Work-life imbalance has been a tradition for a long time, with work weighing more than other life aspects – which means that most of our life activities gravitate towards work related activities. When freed up from work, we often find it quite difficult, just after downing tools, to adjust to other life activities such as leisure, spending time with friends and family.
Ironically, after spending some time in leisure, we then dread going back to work. Is this rat race culture sustainable?
More often than not, when in the mix of things with work, we often miss out on the beauty that life has to offer as we get stuck in chasing deadline after deadline with expectations of high levels of accuracy and precision. A small error can go penalized as lack of competency, regardless of how much effort one has put into their work. This then creates an environment of terror and frustrations all round – and learning becomes even more difficult.
Who is to blame? There is an all-round expectation for quality outputs and outcomes – i.e., the customer wants their product or service to be performing seamlessly. So, one could say the customer is the problem, but is a customer really a problem? What if the seller has promised super quality outputs to the customer, is the customer really to blame?
The problem might actually be the seller, since the seller wants to be seen as better and make more than his rival. Is it then a power thing? If I am more powerful than my rival, to who’s good is it, if the very same people on my side are suffering? Is it really worth it?
I think most organizations miss the sweet spot, where diversity across organizations can be made to be beautiful and make for healthy snorkelling cultures which are collaborative in nature. Individuals in teams are likely to appreciate the scenery and last longer in the organizations, and not feel endangered like the turtle population.
Errors and mistakes made while on the job can be seen as alternative views and lessons in being innovative. The challenge is that the turtle snorkel culture seems like it can’t be attained – and it is not clear who is resisting the change harder. The customer or the seller? The seller has the responsibility to educate the customer and maybe the seller should invest in interventions on expectations the customer should have. These interventions should drill down to the value systems which make an entire organization appreciate not only the survival, but the thriving of the threatened species and encourage bale teams to enjoy the snorkelling experience.
#coaching #valuesystems #highachievers #businesscoaching #topofmindthursdays