Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 247 Habit and Change the Way You Work by Leslie A. Perlow

Author:Leslie A. Perlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Second, even if it is true that you and your team don’t act under pressures and unpredictability to the degree that BCGers do, it is important to recognize that PTO should not be categorized as something that applies only to extreme cases. Rather, it should be able to catalyze positive change in situations far different from BCG’s. The process should be invaluable in any case where the work has more bad intensity than it could. It should apply in any situation where people can benefit personally from working collectively to challenge deeply held assumptions about how the work is done.

I also often hear people say, “I don’t want this.” From carefully observing people at work, I have found that they are often so deeply caught in the cycle of responsiveness that they have come to accept this person who never stops working as who they are and who they want to be. But what I discovered at BCG is that many who felt strongly that this process was not possible, let alone desirable, changed their minds once they engaged in PTO. You might be very surprised about how much you stand to gain.

Another objection, usually voiced by senior leaders, is that PTO will make team members feel more entitled and raise their threshold for what they expect. The concern is that team members will suddenly think that the goal is the new normal and time off will become a right rather than a privilege earned by investing in the process of making such time off happen. This fear of entitlement was widespread among partners at BCG, but in practice it arose only in the very rare instances when the leader rejected the PTO process from the start.

An equally widespread and very important to address objection is, “This is going to increase the workload of the middle manager.” This makes perfect sense as an initial reaction. At BCG, the project leader and/or principal was the integrator and synthesizer of each team member’s work. Participating in PTO would require the additional responsibility of ensuring that their team members got their time off, regardless of what was going on at work; then there was the weekly dialogue that can require premeeting work regarding tummy rumbles plus extra time for the weekly meetings for the teams to reflect on their process. Little wonder that PTO could feel like a big burden.

Many BCG principals and project leaders voiced that objection until they understood what was truly involved—and what the benefits were. When PTO is done right, middle managers end up doing less work rather than more: they now have their own time off and the team shares the burden for ensuring that everyone gets a night off. Most important, the team comes to share ownership for the work itself and its integration, benefiting the work process in ways that also ease the burden on the middle manager. These effects were so powerful, in fact, that 73 percent of principals and project leaders engaged in PTO—compared with 25 percent of those not engaged—could see themselves at BCG in the long term.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.