Book Excerpt
The Elephant in the Room
With all this said—the business challenge well articulated, the arguments convincing and defensible, and the course of action well laid out—we are aware that not everyone is on board in recognizing that (1) there is a structural workforce shift at hand, (2) the workplace must respond in kind, and (3) now is the time and place to sustainably address this challenge.
Perhaps this perspective is best described by my [Cathleen] recent personal experience in a comfortable local Italian restaurant with a great friend and newly retired mentor. Over a leisurely dinner we began talking about workforce trends in general and the subject matter of this book specifically. After some good-natured bantering back and forth, his bottom line took me aback. At the end of the day, he asserted, the most successful people in business possess two qualities: They are talented, and they work really hard. (The clear inference is that anyone who had dialed down, by definition, didn’t work really hard.)
As I paused, organizing my thoughts to respond to this claim, his wife, Cindy, jumped in—which was uncharacteristic when it comes to business topics. A dear friend and someone whom I admire for her many qualities, Cindy had just spent the past forty years or so being the quintessential corporate wife. She was very comfortable with her position, dedicating the “working years” of her life to this role.
“The reason that you were so successful,” she interjected, “is because you had the talent and you worked really hard at one thing—your career. All the other elements of life during those years were handled by me.” To be sure, from child rearing to household projects to domestic finances to community contributions and beyond, Cindy carried all the noncareer responsibilities. She was, in essence and reality, the not-formally-appointed COO of their household.
Cindy went on to remind her husband that this division of labor in their marriage was not so for their three married children, all in their thirties and parents of young children. She pointed to her oldest son as an example. He was talented and worked very hard—and so did his neurologist wife. The difference was that they did not work hard singularly at their careers. They worked hard as a team, traversing home and work responsibilities. Cindy’s point? The delineation between the home front and the work front has become irreversibly blurred. While she and her husband typified the 17 percent of the U.S. population that categorize the traditional workforce, their children, on the other hand, characterize the 83 percent that do not. And this was not likely to change.
With this we wholeheartedly agree. It is not likely to change. So it’s time to start thinking through how to deal with this new reality structurally and systemically—and that’s what this book is really all about.
“One of the boldest initiatives [is Mass Career Customization] ... at Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. Employees would rev up or slow down different aspects of their work ... to suit their lives at different stages in their careers.”
—Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune