Winning - Jack Welch [117]
That takes discipline. Saying no is hard, especially for business-people who have gotten ahead precisely because they have said yes so often. I will always be impressed by Bill Woodburn, who was running GE’s industrial diamond business in the 1990s. We asked him to run a division several times that size, but he had the clarity about his priorities to say no, despite our efforts to persuade him. He had a daughter with two years to go in high school, and he didn’t want to uproot her. Today, Bill’s daughter has long since graduated, and he has been promoted twice. He’s now president and CEO of GE’s infrastructure business.
Usually, however, you don’t need to say no to something as large as a promotion to get the balance you want. You just need to say it to smaller stuff—a request that you join yet another nonprofit board, a plea to coach yet another kids’ sports team, and the like.
If you say yes to everything, you won’t get balance. You’ll get off balance.
Saying no is incredibly liberating. Try it on anything and everything that is not part of your deliberately chosen work-life plan.
Best practice 3: Make sure your work-life balance plan doesn’t leave you out. A really killing dynamic in this work-life balance thing is the everyone’s-happy-but-me syndrome. Very competent people figure out a perfect work-life balance plan that allows them to deliver enough of themselves to the workplace, enough of themselves to family, and enough of themselves to one or two volunteer organizations.*
The problem is, this perfect plan creates a kind of fun-free vacuum for the person at its center.
Of course, work-life balance involves making trade-offs, and decent people are obliged to deliver on their commitments to home and work. But if you craft a work-life balance plan where you are having no fun, chances are you won’t be able to sustain it.
You have to make sure your work-life balance plan fulfills your dreams and passions. If that means working a lot, do it. If that means being home every night, let that happen too. Yes, you have to be responsible to those around you, but you can’t live someone else’s concept of your life in the name of balance.
Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. It almost always backfires.
We all know outwardly happy-looking people who juggle huge career and family demands only to suddenly stop and make drastic changes to their lives. They’ve just had enough of hanging on by their fingernails.
One person we met recently at a cocktail party explained her decision to “throw it in” this way: “I hadn’t really had a good laugh for fifteen years. I hadn’t read the newspaper with a cup of coffee or played with the dog or called an old friend. It felt like every single minute, I was struggling with logistics in order to meet everyone’s needs but my own.
“Technically, I was a good enough wife and mother, and I was good enough at my job. Everyone else was OK, but I was miserable. I had to quit or I was going to collapse.”
Today, this woman works from home. Her family has less money, and she will tell you she misses her old life as a professional. But at least she can breathe—and laugh.
Work-life balance is not a decision you make alone. You have to confront how your choices affect a myriad of others.
But if you don’t fulfill your own joy with your plan, all the balance in the world is just duty. One day, you’ll wake up and find yourself in a special kind of hell, where everyone is happy but you.
And that doesn’t do anyone any good.
When you get right down to it, there are only a few things you need to know if you want, as the title of this chapter says, to have it all.
Outside of work, clarify what you want from life.
At work, clarify what your boss wants, and understand that, if you want to get ahead, what he or she wants comes first. You can eventually get what you both want, but the arrangement will be negotiated in that context.
Make sure you work in a supportive culture where performance matters and you can earn flexibility chits with