somethingsort of secondary, you know, so it's
(32:31):
just, it's not a good systemfor the way that so many families
live, which are out ofnecessity, tend to be two income
families, you know, just topay the bills. So I think what was
exciting is during thepandemic, Blackbaud went through
that very process that Italked about, you know, really working
with the people kind ofclosest to the work. Like, what are
(32:53):
your pain points? Where areyou suffering? What would work better?
And again, really redefiningthe value. What is it that we're
doing? What's most important?What is more important than sitting
in an office in some city, youknow, what is the real work that
we're doing? And then whatthey did is they found that they
were so, so innovative. Theyweathered the pandemic so well that
(33:14):
they actually ended up goinginto- They call it a remote first,
and I like to call it digital,digital first or networked first
kind of work environment. Andthe Reason I like to use words like
digital or networked isbecause if you use the word remote,
you're still implying that thereal work is done someplace. And
(33:34):
if you're going to be a trulydigital or a truly networked environment,
it doesn't matter. The realwork is being done in a lot of different
places. And so I thinklanguage really matters in that,
in that instance. And so whatwas exciting is when they decided
to go digital first, you know,you didn't have to go to a certain
bricks and mortar city justto, you know, to get onto a management
(33:57):
or leadership track. And whatthey found is over time their leadership
ranks became much morediverse. All sorts of different people
could rise because you didn'thave to move, you didn't have to
be a trailing spouse. Youknow, there were so many more opportunities
open. And I think that that'sreally exciting to me to see. When
you kind of blow up oldsystems that don't really make any
(34:20):
sense, it's better, you know,you get better work for the company,
but you also create so muchmore opportunity for not just workers
with care responsibilities,but workers with disabilities, workers
of color, all sorts ofdiversity, which is what you really
want. You know, that's goingto make your organization better.
It's going to be morereflective of the population and
(34:42):
that's also how we get to amore equitable society.
Yeah, that makes a lot ofsense. I want to talk about people
in positions of real, well,seniority, I guess. So last week
we had a day with our group ofsenior fellows. So they are exec
(35:04):
directors, senior directors,even a CEO amongst them. And we talked
and they were struggling withoverwork as much as everybody and.
But they also recognized thatit was partly because of the way
that they were used toworking. But obviously there's no.
They don't have a boss apartfrom the board. But also the work
never stops, really doesn't.And the buck does stop with you.
Sohow do you, if you're inthat type of situation, how do you
change your own workingapproach from overwork, which is
feels safe, sometimes workinglong hours feels really safe, to
stopping, setting boundaries,trying to focus just on value added
work, if you know what that is.
(35:48):
Yeah, yeah, it's such a goodquestion. And you know, look, you
know, I struggle with overworkas well. You know, I mean, I wrote
this book while working fulltime at the Better Life Lab. That
was probably really dumb. Thatwas a lot of work. So recognizing
that sometimes there will bewhat some people call code red, there
(36:08):
will just Be times of I willnot always be writing a book and
working full time. Theremight, there might be some big project,
there might be some deadline,you know, so there will be those
periods where it will spike,where it will feel like, this is
important, we have to do thisnow. So I recognize that. I think
a lot of it though, is you.It's not always, it doesn't always
have to be like that. Youknow, it's not always a life or death
(36:32):
emergency. It's not alwayslike, pitch in for let's work 24/7.
And when you look at the data,when you work that way, maybe you
can last for about six weeks,but the data shows that after that,
working those long hours,you're less productive over time
than if you had worked sort ofa rational schedule all along. So,
(36:54):
you know, yes, code red, fine,I get it. But don't think it's going
to last for more than sixweeks because then it's going to
start being counterproductive.And I think that's an important thing
for people to recognize. Isthat what the research shows is that
the longer you work and youkind of like drive yourself, you
know, you're pushing yourselfand it's like, ah, the work never
(37:14):
ends. I've just. And just onemore thing, and one more thing, and
one more thing, you get tothis point of diminishing returns.
Like some people call it theproductivity cliff. Like after about
50 hours a week, yourproductivity just falls. Because
what happens? You get tired.We're human beings, we need rest,
we need recovery. Yourthinking gets fuzzier, you make more
(37:35):
mistakes, you have to go backand repeat stuff, you have to redo
it because you didn't do itwell the first time. And so I think
that's the important thing toremember too. It's like it might
feel like the work neverstops. And I get that. I mean, I
understand. And particularlyif you work in places where, you
know, you're not making acertain number of widgets, you know,
a lot of knowledge work, whendo you know when you're done? That's
(37:58):
hard, you know, and so I thinksometimes it just does come down
to putting boundaries aroundsetting expectations that aren't
too high. You know, sometimeswe start the day, it's like, I'm
going to do these 70 thingsand I think we have to pare it back.
What's one thing? What arethree things? You know, maybe three
big things that are the mostimportant that I'm going to work
(38:19):
on this week, that I'm goingto focus on. You can call them the
big rocks or the, you know,the most value, but find a time to
schedule them into yourcalendar. I mean, we did some research,
and it was. It was amazing howmany people we talked to would say,
I've been busy all day long.I've just been flying and running
to different meetings andanswering emails. And then I get
(38:40):
to the end of the day and Ihaven't even started the most important
thing. And so then they takework home and it steals time away
from their family. They don'trest or they'll, you know, work over
the weekends. And a lot ofthat is because, you know, if you've
got something big to do, youdon't put it on your calendar. Well,
when are you going to do it?We just sort of assume it's going
(39:02):
to happen. There's a realvalue to being very intentional about
creating an intentionalschedule based on taking that moment
to just stop and pause. What'sthe one thing, the most important
thing, and where am I going todo it? And kind of create that space
in your calendar to make ithappen and something as simple as
(39:24):
that. It's amazing how manypeople don't do that and just assume
the work's going to get done.But I write about sort of thinking
about work in three ways. Sortof the work, the real work, that
gives you a sense of, youknow, fulfillment and meaning, that
creates the most value.There's the work around the work,
the emails and the meetingsthat should support that real work,
but that oftentimes becomesthe work. You know, that's sort of
(39:47):
like rushing around. Itdoesn't really lead you anywhere.
And then the third sort ofconcentric circle that I think of
is the performance of work,where that busyness of, like, rushing
around and going to meetingsmakes it look like you're being productive.
And so then you kind of get acharge out of it or you get rewarded
for it. But it takes you, Imean, it takes you further and further
(40:09):
away from the core of what youwant to do, where you feel like you
could grow, and also what the,What the organization really needs.
So we've sort of created theseperverse incentives to do the wrong
kind of work and spend a lotof time doing it, then robs us of
our lives. So that's what Iwant people to kind of begin to disrupt
(40:31):
those cycles and see how youcan do it individually. And then
in your organizations,especially if you lead a team, you
know, even as a middlemanager, you have a real opportunity,
opportunity to create acompletely different Experience for
yourself and for your team.
Very well said. I'm interestedin the topic of making time for care
(40:58):
and family care throughculture.And I think that's quite
a.That's quite an importantone. Whenyou write in your book
how important it is to, well,that we can only be present with
our families if we are able towork in a way that allows us to do
that. But what can employersdo practically? So the board. What
do you want on the board'sagenda to be? To change things? Ideally,aside
from getting them to read yourbook. But if we had a society where
people could do big jobs, butthey could also care for family members,
for elders, what should boardmembers do?
(41:38):
Yeah, it's so interesting. I'mso glad that you asked that question.
I was just reading a storythis morning in the Wall Street Journal
about looking at all of thesefamily friendly policies and sort
of the public policy. And theylooked at Norway and they looked
at Hungary and they stillsaid, but why is the birth rate falling?
You can have all of thesepublic policies and all for that.
(42:00):
I think, you know, the more wecan do to support families across
the life cycle, the better.You know, I think people think of
care as parenting and that isintensive and very important. But,
you know, we've got agingsocieties. We need to take care of
our, you know, aging parentsand loved ones. Many of us have disabled
or ill adult children and weourselves get sick. So we need to
(42:24):
think much bigger about whatthat, you know, that care is that
we want to do and that we needto do. So I was just thinking a lot,
reading that Wall StreetJournal story, like there was puzzled,
like, well, why do thesepublic policies, why is this not
enough? And it's not enoughbecause we need to change our work
cultures as well. And Iremember in the first book, I spent
(42:45):
some time in Denmark and thentalking to some women there, like,
well, you've got all thesegreat policies. Why is that not enough?
Why are you not at genderparity? And one of the main reasons
why is because they haven'tdone the work to change work. And
that was what was sointeresting, like going to Iceland.
They are beginning to do that.They are trying to figure out what
(43:05):
do we need to do to change notjust public policy, but work itself.
And so that's where I wouldsay, you know, to the board and to
the CEOs, you have so muchpower to make things better for people
all across the, you know, allacross the life cycle, you know,
with care responsibilitiesacross the lifecycle. And it Goes
(43:25):
right back down to, you know,figuring out what's most valuable
and dispensing with kind ofthe performance and the busyness
culture and rewarding thewrong things. You know, it's interesting.
You could make well, beinghuman well being and work life balance
performance metrics. Thatcould be one of the things that you,
(43:50):
you know, that shows yourvalues. Like, well, you know, yes,
you got this big project done,but did everybody quit, you know,
or they did everybody, youknow, is everybody so burned out,
did they not see theirchildren, you know, for five weeks?
There are ways that you caninfuse equity and care and human
wellbeing into the metricsthat you use for what makes for a
(44:12):
successful company,organization and even country. I
mean, I think that's one ofthe things that's interesting too.
We use growth and GDP as waysthat we measure the wealth of nations.
And what if we turned that onits head and instead started measuring
human wellbeing and thequality of life? Because isn't that
(44:35):
why we're all here and ourbrief lives on Earth to make that
the opportunity to live a goodlife much more equitable and available
to much more, to many more people.
Beautifully said. I'm going tochallenge you.
You've Been challenging me all along.
(44:58):
So I'm.
Going to keep really making methink here.
So.
No, it's awesome. It's great.
So I, I'm going to challengeyou. To imagine someone listening
to this who thinks, well, myorganization just, I'm fighting for
the smallest things. I have toput in an appeal just to be allowed
to pick up my children an hourearlier. They'redefinitely not excited
about creating a changing thework culture. SoI'm interested for
that person, what smallactionable steps could he or she
take today to begintransforming their own daily grind,
even if their workplace isn'tentirely supportive of change?
(45:42):
Yeah, that's a good question.You know, kind of going back to that,
like, what can you control asan individual? Well, first of all,
it goes back to reallydefining what's valuable to you and
also recognizing that a careercan be long. Just to go back to my
own experience, when mydaughter was born, my second child,
(46:03):
I really just wanted moretime. I wanted more time with my
kids. I just, you know, as anolder mom, I was tired, but I also
just, you know, I also hadsome fertility issues. It wasn't
clear that I was ever going tobe able to have children. I just
really wanted more time withmy kids. And so I asked for a four
day work week And I was toldby the powers that be at the time
(46:27):
that if I did, I would ruin mycareer. And, you know, I remember
being so angry with that and Ijust said, well, you know, that's
just a chance I'm going tohave to take. So I would, I did not
have the support to try tohave more time with my kids. And
it was so important to me thatI'm like, well, I'm just going to,
I'm going to take that chance.They're little for such a short period
(46:47):
of time. And I remember Iwould, I still wrote important stories.
I still did like big projects.And I remember, I remember there
was one editor who kind oflike sort of muttered under his breath.
It's like, oh, she did that ona four day work week, you know, as
if I like, all of a sudden mybrain fell out of my brain, you know,
out of my head or something,you know, and it was frustrating.
(47:08):
I was mommy tracked, no doubtabout it. And I saw, you know, my
star diminished. You know, Idid, I violated the ideal worker
norm at my newspaper. And thatwas hard for a while. That really
was hard. But now my kids arein their 20s, you know, I've just
written my second book. Ididn't ruin my career. It took me
(47:29):
on a different path and I'mreally glad it did. And I just, I
am grateful every moment thatI had. I took Mondays off and we
called it Mommy Mondays. Andwe would just do fun, weird things,
you know, and that is timethat I will never get that back,
you know, and so I thinkthat's where, that's where it's important
to think, think about the longgame. And there are plenty of people
(47:51):
who did, who, you know, whodidn't work the four day work week,
even though if they wanted to.And they're still slogging away.
And my husband keeps remindingme of that. It's like, yeah. And
you know, how many of themwould give their right arm to have
just written a second book?It's like, yeah, I'm really, I did
what I wanted with my kids andI'm doing what I want with my life
right now, even though Ididn't play by the rules. And I ended
(48:13):
up leaving the Washington Postbecause it was a super structure,
it was super rigid and itdidn't work for me. And I worked
flexibly when it wasn't, whenyou weren't supposed to, you know,
but I showed that you can, youabsolutely can do it. Sometimes you
can be transparent about it.Sometimes you have to Be a little
stealthy. And I was superstealthy. But then I found a lot
(48:34):
of other people were reallystealthy. Like guys that, you know,
had reputations of being theselike monster, you know, ideal workers.
And they'd say like, yeah, I'mout on a story. But they'd be at
their daughter's soccer game.I love that. And I think that that's
what we need to recognize isthat you can do big and important
(48:54):
stuff and go to yourdaughter's soccer game and work a
four day work week when yourkids are little or when it makes
sense for you, you know youcan do both of those things.
Absolutely. And where canpeople find out more about you or
your book?
So my book has been publishedby Holt. It's called Overwork, Transforming
(49:15):
the Daily Grind and the Questfor a Better Life. And it's available
wherever you want to buybooks. The first book is called Overwhelmed
Work, Love and Play. When noone has the time, it really looks
at time pressure and genderroles. I direct the Better Life Lab
at New America. So we have awebsite and a newsletter you can
subscribe to where we shareour latest research and news about
(49:37):
work, family justice andgender equity and care. I have my
own website. I am on socialmedia, sort of. I try to be better
about that, but I love beingin conversation, conversation with
people, I love hearing theirstories. As a reporter, that's a
lot of what I do. And that thebook is really a story of. It's a
lot of journalism, a lot ofother people's stories and I think
(50:00):
there's such power in that.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Bridget.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me.
I really appreciate youlistening. Thank you so much. And
I always love to hear from ourlisteners. If you want to connect
with me on LinkedIn, just goto Verena Hefti and I'd be delighted
to hear your feedback and yoursuggestions or just have you say
(50:24):
hi. Likewise, if you do feelpassionately about gender equality
and you want to support afemale led podcast, then please do
leave a review and share itwith a friend. Just because at the
moment podcasting is still avery, very male dominated environment.
Most of the top chargingpodcasts are led by men. I really
(50:45):
love all the people who'vejoined from the podcast, our fellowship
program. And if you want to dothe same, then please head over to
leadersclass.org/Fellowship inorder to get access to a community
of support to help you combinean ambitious career with young children
together with people who haveyour back. See you next week.
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