HOOPLA

2011-05-08T15:56:00.001-07:00

Every couple of weeks I indulge myself and get my hair professionally blow dried. It makes me ridiculously happy to have my wavy hair smoothed and straight. Although I would never leave my cut and colorist (www.brushcrush.com), I zip into the local SuperCuts to get the quick do. The other women I see there are not indulging as I am. They are often presenting their reluctant children to the stylist for a trim or down to the business of their own cut and color. The men, and there are mostly male clients at my local SuperCuts, are there for a haircut and what I have come to observe as a geisha experience. The stylists are real professionals and have a counter full of razers, trimmers and styling gel for their male clients. But it is the additional service of having a woman run her fingers through his hair and massage his scalp that puts the smiling and satisfied guy in relax mode during his haircut. Witnessing this experience time after time comes close to how great I feel when I exit the chair too. Best of all is that I don't wait 4 weeks to do it all again.

2011-04-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

While laying on a heat pack at physical therapy this morning, I found myself listening in on all the many conversations taking place between therapists and their patients. One lady was born in Italy and speaks a family dialect that is almost gone. Two of the guys were commiserating that the Spurs got lucky last night and it just wasn't fair. I picked up two recommendations for book club and learned about a sister who is a flight attendant and cursed with passengers having medical emergencies in flight.

The last time I needed physical therapy was probably 15 years ago. Back then, I screeched in a couple of minutes late for my appointments and watched the clock ticking off all the things remaining to do that day. I doubt that the conversations around me were any less interesting but I never heard them. How we measure time, pass time, make time and run out of time sure fluctuates at times. When there were babies in the house, time was measured in feedings and naps. When I had the big career, time was precisely measured by productivity markers. Last night I noticed that I now measure a week when my pill case runs out and has to be refilled again. Yoga has taught me that time is in the breath. The past and the future are not time. Only the present moment is time. I really understood that this morning as I lay in the moment and received some nice stories while I healed.

2011-04-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

I received a journal for Christmas entitled, " Mom's One Line a Day," a five year memory book. Needless to say, the first few weeks the entries filled in the pages themselves. Then there was a one or two day gap and then a week or two. After sitting down today to catch up the entries, I realized that not filling in the missing days wasn't a failure. Revisiting the calendar and recalling those days was, in fact, a gift. For example, while reflecting back to March 7th and my son's trip to the dentist, I was touched by the observations I had about him as he soldiered through a very long visit in the chair which included xrays (gag reflex), a lecture from the dentist to mom about the enamel on molar number 5, cleaning and then a filling. What I realized by looking back to the events of March 7th are that my son is becoming a more mature young man. He didn't show fear or remorse at the dentist's office and I may not have seen that growth in him if I didn't have a few weeks upon which to reflect.

Reflection is not a gift I have much experience with anyway. I live in the moment, frantic moment to moment actually. My gut leads the way pretty persuasively and I don't cotton much to regrets. What I am seeing a glimmer of is that reflection is a lovely window of insight that can be enjoyed any time after something occurs. It doesn't have a goal or a measurement. Reflection is the clear, pure view of something that provides a glimpse into one line a day for me.

2011-03-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

I am so looking forward to Meg Wolitzer's new book due out next month. If it is half as familiar to my cohort as Ten Year Nap, it will be a great read. The economy and job market have had such a debilitating effect on so many of my friend's marriages. What may have been a normal settling in of the spouses where they agreed to disagree on topics like sex, communication, grandchildren, has morphed into a worrisome battleground of who spends too much and what maintenance (physical, house, car, spiritual) gets shelved for the time being. For the most part, noone is leaving anyone, but the level of discomfort is growing and painful.

2010-07-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

In a Vanity Fair interview earlier this year Meryl Streep talked about the feeling of personal liberation that she is experiencing in her life these days. What she said resonated so much for me that I clipped part of the article and have carried it with me ever since. She has raisesd three daughters and I agree with her that as the girls grow up and boys enter the picture, the girls begin to modify their assertiveness. They yearn to be acceptable, even appealing to boys. I have certainly seen and heard this from my two teenage daughters. But what Streep says that I really adore is "an enormous relief to outgrow those constraints." She says, "I can't remember the last time I really worried about being appealing."

For me, I can't remember that last time I checked the mirror after leaving the house in the morning. As Streep reports, " I think you just have to get sick of hearing the accommodations in your approach to things...the way people have to get sick of drinking or drugs before they stop." Pretty strong words to compare personal liberation to recovery from addiction, but it rings true for me. I found a very strong taste for personal liberation in the past few years. I am happy to be exactly who I am, without making it easier for everybody else.

2010-03-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

By now, many people who were laid off two years ago have begun to diversify their job search. More intensity and diversity are smart ways to go about the search and the more you perfect these techniques, the better your chances of finding a good job. How do you diversify your search? This is key and will save you time and confusion if you take the time to carefully think about and then strategize your optimal plan for finding a job.

You have listed the skills you can offer potential employers on your resume. You have successfully documented your career thus far too. Now you know what kind of work will be a good fit for your training and skills. Next, and perhaps more important, it is time to conduct a self assessment that includes your interests, your values and a fresh look at how your particular skillset could benefit your next employer. One tried and true place to look for help with self assessment is in Richard Nelson Bolles' book What Color is Your Parachute.

Even in a tough economy, there are always job vacancies. Organizations continually start up, expand or replace workers. These jobs aren't always posted and you need to use the right method to find them. This puts the responsibility for the process of finding a job on you. Since you never know when an opportunity will present itself - be open minded and proactive. This is easier said than done after a long layoff but is a surefire way to uncover opportunities. You know to be persistent, but put this in the context of being proactive and you might see new ways to follow up, turn a "no" around and express a sincere interest to reinforce your desire for a job.

There is certainly an art to following up. Remember that the opportunity in the follow up is for you to be remembered and recognized in a favorable way. You do not want to annoy anyone and can use your better judgement to put yourself in the path of the opportunity. Become the most memorable candidate and be the one who receives the offer.

2010-01-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

It's back and all new, almost. After nine months (gestation), the Hours are a new balance of editorializing, counseling and some brass tacks retail thrown in. Stay tuned for my explanation and exploration of balance in the new decade.

In the meantime, enjoy this op-ed piece from today's New York Times www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24singloh.html . Sandra Loh manages to get off a nice description of the modern woman's mantra, "What I need is a wife" without regret or acerbic comment. It is what it is and while I usually fantasize about retreating to the mountains with the monks, Loh heads into a "Mad Men" fantasy of her own. At the end of the (long) day we each head back to reality. Success is reserved as reward for those who manage one step at a time through the many land mines of modern marriage.

2009-05-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

Our eldest daughter is all decided on college. Those of you who have been through college shopping, wishing and praying know well what this past nine months has been like for our family. In with the dorm accessories and technology I am packing her a copy of M.F.K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf. Fisher's breakthrough book, first published during World War II, is a collection of essays on enjoying the humble pleasures of living and dining during times of dearth.

Not only the economic times influence this selection for me. It has hit her dad and I between the eyes to see how little dearth our darlings have had to endure while being raised. But now is a time to rethink our values and I, for one, am optimistic. Like Fisher, our daughter attended the private prep school by the shore where she began writing -- and both favor ambiance over opulence in getting together with friends. I want to see our daughter begin to both begin understand the basics of economy, hosting and simple pleasures and to also appreciate how contemporary is the notion of simple feasting ala the slow food movement. Good for her, good for the planet and decidedly good for conversation which should ease this big transition for her just a bit.

2008-08-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

We celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage each year on August 26th at our house. From the time my girls were little and I used the movie Mary Poppins to explain women's suffrage, we have made note of the progress of women. Or lack of progress ...

Thanks to Ellen Goodman's op-ed piece in the Boston Globe today, we had fresh suffrage fodder for dinner tonight. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080821/news_lz1e21goodman.html
My favorite example offered up in a couple of Goodman's recent posts is the apparent closing of the math gap between men and women. Since we have a teenager who reads math books for fun, the validity of the gap was never on our radar. But we do like seeing the acknowledgement that math is an equal opportunity skill set.

I only wish that there were more happy examples of the advancement of women. Every month, I turn to the back of Ms. magazine to get a fill of outrage at the atrocities of advertising, law and economics that women must face around the world. Elizabeth Edwards and Silda Spitzer come to mind for their silence. Phyllis Schafley for her outspokenness against women's rights. It is one thing to note the inequality of women as dished out by men. Quite another thing to see intelligent women doing to us all.

Thanks to Goodman for shining a light on those who have done their best this year to set back the cause of women.

2008-08-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

John McCain issued a press release this week in support of establishing a National Office on Work Life Balance.
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/
cc55f873-0d4f-438b-a866-688633c02e71.htm

2008-07-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

The issue of entitlement to time off is an emotive one for most working professionals. This is true whether you are the boss, the manager or the only employee. As you have heard from this column many times, time is a very valuable asset for most individuals. Much of what time off an employee is entitled to has been legislated over the years I have been working. Thanks to maternity leave policies, it has even been okay to consider leave practices that vary by employee/gender/group. The argument that if time is given to one employee, then it must be made available to all employees has more recently been applied to the development of paternity leave policies. Statistics so far support the notion that what works for one group of employees may not apply or appeal equally to all employees.

Legislation may have set up annual holiday leave policies that most companies adhere to but it has yet to touch on a different dilemma -- leave entitlements that meet an employee's satisfaction. Given that the legislated policies are widely interpreted upon implementation, individual contracts need to be carefully crafted to succeed. What the entitlement dilemma illuminates for employers is the complex labyrinthine measures employees use to balance their entitled time. For example, few HR manuals describe how to compensate employees when they travel for the additional time "on the job" such as getting to the airport early and overnights including work done in the hotel room. Likewise, the late evenings in the office, the breakfast and dinner meetings, Saturday trade shows and midnight global concalls all constitute time that management has long considered due them from their well paid professional staff. And well it might be.

What is being calculated, however, is entitled time. I don't know an employee, no matter what their rank, who hasn't done a private accounting of their extra time expended and an offsetting accounting entry for making that time up in personal pursuits. Given that money runs neck and neck with time as a valuable asset in most people's minds, similar accounting is done for the expense sheet. Although leave entitlements for events of short duration like hours and days doesn't make for very interesting conversation, it can offer a great deal of comfort to have these policies outlined and referred to by your valued employees.

2008-06-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

Just as the news breaks that women are getting squeezed on maternity leave benefits due to changes in corporate insurance programs, I am reminded of the dealing so many women in my office did to maximize their six week paid leave with banked vacation and sick days. The women were usually able to take eight weeks of paid time off but tipped close to the brink of the corporate culture in attempting to take another month of unpaid leave. Usually they simply returned to work a little sad at 8 weeks.

What this evokes in me, however, is the memory of the shared work arrangement my husband and I agreed to and several of my peers tried to negotiate as well when looking down the face of the calendar and childcare for a new baby. We built what we called a new model -- one that only our modern generation understood the need for. We were planning to be parenting and household partners with an equal distribution of work and homework hours. As Lisa Belkin once again hits the bulls eye in her June 15, 2008 article for the New York Times: When Mom and Dad Share It All, modern women still do more of the housework and care taking at a ratio of two to one. Class doesn't matter -- and our family has been multiple classes over our 16 years of child rearing. Working class, middle class, upper class, the ratio is still two to one in division of labor in families.

What really needs a flashlight focused on it, however, is the issue of why women continue to put up with this lopsided division of labor in the first place. Even in families where the woman works full time and the husband stays at home and you would expect a reversal in this division, you find the wife doing the majority of the housework. And childcare is measured separately from housework in the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households. The division of labor in childcare is (are you sitting down?) 5:1! There is no rational explanation for these out of whack proportions. I understand that social norms (however outdated) play a part in the way work is fashioned. What I cannot understand is why women put up with it.

Well, actually, I do know why. It is another type of making a deal much like negotiating maternity leave. Many of us know the women who put her foot down on the unfair division of labor and found themselves on food stamps and living in an 800 square foot apartment. I am always a bit aghast when I witness women who continue to work themselves to the bone raising wonderful children, managing their relationship and often working a full time job too. What shocks me is the women's perspective that they have a pretty good arrangement. I have seen their husbands go from golf course, to tv remote to a brief try at catch or homework and heard them applaud their men. The survey I would like to see the sociologists conduct is the one that measures the economic value of maintaining this 2:1 and 5:1 division of labor in order to keep the family intact and the concomitant value for the growing child.

2008-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

In April 3rd's www.salon.com/books/ review of Meg Wolitzer's new novel Ten Year Nap, Rebecca Traister raises a question that I believe sums up the pain and frustration so many women feel in today's work world. Traister points to the "professionalism of parenthood" brought about by our generation of high achieving women who were compelled to leave the workforce. These women applied the same skills to parenting as they did to their previous jobs - and the same intensity. Wolitzer agrees and says this is the heart of the mommy wars. There is anxiety from the pull of motherhood and the pull of career in another direction. Self-doubt follows and unhappiness settles in.

As we mothers apply our professionalism to raising our kids, another type of fallout occurs - perfectionism! According to Psychology Today (March/April 2008), perfectionists are made, not born. Experts also know that perfectionism in children is increasing. Pressure on children to achieve is rampant, because parents now seek much of their status from the performance of their kids. The kids' view on this pressure to not make mistakes is self evident. They feel criticized. Raising our kids on this kind of distress will never yield adults who will be able to adapt in our fast moving world. Adaptability is the characteristic that enables the species to evolve. Kids need to be raised to be flexible and comfortable with ambiguity. They need to feel free to take risks. Since perfectionism is the "endless reportcard" this path is doomed to result in endless frustration and anxiety. Hhmm. Sounds like the mothers who off ramped from their careers.

More on this topic and how to turn things around, next time. For now, just remember to breathe.

2008-02-22T17:09:00.000-08:00

While sending regrets for a school party I couldn't fit into my weekend recently, I was struck by how much I really did regret that I couldn't make it to the party. There are two kinds of regret in life -- regret about things we haven't done and regret about things we have done. When asked what is the biggest regret of their life, three fourths of my workshop attendees describe something that they did not do in their life.

When considering flexible work schedules with my clients, it is often that case that they are seeking to make time to do something they will regret not having done at the end of their career or life. Women often complain of not having enough time - and we know this is a true stressor in modern life when you both work and run a household. When we do our self assessments and list and prioritize our days, it is very likely that something regretted will pop out. It may be something you wished to try when younger and you never got around to it. It may be something that has taken on signifigance in your life through caring for yourself or your family. It may also be a "before I die" sort of longing as you face the second half of your life.

So try this exercise : if you could have anything you want and noone would crticize or sabotage your dream -- what would it be? There would be no downside. Cost wasn't the issue. Time isn't the issue. I know. The "buts" stream on endlessly because the real question is WHAT DO YOU WANT? When you really know that, the way generally cooperates and opens up. If it is something you have always wanted to do, your task is taking the steps to begin to do it. Remember how sorry you will feel if you never do it. If you are not entirely sure of what you would regret passing up, consider similar things and select from them. Believe that you are in control and that things can change. For years, I did what I was good at but never questioned whether it was what I wanted to do. In taking control of my career - after losing control, which is another story - I have found a far richer tapestry which contains no regrets.

2008-01-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

Human activities create about 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, and governments regulate only a fraction of that amount. When the United States decides to establish a carbon trading system as Europe already has done, reducing CO2 emissions will quickly become a corporate measurement. And I am not talking factory emissions only. Some companies have already begun measuring and verifying the benefits of green at the individual level, offering a cash rebate to employees who purchase a hybrid vehicle, reducing space and power costs in exchange for home offices for telecommuting employees, and beginning to evaluate a wholesale change in how and where their people work.

Flexible work arrangements including telecommuting, compressed work weeks and job sharing have gradually gained ground since the 1980’s and programs exist in most corporations to support diversity and flexibility. It is widely agreed that flexible work improves employee retention, increases job satisfaction and may improve productivity. These gains, however, are difficult to measure and the savings are at best approximations. The drag on the evolution of how, when and where people work is evolutionary. People generally won’t change the usual way they do things or even evaluate how they do things unless they are encouraged to do so. One such continuum is casual Friday which has given way to work from home Friday in many corporate environments.

Data abounds to calculate and verify the cost savings for an employee telecommuting once a week. For the company who pays an employee who earns $40K annually to work from home once a week, company savings ramp to $12,000 in the second year based simply on reduced sick days, space and equipment savings, reduced turnover costs, and reduced parking requirements.

The challenge for leaders in government and corporations is to replace telecommute with telework and relate a new work structure around issues that matter and can be measured. The time is right around the corner for companies in California to totally revisit how their work gets done and revamp their organizations to work productively from home. Carbon emissions are a great tangible with real financial ramifications.

2007-09-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

"To the mind that is still," said Loa Tzu, "the whole universe surrenders." During a recent corporate workshop I got to really see this tome in action. A dozen mid and senior level managers met to learn how to access and recognize flexibility in their jobs. Many arrived with the outlook that their jobs could not be done effectively any other way than full time and in the office. The first thing we had each person do was to list all the work they do. All kinds of fun broke out. As you can imagine if you think about all the work you do, these lists were long. Next we asked the managers to put a plus next to the items they like to do or can do quickly and easily and a minus next to work that they don't like to do or often avoided doing. Some people were dissatisfied with fully half of the work they do in their job while others really only disliked one or two aspects of the work.

After pairing people up in small discussion groups we gave the assignment to try to solve each other's aspects of the work that they indicated they didn't like to do. Some great ideas were offered including trading responsibilities and grouping unfavorable tasks to be done all in one afternoon or day. One group suggested getting a partner so the employee didn't do the work alone. A few managers took a like it or leave it approach saying don't complain, just do the work. We cut this part of the workshop short before the groups had a chance to finish and then we asked everyone to sit in silent meditation for ten minutes.

It has been my experience that meditation after a session of intense thinking and discussing can allow the best observations to float to the surface. One of the most significant breakthroughs I have ever witnessed came this time from one of the more rigid workshop participants. He had consistently debased the notion of flexibility as proof of under commitment to the job and judged the whole idea of flexible schedules as an expensive experiment for the company. His contribution at the closing circle of the workshop surprised us all. He said that during meditation time it had occurred to him that if his employees had areas of their work that were not interesting or compelling for them to complete, that his job as a manager was to reassign those duties so that his employees could focus on their strengths. He still was not buying into reduced hours or telecommuting but this revelation that work can be distributed based on passion and interest therefore supporting each employee's strength is great management. Ah, sweet surrender.

2007-08-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

The spectrum of work flexibility is very broad. Certainly it has both broadened and become more of a cultural transition since I first started asking for flexible work 10 or 12 years ago. Today there are still mostly cultural and management issues that get in the way of an employee having the best balance of work and personal obligations. I still see signs every day of general mistrust of the employee's commitment if they ask for a reduced hours schedule at the office. Sad was the number of times during my high tech career that the worried Fortune 100 companies repeatedly laid off talented and dedicated professionals only to bemoan the scarcity of such talent a year later when they began hiring again.

Still, flexible deals were made in the office and they were not uncommon - only unspoken. At the other end of the spectrum today are companies like IBM which has a culture of measuring professional performance not by an observed and rigid schedule. Each employee has their own deal and is accountable for their work. Funny enough, some of this flexibility came about as a cost cutting measure. Instead of laying off people, IBM got rid of their offices and put people to work on the road and at home. The culture still dictated working long hours and forgoing vacations and the lines between personal time and work time began blurring. At the end of the day, the employee's life has become more manageable and the corporation is still getting it's pound of flesh.

Best Buy, Netflix, Patagonia and a host of other companies have caught the wave of using performance measurement and the honor system. "When you have a work force of fully formed professionals who have been working for much of their life," said Patty McCord, chief talent officer at Netflix, "you have a connection between the work you do and how long it takes to do it, so you don't need to have the clock-clock-out mentality."

The key to all of this culture change is not difficult to pinpoint. Management must be up to the task of setting the measurements and implementing them. Rarely in my twenty years in corporate did I encounter a manager who was highly skilled at this. I did, however, frequently meet individual performers who managed themselves very professionally. They set goals, deadlines, organized cross functional teaming and ran budgets. They didn't usually report on their methods. They just did them.

2007-08-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

Do I really want a wife? I think that what I really need is the acknowledgement that I am best suited to do the disproportionate workload for our home and family BECAUSE I CARE. Shira Boss said in a New York Times 8/11/07 article that "even if the workload is divided, women complain that they are usually the ones organizing, juggling and filling their head space with the daily demands of family life." That's a fact at our house.

If you were to ask my husband about all my: (pick one) complaining, organizing, juggling and analyzing over the household, he would shrug his shoulders and mutter that I take on too much. After putting this topic on the weekly meeting agenda a few times over the years, neither one of us has altered our opinion on what constitutes "workoad." I used to be so sure that this was because my husband was either (pick one) too tired or too lazy at the end of the day to carry more of the load. Sure I was left with less energy to devote to workplace tasks. But I always felt strongly about my homeplace commitments too.

The plain truth is that "women are held to higher expectations and hold themselves to higher standards," according to Sumru Erkut, associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women.
I don't think the solutions lies in women lowering their standards either. I derive huge satisfaction from nurturing our (pick one) meals, laundry, vacation plans, interior design, garden, volunteering. All this, and I love my work too. The solution once again lies in women's ability to identify and implement schedules for their time that is in proportion to their needs and interests. Most of the time this will include a flexible work schedule and that time has come.

2007-07-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

We must put an end to the Mommy Wars. Let's not have media or malaise take our focus off the real opportunity to schedule a balanced life. Judith Warner says it all in today's New York Times.

July 24, 2007
Guest Columnist
The Full-Time Blues
By JUDITH WARNER
The news from the Pew Research Center this month — that 60 percent of working mothers say they’d prefer to work part time — was barely out before it was sucked up into the fetid air of the mommy wars, with all the usual talk on “opting out” and guilting out, and the usual suspects lining up to slug it out on morning talk TV.
But the conversation we should be having these days really isn’t one about What Mothers Want. (This has been known for years; surveys dating back to the early 1990s have shown that up to 80 percent of mothers — working and at-home alike — consistently say they wish they could work part time.) The interesting question is, rather, why they’re not getting it.
Only 24 percent of working mothers now work part time. The reason so few do isn’t complicated: most women can’t afford to. Part-time work doesn’t pay.
Women on a reduced schedule earn almost 18 percent less than their full-time female peers with equivalent jobs and education levels, according to research by Janet Gornick, a professor of sociology and political science at City University of New York, and the labor economist Elena Bardasi. Part-time jobs rarely come with benefits. They tend to be clustered in low-paying fields like the retail and service industries. And in better-paid professions, a reduced work schedule very often can mean cutting down from 50-plus hours a week to 40-odd — hardly a “privilege” worth paying for with a big pay cut.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In Europe, significant steps have been made to make part-time work a livable reality for those who seek it. Denying fair pay and benefits to part-time workers is now illegal. Parents in Sweden have the right to work a six-hour day at prorated pay until their children turn 8 years old. Similar legislation helps working parents in France, Austria, and Belgium and any employee in Germany and the Netherlands who wants to cut back.
Even Britain has a (comparatively tame) pro-family law that guarantees parents and other caregivers the right to request a flexible schedule from their employers. European employers have the right to refuse workers’ requests, but research shows that very few actually do. And workers have the right to appeal the denials.
None of this creates a perfect world. Feminists have long been leery of part-time work policies, which tend to be disproportionately used by women, mommy-tracking them and placing them at an economic disadvantage within their marriages and in society. The American model of work-it-out-for-yourself employment is Darwinian, but women’s long working hours have gone a long way toward helping them advance up the career ladder.
“We know that family-friendly policies encourage work force participation,” says Professor Gornick, who has extensively studied family policy on both sides of the Atlantic. “But do they lower the glass ceiling or make it thicker? That’s the million-euro question.”
I think that when it comes to setting priorities for (currently nonexistent) American work-family policy, we ought to go for the greatest good for the greatest number.
The place to start, ideally, would be universal health care, which is really the necessary condition for making freedom of choice a reality for working parents. European-style regulations outlawing wage and benefit discrimination against part-time workers would be nice, too, though it’s not a terribly realistic goal for the U.S., where even unpaid family leave is still a hot-button issue for employers.
A British-style “soft touch” law could, however, be within the realm of the possible. Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative Carolyn Maloney are circulating draft legislation modeled on the British workplace flexibility law that would give employees — all workers, not just moms or parents — the right to request a flexible schedule. The legislation — which would require employers to discuss flexibility with workers who request it, but wouldn’t require them to honor the requests — has a little bit of something for everyone: protection from retaliation for workers who fear letting on that they’re eager to cut back, protection from “unfunded mandates” for businesses.
Critics might say the proposed legislation’s touch is so soft as to be almost imperceptible, but it’s a start. At the very least, it’s a chance to stop emoting about maternal love and war and guilt and have a productive conversation.
Judith Warner is the author of “Perfect Madness” and a contributing columnist for TimesSelect. She is a guest Op-Ed columnist. Bob Herbert is off today.

2007-07-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

While there is no one size fits all approach to how a woman might construct her non linear career, we often hear about the guilt that accompanies any choice she makes. I have found that the most pervasive emotion felt by women who have reconstructed their schedules, their job attributes or career ambitions is actually full blown anxiety.

When there are multiple demands present in a situation, women usually fare very well in managing them. It is when the contribution is delivered outside the usual schedule or location or timeframe that the professional, her peers and her management lose the context of her work and themselves feel uncomfortable - that something is different. And in any situations involving human beings, things that don't fit in create some anxiety. That isn't necessarily bad. First of all, anxiety can be managed when it is acknowledged. It isn't about the quality of the work or number of hours at work. Anxiety is about not fitting in and being accepted. Secondly, the individual has control over this feeling. That is even more empowering than the notion that a company's flexible work plan can construct the perfect schedule for each and every employee.

Who hasn't felt the pressure of having to leave some work on the desk in order to go to a meeting ? This same anxiety is what is felt when leaving that work to go pick up the kids from school. And it is manageable outside the context of flexible work. First, we must separate the feeling from the facts. If we take a moment to recognize and acknowledge the anxiety, we can see that it is an irresponsible choice. The responsible choice is to act like the caring, diligent adult that we are and recognize the limits we have set for each area of our lives. I know setting limits isn't the acceptable thing to do these days, but our peace of mind is at stake if we don't. And the truth is, that moment of transition is not the sum of what we contribute. It is simply a breath we take while changing gears.

2007-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

The social context of the conflict that is supposed to be modern woman escapes me. Although I have pulled stints during my career of each of the following - good woman, individual achiever, caregiver, die-hard workaholic and quitter - I have never suffered the pain of conflicted feelings about my roles. My friends and clients have sometimes chosen career, sometimes family, sometimes both work and family. The common thread that we set out to "fix" in each person's case is the feeling that their choice makes them feel conflicted.

It turns out that when we are frustrated we rise up against whatever we perceive to be oppressing us. We are fearless in the battle and ultimately make a "difficult choice." I have been fortunate enough to be guided by an inner conviction at each difficult juncture in my career. I seldom considered what was expected of me during the decision making process. I usually believed that I could craft a solution to the problem and trusted that it would work for me. This is not to say that I didn't have to vascillate wildly on some issues. Ultimately, though, I trusted that there was a solution or maybe a revolution to solve my puzzle. Usually it was a revelation breaking through the clouds that arrived very simply by looking at things a different way. One more struggle out of the way. Breathe.

2007-06-22T08:11:00.001-07:00

Our oldest is beginning to compile a list of accomplishments to include in her college applications. She has been around 16 years and has a dozen accomplishments that she believes gives a good picture of what her interests are and what successes she has enjoyed in her select activities. When was the last time you made a detailed list of your accomplishments during the past sixteen years?

When you are considering how you want to work in the final decade of your career, it is very useful to update your resume. One of your best assets in renegotiating your schedule at work to reduce your hours is your accumulated knowledge. We have talked before about the coming shortage of people to replace the retiring boomers. The real challenge employers are beginning to realize is the cultivating and transferring of knowledge and talents to the incoming generation of workers. Take the time to reflect and then list all the things you know and rebuild your resume to reflect this knowledge.

Two things will happen when you do this: first, you will gain a renewed vitality in what you have to offer to your employer. Second, you are creating a responible knowldege transfer plan for your successor. According to a recent survey by Buck Consultants (www.buckconsultants.com),
"more than 80% of survey respondents, regardless of industry, have not surveyed their mature workers to determine future work preferences or intentions. 42% have not identified who is responsible in their organization for knowledge transfer and knowledge management.

It is about more than your flexible schedule, but documenting a knowledge transfer plan by reviewing your talents and contributions to the organization is a great leverage. Contact me if you want to know how to identify cost savings for your employer if you are considering alternative job design.

2007-05-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

One thing that is in balance in my work/life is the piles of stuff I am working on. Often, I take great pride in having visited the piles and pulled a few things out to complete. Building the piles is an act of mental organization NOT simplification. This is an important distinction because we hear so much in the media about simplifying our lives but decluttering, boxing things up and creating order in our lives strikes me as a paper tiger. When my husband and I bought our first home, it had four bedrooms. Since the dog didn't need his own room, preferring to sleep on our bed, we each took one bedroom as a home office used the third spare as a heave it all junk room. As you can imagine, over the years, one and then a second child came along to claim two of the rooms. The remaining room became a two person office and junk room causing much discomfort for its users.

Along came baby number three. We were both still working and still amassing junk, so naturally things started rolling out into the house. We decided to move. We designed the next home to accommodate two work desks for us in the kitchen and family room and designated the garage as the junk room. The garage now represents a project for two long weekends each year. Life is very much like this -- messy and creative. Unfortunately, many women I meet have absorbed this message that life should be simple or simplified. We have heard the message and when given the opportunity to simplify our stresses of caregiving, household management and careers, we choose to close the door to our jobs. I and many of my peers have done exactly this -- stepped away from our careers after investing years of study and work and thousands of dollars in education. The news from the front is not good. None of us feels that our life is more manageable and most of us feel either the economic pinch, the isolation from our spouse and friends still working, the pressure of tidy rooms and drawers and/or the meaninglessness of completing small tasks over challenging big ones.

Keep the clearly defined roles for baking a cake or writing html, I say. For everything else, we must broaden our view of life. During the 30-50 years that encompass our aspirations for our children, our career, and our partnerships, we should let it be messy, keep it all in piles and let our attention be on balancing all that life has on offer.

2007-05-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

I succeed like a workaholic. Over the many years since I entered the workforce - arguably at age 7 by subcontracting part of my brother's paper route - I have developed skills, maintained momentum, ramped up, then down and been forced out rather than opting out, and started from scratch. At no time did I not succeed at doing the very best that I could do.

Devoting myself wholly to my job has gradually enabled me to deliver an increase of contribution to the work I am doing. I have learned to do more in less time. Maturity and motherhood helped me with this lesson. I have always been the go-to person when things get crucial. If deadlines are looming large and a panic is setting in, I step up to help, spending whatever time necessary to get the job done. Then, I rest.

My work product is never sloppy, never the worst. Oftentimes it isn't the best or most perfect either. I have learned to settle for merely excellent.

I am not afraid to try and to experiment. This means that I fail and make mistakes sometimes. Whether you find these attributes of mine appealing, I think, will depend on your willingness to embrace flexibility and balance. Businesses want to build better employees. "There is still a lot of stigma to utilizing work-life benefits programs." according to Carol Evans, founder and CEO of Working Mother Media. "When progressive policies are a cultural shift, it becomes embedded into how a whole company thinks." I believe this cultural shift will happen rapidly over the next generation of workers.

For now, though, I recommend getting to balance by succeeding like a workaholic and making sure your exemplary work gets communicated to your management. If you apply yourself to doing the best work possible a little bit faster, jumping in to help and doing a little self-PR, your rewards are a better ability to balance your time at work and away from work. And you will have earned it.

2007-04-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

BOOKS I RECOMMEND

The Price of Motherhood by Ann Crittenden

If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything: Leadership Begins at Home by Ann Crittenden

50 Ways to improve Women's Lives by Staff of National Council of Women's Organizations

The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine M.D.

The Feminine Mistake : Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts

Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide by Maureen Dowd

I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother by Allison Pearson

Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich

Time Off for Good Behavior: How Hard Working Women Can Take a Break and Change Their Lives by Mary Lou Quinlan

The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability by Laura Kipnis

Against Love by Laura Kipnis

2007-04-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

The Boston Marathon went off yesterday and the field was comprised of 40% women. Forty years ago, only one woman entered and ran. The Boston Marathon is in it's 111th year and over time it has evolved. The notion of balance in women's careers is also evolutionary. A convergence of government, social and economic programs will eventually begin to swing the balance of work and personal obligations.

In the meanwhile, let's take a look at what it takes to make incremental changes in your work now. It takes confidence to pursue part time work and employers need help to find ways to make it work. Many times a seasoned employee has asked for time off to care for a family member and had the time approved only to return to work with a little cloud of stigma settled firmly around them. The best strategy to get everyone back on track is the the same one used to get the time off in the first place -- communication. For, although it is difficult to work up to courage to ask for caregiving time in the first place, we often accept that we deserve to be punished for taking it. Women, in particular, tend to believe that we just have to hunker down and pay for our flexibility.

This is not actually a bad idea because talented employees are appreciated in the office and getting back to work will quickly get things back on track. I advise people to take it one step further and to thank the boss and coworkers who helped out and to communicate clearly and often how you are prioritizing the work that was waiting upon your return. Then communicate widely how much you appreciated the flexibility your employer showed you. This will demonstrate that a precendent has been set and help others to ask for the time when they need it. Even companies who have been working to support a diverse workforce for a long time are continually evaluating and updating their support programs. Concerned employers will be quickly able to assess the productivity and retention gains they enjoy from creating part time or short term leave programs for their talented employees.

2007-04-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

Longing for that 'ol 1950's version of housewife instead of the ridiculous schedule you are now keeping with work and kids and housekeeping? In her new book The Feminine Mistake, Leslie Bennetts points to the revival of the idealism young women have for the stay at home domestic diva. Her point is well taken-- rely on this model at your economic peril.

But, importantly, be aware that women's desire (young and old) for a simpler set of obligations is a snapshot of how overwhelming it is to be expert and efficient at both one's career and family obligations at the same time. Where are the men?

Some people would have us believe that men and women are the same. That is certainly the way the work world is constructed. There have been precious few "accommodations" for women since we entered the workforce twenty years ago. I can remember donning a floppy tie and double breasted navy suit for work. I certainly remember the one time I cried in the office -- forget that I wasn't pregnant, PMS-ing or usually "bitchy." I was, in fact, very frustrated at having been passed over again for a promotion that went to a much younger, less experienced and less successful man.

Given that large numbers of women are responsible for the minutiae of all things household, are outearning their spouses, are not taking time off but are sequencing like men in their careers, where are the men? At my house, they take out the garbage and play catch (in the kitchen) with the kids, or flop on the couch to watch a sporting event. As I have mentioned before, we have to ask . We have to ask at work for the freedom to participate as respected professionals and freedom to be mothers and daughters. From our men, we have to ask, for the exact help we need, sometimes repeatedly and definitely for their response with empathy.

2007-03-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

Failing to ask feeds the balance gap in much the same way that failing to ask feeds the pay gap. You know that women are actually pretty good at negotiating on behalf of their companies, their work projects and particularly, their families. It is ironic that when it comes to perks or pay for themselves, women tend to be negotiation-shy.

There is plenty in the media currently to describe the wholesale changes needed to narrow the balance gap for families. It certainly would help if lots of women asked for change. The combined voices of many women will do something really important -- make it normal to ask. There is a tactical approach you can use for yourself while you wait for the chorus to chime in. ASK. The reason this is not a scary thing to do is that in fact, most managers expect you to initiate requests for more pay, better commissions or restructuring your schedule. Of course, most employers have policies and cultures that discourage sharing of how other employees have changed the practices. Therefore it is up to you to dig up the instances of where flexibility has been permitted in your company and industry.

Ask and don't be quick to settle. While women may be both hard-wired and socialized to not be assertive and to be sensitive to the needs of others, they are equally well equipped to fight to maintain a relationship. According to Louann Brizendine, M.D. in her wonderful book, The Female Brain, "In women, conflict is more likely to set into motion a cascade of negative chemical reactions, creating feelings of stress, upset, and fear. Just the threat of conflict will be read by the female brain as threatening the relationship." Having a well researched plan and some backup support are key to overcoming the resistance you may meet when you first begin to ask for a change in your schedule.

Time is on your side if you have a successful career with a good network of clients and peers . For decades one of the most puzzling habits of American businesses has been to lay off workers and then soon after, complain that they just cannot find enough qualified employees. What is new, however, is the undeniable shortfall of up to 10 million workers as the boomers retire. Even though American companies are pathetically shortsighted on planning for this exodus, key industries are already looking a lot like the free for all recruiting of the 90's. Industries that cannot be offshored such as healthcare, accounting, and engineering are already struggling to fill job openings. The gap between companies seeing the value of retaining a seasoned employee and chasing a recent college recruit is your opportunity. Go ASK.

2007-03-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

How long have you been working in your career 20 yrs? 25?
How long until you retire? 5 years? 10 years?
Would you like to ramp down to retirement?
How many leaves of absence have you taken of 3 months or more during your career? 5? 3? 1?

So let’s say you have a career span of about 30 yrs. You are 2/3 through it now and have managed to get married, give birth, raise a family, care for aging parents, maybe get single or repair a joint, be downsized (more than once?) and perhaps survive cancer. And you did all of this while maintaining your career at a full time pace. Who do you know who took a full quarter of a year off? And all of this doesn’t consider personal preferences you may have forgone during these years. Whether a philanthropic save the world endeavor or a personal improvement course of action, chances are you either wrote a check or devoted a few hours a month to stoke the embers of your personal passion.

Now, I am not judging this path. I would like you to consider however, that the path is not the same path you set out on when you began your career some 20 years ago. There are very few of us who want to repeat the first half of our lives during the second half -only older.

Although it may seem to you like you are managing with your career the way it is going at the moment, I invite you to imagine you are strategizing that time when you are ready to recalibrate your career, work fewer hours and turn some of your focus out to traveling, volunteering, and family. So often I find that women who entered the workforce in the 1980’s and configured themselves to fit the corporate world have adapted so well (isn’t that what women do after all, collaborate?) that it simply doesn’t occur to them to ask for something different. Certainly stress is evident. If you raised a family during your career you will remember feeling guilty for either not being at home or at work depending on where you were at that moment. When you cared for your parents too. You could see there was a deadline on the time you could spend with your parents even more clearly than with the kids.

Perhaps you did ask for an “accommodation” at work. If you did and were a respected contributor you probably got some slack and you were most likely stigmatized for it. And, you know what, you probably believed to some degree that the stigma was justified. You just weren’t as focused as usual during your chemo, for goodness sake!

Over the course of the next few postings, I will lay out a plan for you to RECALIBRATE your career. It turns out that you CAN have everything and you've already earned it!

2007-03-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

A TIME TO LAUGH

Every time people are in a stressful situation and someone tells a joke, it instantly lightens everyone up. Amusement is key when releasing and working on making changes in your life. Being too serious and in effort, your mood becomes heavy and your outlook can become down or depressed. It may even feel like you are walking through quicksand and just getting stuck. When you are feeling down or depressed or stressed, it is key to focus on what you want and not on what you don't want.

Take the multitudes of observations on women in the executive suite. At one time, job equity totally consumed the way I worked. It was many years before it dawned on me that the way most jobs are structured, job equity is not so alluring afterall. Mounting frustration about the quality of my life brought me to the real issue: not more, as I had always thought but what form of more it could be. Now, granted, I became enlightened as it became clear that job equity was not happening in my career and as the demands of my personal life remained 80% mine to manage. The fact is that most women in the workforce are non-poster girls for the executive suite anyway. This was true when I began my career in the 1980's and it is even more true today as benefits are down, new jobs are in the low paying service sector and increasing independence from men means more dependence on uncertain job security. Women are not gaining access to executive positions in any proportion to their entry into the workforce.

What's so funny is that I realized that for me CAREER was a job that had gone on too long. What returned my focus in life to laughter was my family. No matter how tired I was or how stressed, I found a reason to smile every time I saw my kids or spoke to my folks. The more I smiled and laughed, the more energy I had to see things from a new perspective-- a clearer perspective too. I saw that the job market had been flexible enough to absorb me and all my cohorts while at the same time suppressing salaries and quashing labor demands across the board. Women in the workforce did not serve to upgrade social institutions with their new economic and political power. Equity, feminism -- both log jammed. And that provided me with enough comic relief to recalibrate my career. And with a smile on my face.

2007-02-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

Have you had the flu yet? Well, I can tell you that our family flu this year has provided me with some great recalibration and self-reinvention time. One of the great benefits has been discovering the art of negotiation as more than a tactic in hostage standoffs.

To begin with, I spend a lot of time negotiating with myself nowhere more evident than in trying to balance myself when the house has been turned into an infirmary. Big and small, I struggled with compromises that included deciding whether to let them play DS rather than sleep or whether I should call in sick to work or tap my spouse to do nurse duty (which he refused to do during the day, no matter what). According to economist Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon, women are 2.5 times more likely than men to feel a "great deal of apprehension" about negotiating. Apparently we will go to great lengths to avoid the bargaining process, so I am not alone.

But of course, negotiation is part skill and part art. It can be learned and perfected. And the most important part of negotiation is being prepared. In my work I employ a strategy of "Principled Negotiation," which seeks to move both parties away from polarizing and usually entrenched positions into the realm of getting each party's interests met.

The first step in preparing to negotiate is to learn to listen. Those who know me will remember that I often write the word Listen on the bottom of alternate pages in my notebook. Since I am prone to doing a core dump of everything I know on a subject causing my audience to glaze over from the ramblings, Listen is the most important word on the page. In my youth I argued that I had a particular gift in paying attention and intuitively gleaning what someone was trying to say very quickly. What I had to learn was that paying attention is also about letting the person speaking "feel" heard. Really paying attention to what the other person is saying is hard. You can practice listening many times a day. Give it a try.

First of all, stand still or better yet, sit down. Don't start a conversation if you don't have time to really listen. Try these first two tactics for a few days and check back for more tips. Remember, being the first one to listen is crucial to building trust.

2006-12-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

Women invented the division of labor. And we wonder why the division of labor is so often skewed against us. Let's go back a few thousand (or hundred thousand) years ago and see what happened.

I learned in my college anthropology course that in pre-agricultural societies there was a clear division of labor between men and women. Men hunted and women gathered. Today, in a paper just published in "Current Anthropology" Steve Kuhn and Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona, proposed that this division of labor happened early in the species history, and that it is what enabled modern humans to expand their population at the expense of Neanderthals.

It appears that Neanderthals developed little or no specialisation skills and no division of labor. This means that they weren't able to capitalise on converting the skins of the big game they hunted into making clothing for themselves. It means that they did not hunt and eat small game, nor did they collect nuts and grains. According to Kuhn and Stiner, signs of the division of labor come only with the arrival of modern humans into Europe 40,000 years ago. It is commonly understood that the men were stronger and faster -- thus the hunters. Women were occupied with child rearing.

If it were the division of labor that gave humans the evolutionary edge over Neanderthals and it was women who multi tasked between gathering plants, hunting small game and making clothing and shelter during the colder times of the year which is clearly specialisation--- it isn't much of a leap to concur with Kuhn and Stiner to "assign to women the main role in establishing the antecedents of modern economics, and thus launching the process of growth that continues to this day."

2006-12-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

Have you tried your kid's Ritalin yet? I had just such an opportunity to loot my elderly mother's medicine cabinet a couple of years ago. This was right around the time that the show I most Tivo'd was "Desparate Housewives" and my aha moment arrived in the form of Lynette Scavo who was stressed out and harasssed enough in her supermom role to down her son's medicine.

As I recall, that time, I hightailed it to my local organic grocer to stock up on chamomile homeopathics to cope with the stress of family and work. You can't overdose on homeopathics. I checked into it. But ADHD -attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a diagnosis on the rise for women according to author Sari Solden. She has written a book, "Women with Attention Deficit Disorder" which asserts that millions of women are suffering and cannot get the help they need. Given that the American market alone for ADD drugs is already worth over $3 billion, if women begin to get the help Solden suggests they desparately need, the potential market will double.

The frequency of diagnosis and treatment of children and ADD is a contentious battlefield. But even a middle of the road opinion that this disorder exists allows that people under stress (including mothers going out to work) may be quick to say they have it. The December 9th issue of The Economist describes the global plight of women who say they have trouble focusing their attention for long enough to deal with the problem. "Even in countries where the syndrome is recognised among children, it is hard for women to be treated for ADHD." Whether the problem stems from lack of understanding, skepticism, religious beliefs or presumed hypochondria, the growing number of women coming forward portends a new feminist cause.

2006-11-20T16:56:00.000-08:00

According to the New York Times: In 2005, women working full time had median weekly earnings of $585 or 81 percent of the median weekly earnings of men. In 1979, women earned 63 percent as much as men.

Enough said.

2006-11-17T16:19:00.000-08:00

Returnees have a spring in their step according to the October 7th issue of The Economist. In Ireland, they enjoy a 10% wage premium over their stay-at-home compatriots. In China, they receive more grants and fellowships than their domestic counterparts. A third of Taiwan's companies were founded by returnees from America. Oh, did you think I was talking about women returning to work after an interruption in their careers?

Would that I was! The talent elite everywhere has in common that it is more mobile than the rest. Most developed countries are already struggling to find enough doctors and teachers, and are wondering how they will manage when the baby-boomer generation retires. The Economist says that, "Developing countries, for their part, realize that they will not be able to plug into the global knowledge economy unless they give their people the freedom to move around." But women who want to contribute to businesses are routinely forced out when they attempt to "move around."

Companies are beginning to become aware of the need to gather and retain talent. "The first rule is to think more carefully about their critical talent." Unfortunately, The Economist article fails to identify the potential talent windfall for companies who pay attention to the many women they lost to attrition. Many of these women represented the critical talent of their time and if given a chance to work on projects part time or in some flexible ways would contribute straight to the bottom line. They would likewise need less breaking in than a new recruit. Booz Allen, IBM and Deloitte have already begun to cultivate an internal market for talent. Often, companies do not have corporate officers assigned responsibility for talent attraction and retention. One thing is for sure.

The notion that arrangements for one person of talent must be made available to the general employment pool is outdated. In order to buttonhole stars, the deal needs to be customized. According to McKinsey, "tacit" jobs-- ones that require complex interactions and a high level of judgement have grown three times as fast as employment in general including transcational and manufacturing jobs. That means that about 70% of new jobs created in the last 8 years require tacit interaction. I understand the potential landmines of making deals for superstars but it is a method of attracting talent that American business invented. And the truth is that talent is ruled by inequalities. It is not equally distributed across age, gender, or country.

I do happen to know a couple of talented doctors and teachers who represent the "passive candidate pool." They are quietly raising their children and running the volunteer organization at the library. The line forms here.

2006-11-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

Been hitting the holiday boutique circuit early this year. What I see behind many of the jewelry tables and handcrafted baby bibs are incredibly talented women. I always ask them if this is the training they got in college or if handcrafted giftware is a second career. So far I have met an attorney, a chemist and a several former teachers. One thing they all have in common is that they are mothers who left their first careers to care for their families. Not one of these women can conceive of how they could have crafted a work schedule that would have allowed them to remain in their chosen careers. Everyone of them is hard working, multi-tasking, loyal, clever and entrpreneurial. Last I checked these are the keywords management is looking for when they discuss attraction and retention strategies for their departments.

Funny thing is that when you look at a professional's work day and compare discretionary time available to what a mother has available to apply to her small business you see how similar they are. Due to meetings and interruptions, the average employee in an office has about 2.5 hours of discretionary time. The time is fragmented and represents less than 25% of the work day. A mother has similar uncontrollable interruptions including visitors, phone calls, crises and a to-do list that would take longer to complete than there are hours available. The glimmer of a solution for both employee and mother is to gain control of more of the day. One way I can recommend is to plan the day in advance and to estimate how long it will take to complete the tasks on hand. Estimating how long a task will take allows you to prioritize and drop tasks that you know in advance won't get handled. This is actually quite a relief as it cuts out the worrying you would have been doing all day about that task.

From a big picture vantage point, I want businesses to see that tasking a talented woman in her field of interest for a focused period of time offers benefits for both. I look at these women running their businesses at the holiday boutiques and recognize that they are achievers. They don't just work hard at work. They think about their work a lot of the time. They also acknowledge the value of paying attention to their families or their health (they all looked fit to me). In short, they are fully engaged with the task at hand. Who knew, a "happy workaholic!" I encourage business leaders to reach out to the valued employees they want to keep and find a way to configure the business at hand to engage the vast talent pool represented by professionals who are available fewer hours. They create value for the world wherever they are -- hire them for what they can bring to our business ideals!

2006-10-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Motherhood-plus-paid-employment is a gritty juggling act. A lot has been said about the Aha moment that will somehow deliver us from stress. I prefer to check in more frequently to moderate my stress before it gets out of control. Mothers at home and at work know instantly whether something they are doing is right for the business or right for the family. The one question that will probably require more insight and reflection is whether a decision is right for oneself. Now, I know it is far easier to just get busy and stay busy than to reflect on taking some time on your own. My current solution to this is to lay in bed first thing in the morning and shove my to do list to the side while I check in with how I am feeling, to sense what things are important to address today. This is very different from blasting through the list. This is listening time -- listening to what is inside me to get a feeling for what is true and right. No critics are allowed in during this morning time reflection. Self criticism is an especially tough bird to keep out, but I am finding it worth the effort. One benefit of a busy life is that some decisions get made or fade away due to inattention. If I am too busy to return a call, I am probably dodging another volunteer opportunity or social event I would only half enjoy. By holding some internal listening time for myself I notice I am becoming a better listener throughout the day. When I stop typing and face my son to really listen to him, he visibly relaxes and gets to the point. Hhmm, less stressful for him and for me. Ohhmm....

2006-10-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

October 16 blog

Today while on vacation for a few days I had a revelation. The reading material I was passing my time with represented the Grand Trine of my life at the moment. By the pool, I read with interest the November issue of Oprah Magazine which is full of a great number of how to gems. I didn’t pause long on How to Tell a Joke or How to Be Sexy. What really caught my eye was How to Bake a Killer Vanilla Cake and How to Be a Good Listener. I am not a baker and am an even worse listener, but I aspire to improve at both!

When I came to rest on the cool patio out of the sun, I picked up Mary Lou Quinlan’s right-on tome of the successful woman businesswoman who can’t quite figure out how to step gracefully off of the gerbil wheel, Time Off for Good Behavior. http://www.timeoff4goodbehavior.com/pages/aboutbook.htm This book is a running description of everything I have been doing and thinking since I was in elementary school! How did she get her hands on my journal? Not that I was that self aware until recent years. Quinlan diagrams the journey of us Type A good girls who came of age with the woman who brings home the bacon, cooks it up and looks gorgeous all the while. We didn’t know then what we have come to know now. Woman’s corporate travels have completed the phase of getting our foot in the door and are now focused on contributing in the ways we know best and keeping the pressure on change for the better at work.

The third and least uplifting of my reading material sat heavily at the bedside where I dipped into it only late at night and before an afternoon nap. The Overachievers, The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by New York Times best selling author Alexandra Robbins, chronicles the burdens our high school students heave in the name of getting into a “good” school. See www.alexandrarobbins.com/theoverachievers We have two teenagers in a very competitive private high school where ivy aspirations are the norm and the students and their parents are in concert trying to achieve the right resume for early admission to the very best schools in the country. It was our headmaster who mentioned the book as required reading last month at the Parent Association Meeting. He truly understands what the kids are going through and what role the school plays in supporting the current admissions paradigm (i.e. AP classes, Yearbook Editor, Athletic lettering and four digit Philanthropy hours).

Yup, that about sums it up for my life at the moment—have we passed the workaholic gene on to the next generation? How well did it serve us to keep our focus on the job and forgo vacations, personal time and our children’s early days? I know my wake up came when I became caregiver to my parents at the end of their lives. Who knew when I left for the coast at 23 that it would be 25 years until I spent good quality time with my folks? Will one of my daughters yearn to bake a killer vanilla cake when she turns 50 or can we hope the next generation will figure out work life balance somewhere between college and middle age?

2006-09-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Estelle Ramey was a funny and credible chief investigator on the similarities and differences between genders. Her wit was priceless and her career in endocrinology made her an expert on the subject. Like the other great woman we lost this past week, Ann Richards, Ramey punched many a hole in sexist dogma. What strikes me today is the continuing dogma surrounding how physiological gender differences affect political and societal roles. Ramey once stated, "I am appalled at the fact that men have not studied the differences between males and females for their own advantage." Thirty years later, that statement still stands.

Much has been written and studied on the manner in which women collaborate at work; how they multitask; and how little they stick up for one and other. What if we did a little scientific research into women's hardwiring to nurture and caretake and used the stats to support appropriate career tracking for professional women who elect it? Thank goodness today's working woman doesn't have to defend her storming hormones as Ramey did in 1970 when she challenged the Democratic National Convention official who asserted that women were unfit for the presidency or for handling emergencies such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. She pointed out that our president who had handled the missile crisis in fact also had a chronic, severe hormonal imbalance, Addison's disease.

Discrimination is a condition of ignorance. The more we understand the differences between men and women, the more educated our decisions about tasking them becomes. The press is loaded these days with examples of highly talented women who are still on the partner track while taking some time to focus on family or personal matters. It is companies in the industries that are hard-pressed to replace retiring baby boomers who are leading the flexibility charge. While I am always one to understand that pain begets gain, I ask us now to consider making the bold changes in professionalism that Ramey and Richards spoke on when challenging society's myths on gender differences. As Ramey once responded years ago, " I would rather be a chairman (than chairperson). They make more." Ask a professional at the height of their career if they want to make more or have time and make a little less and the answer will often be the latter. Now, that's progress.

2006-09-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Although it might seem like a business's wildest dreams to have willing employees available at a moment's notice, a new report by Rutgers University School of Business says that employers may be liable for encouraging addiction.

Gayle Porter, an associate professor of management at the university said "Information and Communication Technology addiction has been treated by policy makers as a kind of elephant in the room... everyone sees it, but no one wants to acknowledge it directly. Owing to vested interests of the employers and the OCT industry signs of possible addiction, excess use of ICT and related stress illnesses, are often ignored". http://ur.rutgers.edu/medrel/viewArticle.html?ArticleID=5284

Well, anyone with children can attest to how addicting electronics are for kids. Once a kid is logged in to his DS, PS, Tamagotchi or Xbox, never mind the television or internet-- they are in a trance. In order to break the trance, the parent must risk a range of reactions from their progeny ranging from blank stares to outright hostility at being disconnected. Come to think of it, I have seen a similar reaction from my spouse during football season and Survivor.

The point here is that self awareness and self control are the keystones to using a Blackberry or any other tether to work. That said, I must admit to a compulsive habit of logging on every chance I get. Recently, I began to log the minutes I spend logging on and keying in to my several mail accounts, my website and a couple of favorites on the internet. I haven't tallied the minutes yet, but it's already looking like I put in a lot of time. This is still preferable to doing much of this commincation on the phone like we used to do. Phone time is for significant interactions with clients, press and marketing support.

Addicting? No doubt about it. To me constant connection with work is the natural progression from the what the baby boomers invented as workaholism. At the time, we travelled in to the office every day, stayed late, came in on the weekends. The addictive behavior isn't new, but the flexibility afforded by remote access is potentially a good thing. If it can shave hours off a commute, get you out of the office on time or sometimes and improve response time, both morale and productivity should improve.

2006-09-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

What 40 hour work week? The time and space of the 40 hour work week has exploded according to John Challenger, president and CEO of Challneger, Gray & Christmas outplacement firm in Chicago. "We not only do our work at the office, but we do it at home, on the road or on vacation." And that's not all bad.

Thanks to techonology, the dedicated professional is working more efficiently than ever before. It is the flexibility of being mobile that allows a parent to take a family member to the doctor or to attend a child's event during the weekday. Touching base from vacation at the very least points to the fact that the individual is on vacation and not allowing earned time off to go unused.

Take family leave for example. There is no national policy on the time a new parent can take when they have a new child. Scores of new parents manage to cobble together a plan with their employer and FMLA. Each plan is unique and negotiated. And whether it involves changing jobs, moving, taking unpaid time off or returning to work, parenting marches on. In fact, it is parenting that is so compelling that a new parent will go to bat to get some time off even risking or changing jobs to do what feels right for their family. Not so with most other circumstances such as caring for an elderly parent. I used to work for a guy who put his dad in a nursing center in the midWest, far from the East Coast city Dad lived his entire life in. My boss had a rationale: "I am more likely to visit my dad if he is in a city that I crisscross when travelling for work." I remember him saying he saw his dad about three times that year.

I can't help wondering what would happen if we all began to negotiate for balance in our working hours with the same passion that surfaces at the birth of our children. With CFO Magazine citing that personnel, salaries and skilled labor are the things on most CFO's minds, what if talent retention simply hinged on some flexibility during the transition times of our lives?

2006-08-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Let's face it. The workforce just isn't getting any younger. And though our aging population creates challenges for workers, employers and government policy makers, there are some real economic opportunities to be had. By now, you know about the impending retirement of boomers and the smaller size of younger generations labor pool.

A new report from The Urban Institute, "Work and Retirement: Facts and Figures," outlines the availability of older workers, benefits of delaying retirement and challenges for employers in implementing programs for older workers. From part time work to self employment and including the transition from physical labor to congitive work, the demographics point to increased economic output for individuals and employers who take steps now to attract and retain older workers. http://www.urban.org/publications/900985.html

If all workers delayed retirement by five years, the additional Social Security taxes would offset more than half of the Social Security shortfall projected for 2045. The additional government revenue from both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes would far exceed the size of the Social Security deficit. Money talks, I think.

2006-08-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

"The work family duel can fuel poor outcomes for children -- tomorrow's workers." So says Jodie Levin-Epstein in her new report published by CLASP: Center for Law and Social Policy. http://www.clasp.org/publications/getting_punched_fullnotes.pdf In the course of one's career there are two kinds of time off that affect our ability to stay on the job. More companies need to acknowledge that replacing workers at any level in the organization is less attractive than retaining the trained staff already at work. One kind of time that stops the work clock temporarily is Work Leave, which includes paid sick days, personal or vacation days, and leave for family and medical reasons. The United States ranks low in all these categories and the story just keeps getting worse. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, access to paid sick days dropped from 69 percent to 56 percent; paid holidays dropped from 96 percent to 89 percent and paid vacations dropped from 98percent to 95 percent for employees in medium and large firms between 1988 and 1997. See http://www.bls.gov/data/home/htm

The second type of clock time is Flexibility, which is responsive scheduling that responds to the needs of employees and includes the number of hours on the job, their predictability, and the start and stop times of the workday. You've heard me on the subject of how straightforward is the case for flexible, responsive scheduling. It enhances attraction and retention of high talent. It helps address the challenge of upcoming skill gaps and talent shortages due to an aging workforce.

And how about the children? Parents are working more hours. Parents who work typically feel their children are deprived of their time. Childcare arrangements are often stressful resulting in poor health for children and parents. Parents with paid leave are five times more likely to care for their ill children. There is a correlation between children's success at school and their parents' work schedules. The Leave No Child Behind program caused a few states to enact laws allowing workers time off for parental involvement in school but overall the parents have gotten left behind because their workplace is not responsive to their scheduling needs.

Levin-Epstein throws down the gauntlet for the Government to do it's part for working families. By fostering family friendly solutions the nation stands to retain and regain global competitiveness and create a future for high productivity even as the workforce ages. The high road is perfectly capable of generating profits but the impetus for businesses to take the high road presents an opportunity for the Government to lead the way. It has already done so in the federal agencies which are models for flexible workplaces.

Where is the leadership? The time for balanced hours is now.

2006-08-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

You don't hear as much about the glass ceiling anymore. It seems that women have taken on the responsibility for not getting to the top positions in corporate America. Sure there are still the softer, subtler but pervasive barriers to advancement but it seems that fast tracking - presuming women are willing to give it their all -- is the key to getting that top position. Unfortunately it is such barriers that are keeping the economy from growing to its full potential. Let's say that women are willing to sacrifice their career advancement for a time. What is to prevent a full return to the fast track? Perhaps there is a way. Many women find that when they are ready to reenter the workforce full time and full bore, they are relegated to lower level positions. Although it is a rough road, there are plenty of women who have been successful at climbing back up the corporate ladder from this lower rung. I have clients who have negotiated high profile (but low paying) good for the company/department positions by promising to return to full time eventually. Their management bought into the investment for the short term and were paid back in time. Of course, these women never really caught up in the earnings bucket but they are ok with that. It is a little like compounding in your IRA. If you take a loan out against your IRA, it will be tough to make up the earnings you have foregone. Given that women make up over 50% of the job market, of course it is good for the economy to consider the needs of women in the workforce. The myth that you could have it all or do it all gave way to take your choice -- work or family. The time is right for another correction in the job market. It isn't fair to say that the imbalance is the men's fault, the glass ceiling or women's lack of dedication that makes it so hard to balance work and family. What is called for is a mapping of what businesses can do to attract and retain the best talent and a chance for individuals to assess how they can work at various junctures in their careers.

2006-07-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

"If alpha moms are rolling, professional alpha women are stalling," according to Maureen Dowd, in her wonderful new book Are Men Necessary? Rather than trying to survive the serious humiliation heaped upon successful women like Hillary and Martha to make way for Success, Part 2, Dowd claims that women are choosing to focus their considerable talent and attention on their family life. Every culture on the globe has it's methods for keeping women down. American women are professionally beaten down and then allowed to rise up and be rewarded with a second chance. For those who get beaten down at about the same time that they start their families, opting out is common and the family becomes the arena for their organizing and managing talents.

These days when an alpha woman marries it is often to an alpha male. When children arrive, she becomes an alpha mom who sports alpha muscles while driving her alpha SUV ferrying her alpha kids to their scary number of organized activities. Her alpha husband flourishes in the alpha zone of corporate culture.

Imagine, if these women were able to work a reduced hours schedule in their established professional careers. What if these women and mothers parsed out their attention units equally between kids and careers? Perhaps the battlegrounds -- both office and home would break out in peace. Mom, no longer guilty and worn out, would not surrender to her picky toddler's demands for mac and cheese at every meal. Professional women would no longer be abandoned by the other women in the office who work full time and overtime hours. Their commitment would not need to be measured by their corporate climbing but by the quality of the work delivered.

Another by- product would be that the men and fathers would benefit too. If men like to run things because they are left brain dominant and full of testosterone, they will always be more assertive, willing to take risks and will continue to walk off with the prize. Many writers have pointed out the stats on women who are willing to trade rank and money for the ability to be excellent parents to their kids. Most of these women would like to cycle in and out of their careers while they manage their caretaking roles. Several companies have already succeeded in supporting women managing their schedules flexibly. The stats on men balancing work and family obligations show the men are a no-show. Fathers reap the benefit of being able to focus at work rather than awkwardly trying to remember if this is their night to pick up the dinner and kids. The family unit benefits when the duties are distributed to eager participants.

I am a feminist and I truly believe that Carly, Bernadine, Geraldine, Jill and Diana are all professional women of true power and leadership. I also know that women trying to make a mark in corporate culture are still rapelling a steep cliff face. If women are willing to collaborate at work, billions of dollars of productivity are at stake. As a result, women will advance at a steady pace -- something that is creeping along so far. The ramifications for business, men, women and children are just mind boggling. Guys! Are you listening? The sexes can each do it on their own terms!

2006-07-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

My self worth isn't tied up in my achievement. This was my mantra when I first adjusted my professional life to fit in raising a few kids. What I meant at the time was that I wanted to work and to continue to contribute professionally and I believed I was capable of doing so. What I was willing to forego was some prestige, a promotion and my pride. I exhibited a fair amount of desire to control both my work and personal lives. In all my years of going full throttle I had never caught up with all the things I wanted to do. My outlook was realistic. I was just redistributing the pie.

The first dozen years of raising a family found me directing my inner chaos as follows: school board (preschool, of course), Girl Scout cookie chair (three years in a row), professional golf lessons for the seven year old, a university professor to instruct my 11 year old in writing, a home based business (for "pin money") and domestic skill building (folding fitted sheets with the corners tucked into each other), a kitchen remodel ( and a magazine feature to go with it), care for my aging parents ( doctors, dementia and cross country relocation) and lots of spiritual questing (kaballah, meditation, flower essences). Still not close to catching up but with a workaholic's sense of destiny, I became a whole person.

What I have discovered is that I am very invested in my achievement -- both the internal and external. It is who I am as well as what I do that defines my achievement.

2006-07-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested recently that perhaps women have hit a wall in the amount of work they can stuff into a week. The combination of paid work and personal and family time has brought with it a moving target of third party support. Fathers have stepped in to help with the children and household help has been hired to do the housework. One of my personal contributions has been reducing the number of hours I sleep each night. I figure that adds a couple of hours to my day and I try to catch up by sleeping in on weekends when there isn't a soccer game on Saturday morning. This, of course, isn't exactly as I had planned it. My earlier view of the schedule included lots of household help, some childcare help and me firmly grasping the corporate ladder. I studied, worked and married later to provide for this vision. My participation in the labor force was restrained only when I published my view of how my work would be configured. The proposal was a sound one. For a period of five years, I would reduce my hours and pay between 35 and 50%. Even the benefits could be prorated. Only slightly daunted by corporate reluctance to read my proposal, I shopped it around until I finally found a buyer. I changed departments gladly and got to work. And it did work. There were many naysayers both in management and among my peers. But the plan succeeded for two reasons. The first is that I exhibited a Pollyana attitude when objections to my "deal" arose. As my mother would have suggested, I just kept a positive attitude and my nose to the grindstone. The second critical success factor was that I worked in a job where measurements and metrics reigned. I had numbers to achieve and if I hit them my performance review was good. Each fiscal year, I prepared a substantial plan and negotiated my numbers. It paid off. I worked in my chosen profession continuously for 20 years and half of it on a flexible schedule.

2006-07-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Today I've been thinking about professionalism. I learned from my dad whose profession was accounting at one of the big three accounting firms. Some of the things he taught me have been brushed off the table for professionals today. My father and mother were expected to socialize with the other members of the firm. They were each expected to have hobbies like golf and gardening to share with the other couples they knew. I can rember my dad looking over my first effort at writing a resume and suggesting that "reading" shouldn't be the only hobby listed. I needed to add something group oriented. A quick search through resumes posted today yielded no mention of persoanl interests.

My father was never expected to yield his vacation time either. Those two weeks each August were sacrosanct. We did often vacation with other families from the firm but it was my impression that the bonding of friendship was the only business of the trip. I believe my dad was passionate about his profession. During tax season we saw very little of him in the evening or on Saturday. He poured it on during those couple of months but could be counted on to be home by 6 every other evening of the year.

As I entered the work world intent on acting the professional, I did not distinguish general white collar corporate work from "the professions" - medicine, law or accounting. In retrospect this was around the time the MBA became the ticket for white collar professionalism and my corporate employer paid for mine. In return I did what my dad had done, I respected my company and industry. Shortly I had paid back my $20K worth of tuition several times over to my employer. Imagine my suprise then when I came to work with the expectation that I could slow my career down to focus for a few years on my child.

2006-07-03T22:58:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that our labor force is growing less than 1 percent annually, and the number of available workers between 25 and 44 will actually shrink in 2006. The need for qualified people forces companies to rethink their recruitment efforts, productivity incentives, benefit plans, work schedules and work processes, most of which were designed for a different generation of workers with different lifestyles and working conditions.”--When Work Works, Families and Work Institute.

Welcome to my first post on the subject of achieving some balance in your professional life. I have spent fifteen years working flexibly at large and small companies; as an employee and an independent contractor. While it wasn't always a graceful exercise, productive work got done and business objectives were met. At the same time, my personal objectives were also met. After investing years in my career, I was able to continue as a valued contributer at work without sitting in a 9-5 cubicle. I hear every day how reduced hours and flexible work schedules "can't work around here." My response is always the same -- what nonsense!