I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

‘Work Less!’ Global Companies Tell Top Managers

A Harvard Business Review study found that half of male executives and 80% of female execs working 60 hours a week or more said they would not be able to keep it up for more than a year.

By Reuters
InformationWeek

March 20, 2007 08:32 AM
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198100104

I am optimistic about increasing workplace energy. Here are some interventions with promise. Siesta rooms, scheduling that respects Hans Selye’s stress curve, availability of fresh drinking water and cups to drink it, regular breaks, flextime sheduling, listening and implementing employee input when practical so they have some sense of control and feel like stakeholders. Available whole foods in a little cafeteria. Even having treadmill desks http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-07-office-fit_x.htm?csp=34
(I love this link) and a culture that strongly supports the use of them. Flow inspired design features in the physical environment.

Hey, even pay above minimum wage would be a plus. If you aren’t working two jobs you probably have a shot at getting a decent night’s sleep. Who was it that said that there are hygiene factors and that if you remove impediments to employee satisfaction, at least you aren’t dragging them down. I’ve experienced both scenarios, a rigid bureaucracy and a flexible friendly environment and the latter was superior for my energy and performance.

So there are practical, implementable and replicable possibilities.

You always come up with these great pearls of wisdom! Yeah, Energy is the ticket. I have put in a few work weeks of around 84 hours +/- during my military service and I can attest that I wasn’t very productive. The fact is no matter how gung ho you are, fatigue makes lazy buggers of us all. We had some very driven individuals but by the end of a 12 hour midnight shift, they were pretty useless. Clearly there are limits to the human body’s stress response.

I know that my attention plummeted and I wonder how fighter pilots whose lives depend upon precise and accurate thinking and responding can push themselves to exhaustion.

Kicking around these ideas with you guys is very rewarding.

Great article. I loved your analogy to production — and the steps along the way that ensure the right outcome. The energy idea Kathryn raises is so important… and so much of what is done in organizations actually zaps energy rather than heightening it!

Thanks for raising these issues,
Christine

What I’m finding to be the best talking point for business managers is “energy.” Energy is what makes productivity so elastic. It’s a good term because management can see that energy can’t be mandated. They can tell employees that they are under 7-day mandatory over-time without perceiving how absurd it is. They can’t imagine saying, “Be more energetic!” in the same commanding way.

I like Loehr & Schwartz’s statement that companies should manage energy, not time, making sure that periods of intense energy are matched with periods of recovery and recreation. One of my clients likens it to lifting weights — if you lift them every day, your muscles don’t grow because they don’t have a chance to respond to the stress of the earlier exercise. She has seen this in her fellow participants in strength training.

In my experience, people who believe in what they are doing, see goals as being within their reach, and have some control over how they reach them accomplish much more in less time than the same people working without these qualities.

Kathryn

Thought you might find this article interesting:

http://www.meaning.ca/archives/presidents_columns/pres_col_mar_2007_great-worker.htm