Inspired Manager

Back in the 80’s there was this pivotal work published in the Harvard Business Review by Felice N. Schwartz, called Management Women and the New Facts of life, in which she called for women in management with families to make choices between either being on the career track or on the mommy track (she is credited with coining that phrase).

"It's an illusion, she said, to think that you can have it all."

Well, I remember hearing lots of intense opinion over the article, either for or against. It was volatile, but she did have a point that needed to be said then, and pioneered the idea of companies making their cultures more family-friendly. It was received as an all-or-nothing call, but really what she was saying was beyond the obvious.

"It's an illusion," she said, "to think that you can have it all. If what you want is to focus on your career and compete for the top, then you're going to have to spend less time with your children - a trade-off that many men have been making for decades, and not always happily. Conversely, if you want to make raising your children the highest priority, then you're going to have to accept some impact on your career, at least temporarily."

Jim Moriarty, CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, wrote a great article at the opening of the April 2010 edition of Making Waves, their member newsletter. Jim and the Foundation are friends of Tangram and our Studio did their offices in San Clemente with custom office furniture that was designed for their unique culture. He used the example in the environmental movement of being ‘in’ or ‘out’.

“When we force things into clean, binary categories, we may win a small battle but lose the war. It makes it more difficult to create great shifts in society, and in this case, move toward an environmentally conscious lifestyle. Once we take the time to understand something, we start to recognize the nuances.”

The either-or paradigm is called the Sucker’s Choice in the book Crucial Conversations.

“What makes these Sucker’s Choices is that they’re always set up as only two options available. It’s the worst of either/or thinking. The person making the choice never suggests there’s a third option that doesn’t call for unhealthy behavior.”

The question better could be “how can I have it all?”, or “how can I dial up or dial down the elements in my life to achieve the balance I need?” It really is a question of degrees. What can I do or what do I need to get more of what I want in my own life?

There was an explosion after Ms. Schwartz’s article that prompted degrees of reform, the benefits of which are still being felt today. So after the hard stance, the process of understanding and nuance began and other possibilities fleshed out into new practices that made the culture of organizations more relevant.

So, either you take the binary stance and then you move to understanding and nuance or you start with understanding and nuance? Just kidding. Stay open to possibility. This is a very current topic!