Team Maintenance

Photo by rkramer62

We have all been there before. We decide to go on a diet. Or start working out. Or spend more time with the family. It starts out great. We go to the gym 4 times a week. We eat only an apple for five days. We manage to get home three times in the first week before 7PM. We see results. But then, something happens. We stop. Life takes its toll on us. We can’t seem to prioritize our decision anymore. The way our life is built is not supporting our decisions. These decisions will not work in a vacuüm. They must be incorporated into our life, slowly, but surly. Otherwise, it is just to hard to deliver results.

Teamwork is just the same. We think that if we only concentrate on the results, on the task or the issues at hand, everything will be fine. And then we go into a spiral, where the task demands more and more time. And what gets left behind? The team. It’s culture, it’s structure, the interactions between the people.

We have so much work on our hands that “working on the team culture and processes” seem like an indulgence. Who has time for that? We have real work to do. So what do we do, we go to some team building exercise in the woods, where we pull ropes for a day and feel like we worked on our teamwork.

But that is just like going to the gym for a week. Very painful in the short run and not very helpful in the long run.

Every research ever done on the subject of teams suggests that real high performing teams require maintenance. It is enough to focus on the task at hand and on the deliverables. Teams are made of people, and people form relationships. And these relationships, just like our personal relationships, need to be maintained all the time. And they need a setting and environment that supports them. Otherwise, they became a relationship on paper.

Jon Gordon writes in his blog today:

Whether we’re talking sports, business, education, healthcare, etc. the key to success is to build a winning team first. Of course this seems obvious but with increasing pressure to reach certain targets and goals and a challenging economy it’s easy for leaders and their teams to become outward focused on numbers and outcomes rather than inward focused on building the right environment, culture, attitude and synergy.

We must remember that it’s not the numbers that drive the people but the people and team that drive the numbers.

Yes, it is about choosing the right people. About creating the right process. About creating a supporting environment and culture.  Like so many things in life, sometimes the best way to reach our goal, in this case the results, is to not focus on them. The indirect approach.

Just like every person needs to incorporate weekly thinking-time into his schedule, so does a team need to set maintenance time to work on its effectiveness (and not on the results). Time to talk about how the team is doing. Time to get to know each other. Time to reflect about the team’s purpose and every individual’s role in it.

Like starting a diet or going to the gym, there is no one who will do it for you. If you are a team member demand it, make it a part of the culture, of the norm. Ignore those who make fun of you and insist. If you are a team manager, there is really no one else who has more influence on the team’s design and processes but you – and your team – if you let them…

It’s time for some team maintenance.

Elad

Should managers Push or Pull

Photo by Robert S. Donovan

A discussion in class yesterday prompted me to think about the subject of Push vs. Pull management. What does that mean? Ask yourself – when do you actively engage with your employees and when do you wait for them to come to you?

My guess is that for most managers, the instinct of when to push and when to pull is out of tune.

They tend to push criticism (not feedback), rules and answers.

They tend to pull feedback (that is, they give feedback only when asked to), recognition (yearly performance reviews, anyone?) and taking hurdles out of employees’ way (that is, wait until the employee comes to them with a problem).

One example. Do you have an open door policy or do you practice MBWA (management by walking around).

Another my favorite examples, resisting the temptation to give answers and to tell people what to do. Seth Godin wrote a few days ago:

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”

When asked, resist.

Instead of pulling people to ask you what they should do, resist the temptation to give answers and push back with some questions. Susan Docherty, who leads the United States sales, service and marketing team at General Motors, said, in an interview on the New York Times:

It’s one thing to say that you’re inclusive, but it’s a whole other thing to be inclusive. And when people come into my office, they feel welcome. My door is open. They can bring ideas. They begin to understand that, as a leader, I want to be collaborative. I don’t have all the answers or all the best ideas, nor do I want to.

You don’t have all the answer either. So, why not start asking great questions instead?

The ability to pull and push in the right times is critical. When do you push and when do you pull?

Elad

Greater than yourself

The greatest leaders are the ones who never call attention to their own greatness. They are the ones who focus their energies on making other people greater than themselves. It sounds like a paradox but it is really not.

I agree with the point (even if not with the use of the golden rule). I think it is another example of the obliquity of management. The indirect approach, focusing on something else than your actual goal, is sometimes the best way to reach that goal. Just a few days ago I wrote:

I just want to point out that in the case of managers that deal with people, their success lies in exactly the opposite situation. A great manager is one that helps his people succeed. By definition, a great manager is only a great manager because of someone else

Steve Farber says in the video to find one person to make greater than yourself. I say, if you are a manager, your role is to take every employee and make him perform the best he or she can. Better than yourself and better than himself or herself. Challenge them to be at their best.

Elad

The “other minds” problem

Photo by Guaciranaves

I the last few days I am reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, What the Dog Saw (one chapter every night) and I must admit it if a fascinating ride. However, up until now, what stuck with me the most is a paragraph in the first page of the book, as part of the preface:

This was actually a version of what I would later learn psychologists call the other minds problem. One-year-olds think that if their like Goldfish crackers, then Mommy and Daddy must like Goldfish Crackers, too: they have not grasped the idea what was inside their heads is different from what is inside everyone else’s head. Sooner or later, though, children come to understand that Mommy and Daddy don’t necessarily like Goldfish, too, and that moment is one of the great cognitive milestones of human development.

How many times in your life have your said or heard something like this: “I treat others this way, because that is the way I like to be treated”. Think about it. Seriously, how many of your daily decision are based on that rule of thumb – that what you like is what everybody likes too? It is even an important religious concept – “The Golden Rule” which we hear about all the time and which I wrote about in the past:

This is a good general concept and at a religious (and maybe political) level it is a smart rule. But the problem is that if you move into the world of management, this well intentioned rule leads you to bad managerial decisions (like many conventional wisdoms). Because, if we agree that we are all different it also means that we like and hate different things. This means, I may hate the way you like to be treated. And if I follow the rule (and treat you like I want to be treated), I will avoid giving you what you want.

Isn’t it time to reach that cognitive milestone in managerial development as well? Isn’t it time we understand that the people we work with are different from us and thus enjoy and appreciate different things? They don’t want to be managed like we do. They don’t want to be recognized like we do. They are not driven and motivated by the same thing we are driven and motivated by. They might absorb information differently than us. They are different and unique. Each and every one of them.

The people around us, our employees, our bosses, our peers, they all have “other minds”. The sooner we realize that, stop assuming and starting talking to them, the better equipped we will be to really start creating partnerships with them.

Elad

Who is responsible for a manager’s success?

Photo by orvalrochefort

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan – John F. Kennedy

Yesterday I wrote about heuristics and how one heuristic specifically, the illusion of control, is dangerous for managers and mangers need to overcome it if they want to really reach amazing results. Today I want to talk about another heuristic, which is part of the self-serving bias:

A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. The self-serving bias can be seen in the common human tendency to take credit for success but to deny responsibility for failure

You all know it and have experienced from both ends of the spectrum. When we succeed, it is due to our own talents and efforts. But when we fail, that is when the excuses come knocking. And it is always someone else’s fault.

Now, I am not trying to change the behavior of the entire human race, even though a little more accountability would not hurt to improve our society. I just want to point out that in the case of managers that deal with people, their success lies in exactly the opposite situation. A great manager is one that helps his people succeed. By definition, a great manager is only a great manager because of someone else. As I wrote before:

A manager is not a supervisor that just needs to make sure the work is done. A manager is a good manager when he makes people think; when he helps employees improve their abilities and capitalize on their strengths; when he supports their own self development, self-efficacy and sense of achievement; and when he helps them prepare for their next role

And this is a very hard concept to come to grasps with. In most of our education and through most of our lives we are programmed to think that our success is dependent only on our actions. If we study hard enough, if we work hard enough, if we do the right things we will succeed. The only one that is responsible for our success is us. That is what we are told from the minute we are children. And most of the time there is nothing wrong with that. It might even be a good thing. But then we become managers.

And what do we do?

We create mechanisms of control that will make sure that everything is done our way. We try to make sure everything is controllable, so it will depend on us.

But it doesn’t. Not anymore.

A manager needs to adopt a frame of mind that is contrary to this human nature. A frame of mind that says: my success is the result of the work of others, work that is not under my control and that actually thrives when I am not in control. Hey, who said being a manager is an easy job?

Listen to Tom Peters and take the hurdles out of employees’ way and let them make you successful.

Elad

Embrace the revolution – overcome the Illusion of control

Photo by Steven Snodgrass

In the last few days I have read a lot about heuristics. For those of you who still haven’t been exposed to this intriguing concept, here is a short definition from Wikipedia:

[A]n adjective for experience-based techniques that help in problem solving, learning and discovery. A heuristic method is particularly used to rapidly come to a solution that is hoped to be close to the best possible answer, or ‘optimal solution’. Heuristics are “rules of thumb“, educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense. A heuristic is a general way of solving a problem

We all use heuristics every day. We have to. If we had to think about every decision and process every input fully, we would be totally overwhelmed. So we use these intuitive rules to make quick decisions. From estimating distances according to how well we see the object to estimating numbers instead of doing complex calculation. From deciding we like someone because he reminds us of someone else we like to taking business risks because of over optimism in our abilities. And many times, these are great mechanisms (we sometimes want people to take risks… because this is how progress is created, so it is good to be a little over optimistic, for example). However, as the research of behavioral economics has taught us heuristics are not always a smart way to make decisions.

In his book, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Max Bazerman writes about one heuristic that sometimes goes wrong, The Illusion of Control:

People falsely believe that they can control uncontrollable events …, and they overestimate the extent to which their actions can guarantee a certain outcome… Evidence suggest that experienced dice players believe that “soft” throws are more likely to result in lower number being rolled…

Two other researchers, Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman, in an article in Harvard Business review, wrote the following paragraph:

Managers are also prone to the illusion that they are in control. Sometimes, in fact, they will explicitly deny the role of chance in the outcome of their plans. They see risk as a challenge to be met by the exercise of skill, and they believe results are determined purely by their own actions and those of their organizations. In their idealized self-image, these executives are not gamblers but prudent and determined agents, who are in control of both people and events.

Yes, you read it right. Managers have an illusion that they are in control of people. That their actions, more than anything else, will determine the success of the people around them. That if people will only do as they said, everything will be all right. That everybody around them is a cog to be used just in the right way. And why shouldn’t they have this illusion. For so many years, it worked. Bill Drayton and Valeria Budinich reminds us of how it used to work in a post on the Harvard Business review blog:

Fifty years ago, Detroit was the symbol of American ingenuity and prosperity. Henry Ford and his small group of managers did all the thinking and told everyone else what to do. This command-and-control approach works in a relatively static world where most tasks are repetitive — such as building cars on an assembly line. It does not work in today’s fast-paced, change-is-the-name-of-the-game world; and it will not work tomorrow.

Like every heuristic, The Illusion of Control is rooted in truth. But also like every heuristic, there comes a time when it becomes detrimental and instead of helping people make decision, it actually limits them and forces them to make mistakes and err in judgment. As Drayton and Budinich so accurately point out, the historic validity of the illusion led to the creation of mechanisms of control and to the creation of conventional wisdoms about how people should be managed, conventional wisdoms that are built on Tayloristic assumptions that people are just parts in a big machine of productivity.

We are in a time of revolution. The mangers who will be able to overcome their heuristic towards control and understand that today, the power in every aspect of business lies in letting go of control and not in trying to sustain things as they are, will embrace the indirect power that comes with an environment with no rules, no mechanisms of control and that gives employees autonomy and purpose. It is not going to be easy, but this is one heuristic, that I believe managers can overcome.

Elad

Embrace the revolution – overcome the Illusion of control

Photo by Steven Snodgrass

In the last few days I have been reading a lot about heuristics. For those of you who still haven’t been exposed to this intriguing concept, here is a short definition from Wikipedia:

[A]n adjective for experience-based techniques that help in problem solving, learning and discovery. A heuristic method is particularly used to rapidly come to a solution that is hoped to be close to the best possible answer, or ‘optimal solution’. Heuristics are “rules of thumb“, educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense. A heuristic is a general way of solving a problem

We all use heuristics every day. We have to. If we had to think about every decision and process every input fully, we would be totally overwhelmed. So we use these intuitive rules to make quick decisions. From estimating distances according to how well we see the object to estimating numbers instead of doing complex calculation. From deciding we like someone because he reminds us of someone else we like to taking business risks because of over optimism in our abilities. And many times, these are great mechanisms (we sometimes want people to take risks… because how progress is made, so it is good to be a little over optimistic, for example). However, as the research of behavioral economics has taught us heuristics are not always a smart way to make decisions.

In his book, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Max Bazerman writes about one heuristic that sometimes goes wrong, The Illusion of Control:

People falsely believe that they can control uncontrollable events …, and they overestimate the extent to which their actions can guarantee a certain outcome… Evidence suggest that experienced dice players believe that “soft” throws are more likely to result in lower number being rolled…

Two other researchers, Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman, in an article in Harvard Business review, wrote the following paragraph:

Managers are also prone to the illusion that they are in control. Sometimes, in fact, they will explicitly deny the role of chance in the outcome of their plans. They see risk as a challenge to be met by the exercise of skill, and they believe results are determined purely by their own actions and those of their organizations. In their idealized self-image, these executives are not gamblers but prudent and determined agents, who are in control of both people and events.

Yes, you read it right. Managers have an illusion that they are in control of people. That their actions, more than anything else, will determine the success of the people around them. That if people will only do as they said, everything will be all right. That everybody around them is a cog to be used just in the right way. And why shouldn’t they have this illusion. For so many years, it worked. Bill Drayton and Valeria Budinich reminds us of how it used to work in a post on the Harvard Business review blog:

Fifty years ago, Detroit was the symbol of American ingenuity and prosperity. Henry Ford and his small group of managers did all the thinking and told everyone else what to do. This command-and-control approach works in a relatively static world where most tasks are repetitive — such as building cars on an assembly line. It does not work in today’s fast-paced, change-is-the-name-of-the-game world; and it will not work tomorrow.

Like every heuristic, The Illusion of Control is rooted in truth. But also like every heuristic, there comes a time when it becomes detrimental and instead of helping people make decision, it actually limits them and forces them to make mistakes and err in judgment. As Drayton and Budinich so accurately point out, the historic validity of the illusion led to the creation of mechanisms of control and to the creation of conventional wisdoms about how people should be managed, conventional wisdoms that are built on Tayloristic assumptions that people are just parts in a big machine of productivity.

We are in a time of revolution. The mangers who will be able to overcome their heuristic towards control and understand that today, the power in every aspect of business lies in letting go of control and not in trying to sustain things as they are, will embrace the indirect power that comes with an environment with no rules, no mechanisms of control and that gives employees autonomy and purpose. It is not going to be easy, but this is one heuristic, that I believe managers can overcome.

Elad

Bazerman Judgment in Managerial Decision Making<img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thecompaadvan-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0470049456″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e20120a73d1f5f970b

http://blogs.hbr.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5531

Just because you are successful, doesn’t mean you need to be a manager

Two similar ideas by two different people, both espousing an idea I really like: not everybody needs to be a manager; Even though we all think we do.

In this short TED talk, Richard St. John, says, about 1:30 minutes into the talk, the following sentence:

And reaching success, I always did what I loved. But then I got into stuff that I didn’t love, like management. I am the world’s worst manager. But I figured I should be doing it. Because I was, after all, the president of the company.

And then, about 2:40 minutes into the talk, this:

Well, it didn’t take long for business to drop like a rock. My partner and I, Thom, we had to let all our employees go. It was down to just the two of us, and we were about to go under. And that was great. Because with no employees, there was nobody for me to manage. So I went back to doing the projects I loved. I had fun again. I worked harder. And to cut a long story short: did all the things that took me back up to success. But it wasn’t a quick trip. It took seven years.

On the same idea from a different perspective, Allan Bacon writes:

Here’s my radical suggestion for creating more time and flexibility in your job: give yourself a demotion from management to a position where you can directly make a strategic contribution. I call this “strategic downshifting”.

Just like downshifting in a car, this gives you more power and control. It also makes your engine rev higher and gives you faster acceleration. That is to say, you can create a place where you can be excited about your work again.

I already wrote a few weeks ago about the dangers in our misguided self-perceptions. The myth that success in business means becoming a manager is a just what it is – a myth. Don’t let yourself be disillusioned by it.

It is time to find and focus on your strengths. To find and focus on your comparative advantage. To find and focus on how you can make a difference and how you can create change.

It is time we strive for excellence.

Are you in the best role you could be or do you need a downshift?

Elad

Are you a happiness machine?

This is a subject I wrote about before but that I am only starting to realize its true importance. Unpredictability of rewards.

Watch the movie above. How do you feel? Putting all the cynicism aside, just seeing people this happy is contagious. Indeed positivity is contagious. And really, who doesn’t want his workplace, school or even home to be this happy? I know I do. And no, I am not advocating bringing a Coca-Cola vending machine or even giving people around you expensive gifts. I am talking about noticing people around you and doing something about it. One of the side effects of the prevalent system of Carrot and Sticks, is that people almost don’t expect anything surprising anymore. It is so easy to surprise them. And what does that have to do with management? A lot, as Tanveer Naseer writes in the original post where I first saw this ad:

So instead of having another typical team meeting, secretly plan to end it early and surprise everyone by bringing out cocktail platters and giving your employees time to just relax and enjoy their work environment. Or announce an impromptu hockey game in the office parking lot – with a request for spectators needed to cheer the game on. The point is it doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate to plan – the only objective is to break up the routine and offer something to motivate your employees and raise team spirit.

And I will take it another step further and make it simpler. Notice and make sure the people around you know that they are noticed:

And the same happens to us when we see an employee doing good work. We assume that the fact that we saw him and know what he did means that he knows that we saw him and knows what he did. What is the solution? Taking the opposite assumption. We need to assume that our employees never know that we noticed them. Then make it a priority to let them know that we did. Let’s overcome the curse of knowledge and starting noticing people.

And also see here.

You know the saying – “I feel like you take me for granted”.

It is known because it is true – how many people around you do you take for granted every day? How many employees who are doing exactly what is expected of them are you ignoring? What will happen if you show them, in a simple way, how much you appreciate them? What will happen if you recognize their contribution? What will happen if you give them consistent feedback, all the time?

Tom Peters constantly writes about this and asks all of us: who did you take to lunch today? Every lunch is an opportunity to connect, with a costumer or an employee or in this case – recognize. How many thank-you notes have you written this week? How many people did you send flowers too?

And Dan Pink writes in his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, about the same thing – “if-then” rewards are bad motivators. We should move to “now that” rewards:

In other words, where “if-then” rewards are a mistake, shift to “now that” rewards – as in “Now that you’ve finished the poster and it turned out so well, I’d like to celebrate by talking you out to lunch”.

As Deci and his colleagues explain, “If tangible rewards are given unexpectedly to people after they have finished the task, the rewards are less likely to be experienced as the reason for doing the task and are thus less likely to be detrimental to intrinsic motivation”

Let’s take this idea one step further – “now that … let me surprise you! Let me make you happy! Let me do something unpredictable and unexpected”.

It is so easy to create the feeling we see above, yet it so hard. As I wrote a few months ago:

We know that predictable rewards are not as effective as unpredictable rewards, but still, most companies and managers stick to a schedule of predictable rewards. Why? Well, my guess is that it is just easier. As a manager, I don’t need to think and worry about my employees all the time. Does it really matter if I do in once every quarter for an hour or if I do it 30 times over the quarter for 2 minutes each time? But, the fact that it is easier does not mean that it is right (like most conventional wisdoms). We know nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort.

Are you becoming a happiness machine? It is about time you become one…

Elad

Small decisions, fake sun-glasses and celebrating contradictions

Photo by NightRPStar

I have always been fascinated with small decisions and how one such decision can lead to a spiral that ends in enormous unwanted results in the future. Last semester, while still down at AGSM MBA, I took a business ethics class and noticed that in a lot of the cases we talked about, the current ethical dilemma was rooted in a small and sometimes insignificant decision in the past.

Then I read this post describing a very intriguing experiment:

…[The] psychologists Francesca Gino, Michael Norton and Dan Ariely asked two groups of young women to wear sunglasses taken from a box labeled either “authentic” or “counterfeit.” (In truth, all the eyewear was authentic, donated by a brand-name designer interested in curtailing counterfeiting.) Then the researchers put the participants in situations in which it was both easy and tempting to cheat. In one situation, which was ostensibly part of a product evaluation, the women wore the shades while answering a set of very simple math problems — under heavy time pressure. Afterward, given ample time to check their work, they reported how many problems they were able to answer correctly. They had been told they’d be paid for each answer they reported getting right, thus creating an incentive to inflate their scores. Unbeknown to the participants, the researchers knew each person’s actual score. Math performance was the same for the two groups — but whereas 30 percent of those in the “authentic” condition inflated their scores, a whopping 71 percent of the counterfeit-wearing participants did so. Why did this happen? As Gino puts it, “When one feels like a fake, he or she is likely to behave like a fake.” It was notable that the participants were oblivious to this and other similar effects the researchers discovered: the psychological costs of cheap knockoffs are hidden. The study is currently in press at the journal Psychological Science.

And that got me thinking. Here is the comment I made on that post:

It [the research described above] actually explains the downwards trends in ethics over time and the fact that a small unethical decisions might lead to a major issues in the long run. It also reminds of the broken windows theory. As soon as we are already faced with something broken, it is easier for us to act “broken” ourselves. The importance of small choices is so significant it is almost too hard to understand it.

As always I try to translate such thoughts to the world of management and to the way managers connect with their employees. I think there are a number of implications:

1. There is no such thing as a small decision. Our every act matters. And in the things that are important, like praise and recognition and helping people excel, we are tested every day. We don’t know what deciding not to engage in such activities today means for the future.

2.While thinking about the possible outcomes of the every possible decision is impossible and paralyzing, it is important to realize that the biggest issues started small. If you decide to go down a certain path, you create momentum which is hard to recognize and hard to stop. Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo says in interview for the book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki (You don’t have to read the whole book but read this chapter and page 365):

Good people don’t rush in to do evil where angels fear to tread; instead they start by straying only a small way away from their moral center and each successive step down is hardly different, barely noticeable, until it is too late and their behavior is shocking and may even be awesome or awful.

3. Finally, I write here in this blog that managers should stop with trying to create rules. I believe in employee autonomy and in practical wisdom. At the same time, I wrote this in my e-book:

I believe in doing things right because they are right. In obeying the rules because they are rules. I believe that there are certain things that are just not done. We have so many rules around us. Some are better, some are worse. But the sad thing is, that we are used to breaking them every day. Just think about jaywalking or avoiding certain tax payments or taking something from your office when you are not supposed to. I believe rules are there for a reason and we should follow them because they are there. Because it is right. If the rules are wrong, it is all right to try to change them. In fact, we must try and change wrong rules. But there is a legitimate way to do that. And as long as they are valid rules, we should obey them.

This might seem contradictory. It might be. I have also grown and changed in the year and a half that passed since I wrote those words. At the same time part of my philosophy is that we should celebrate contradictions – F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time”.

Elad

Why grow up?

Photo by BaronBrian

Thomas Barlow thinks we should all grow up. All of us, in our twenties and thirties (and maybe more), in our insignificant search for self-fulfillment. We should stop with all this soul searching and start living. Living  the real life. And what is the real life according to Barlow in his Financial Times article titled: Tribal workers? It is not really clear. What is clear is that he does not think it will be found in working long hours or in changing jobs and looking for the self-fulfillment on the job.

Here is part of his argument:

At the heart of this disillusionment lies a new attitude towards work. The idea has grown up, in recent years, that work should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige – but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself. Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options. …

The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimise personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them. One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence.

Eventually, they will be forced to realise that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is about creating them.

While I do agree that there is a possibility that the almost infinite number of choices a well educated people in western countries have might be paralyzing due to the famous paradox of choice, I am not sure I understand why the answer could not be found in work and should be found in personal commitments.

Yes, it is true, some people take this idea to the extreme. Some people engulf themselves in their jobs and live as if this was their life. And you know what? While I cannot understand that, they might actually be happy. Not because their job is so great, but because it fits them. They are different then me and probably different than Thomas Barlow.  They enjoy different things and get a sense of fulfillment from different things. And who am I to criticize that?

However, the issue is not about quantity of work, but about whether people can actually find fulfillment in work. And to that my answer is an astounding YES. I admit, I don’t think it happens a lot. As we know, so many people are dissatisfied with their jobs. But it does happen. And some people actually wake up every morning and go to work with a big smile on their faces and a feeling that they are changing the world. And who am I (or who is Thomas Barlow) to tell them to change what they are doing?

I think the disillusionment is the one we have been living in the last two thousands of years or more, where work has been considered a punishment (go back to the story of Adam and Eve). Barlow might want us to return to the era of our parents and grandparents who worked in a factory (actual or not) and enjoyed great lifelong personal commitments. Yes, like that worked really great for ALL of them…

No. I don’t buy that. There is no one solution that works for everybody. Some people can find their fulfillment in a work environment.  Every job can potentially provide a sense of purpose for every employee. And every person has a different path and a right to look for it. Above all, I don’t think that I have to right to tell anybody to grow up… who says growing up is a good thing anyway?

Elad