Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric created a stir at the SHRM conference in New Orleans this year by stating: “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”
He was addressing women specifically and speaking about their opportunities for promotion and growth within traditional corporate America. And, of course, he was criticized for taking this attitude, even though it is an accurate reflection of what traditional corporate America is like.
Where he was wrong was in not recognizing how rapidly that traditional world is crumbling.
The concept of work and life being somehow distinct from each other is a recent construct. There was no work/life balance in the 17th, 18th, 19th or for most of the 20th centuries. Work and life were integrated and no one would have even thought to separate out what portion of farm life, for example, was “life” and what portion was “work.” Wives and husbands and children worked together as family units, producing food, clothing, or operating a small family business. Roles were assumed and cast off as needed and whoever had the ability or skill needed at a particular time did what needed to be done. In most of the world this is still the case. It is only in developed nations that these artificial distinctions arose to meet the needs of factories where everyone had to be in a physical place for certain time frames in order for things to be made. It took England and the United States decades to get people accustomed to going to work at a particular time and staying for a fixed amount of time. The way we work today has never been an organic or natural way, and our fixation recently on work/life balance is only the latest manifestation of an old issue.
But, the good news is that we are moving back into a world where work and life are once again integrated, and technology makes this easier and easier. At the most exciting startups, men and women are seamlessly integrated into work that is all consuming at times. Project teams may work for hours and hours at a time, roles change as needs change, and leadership rotates as project requirements evolve. Much work can now be done remotely and more people can now work whenever and wherever they wish. They can be at home with their kids or spouse. They can be outdoors or indoors. And very often they can be physically far removed from the “office” whatever that is coming to mean. The emerging concept is that being in a certain place for a specific time is less important than achieving results and accomplishing goals.
There will always remain work that requires physical presence – whether it is making something, caring for an ill person, or fixing your drainpipe. But less and less work requires that and what remains may be done with greater flexibility and personalization than it is today.
Jack Welch was absolutely right if we are thinking about 20th century corporate life. But no one is going to be working in a traditional corprate environment within a very few years. Gen Y and those that follow will forge new territory and reinvent work – making it the engaging experience it should be where friends and families interact together all the time, teach each other, share workloads, and find emotional connections that have been purged from corporate life as we have known it.
