Career Life Fit II

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at the Chicago GSB to help you advance in your career. Today we're speaking with Brad Harrington, who's the executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, and a research professor and faculty member at the Carroll School of Management. Prior to arriving at Boston College, Brad was an executive with Hewlett-Packard Company for 20 years.

He served in a wide range of leadership assignments in the US and Europe. In 2006, he was named one of the 10 most influential men in the work-life field by a national work-life publication. He is the author of Career Management and Work/Life Integration: Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers. Brad holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Stonehill College, a master's degree in psychology from Boston College, and a doctorate in human resource development and organizational development from Boston University.

Wow, Brad, sounds like you are a mega star in the field.

Brad Harrington: When you're one of the top 10 men in the work-life field, you're in small company. As you may know, it's a field that's dominated oftentimes by women. Unfortunately, we need more men in the field, so the competition to be in the top 10 is more difficult than it has been in the past.

Anita Brick: There you go. Well, you know, I was really intrigued by the whole idea. We use the term work-life fit; you talk about it in terms of work-life integration. How is this different than when people talk about balancing work and life?

Brad Harrington: I'm not sure that it is that different. What I found is that some people—especially people who study this field and spend a lot of time in it, and maybe too much time in it—feel that balance has a couple of negative connotations. One being that if we use the term career-life or work-life balance, that it implies an exact 50/50 split in terms of priorities between work and family.

And obviously there are times when there is that kind of a split, and there are other times when you emphasize work more or family more. So I don't really get hung up on this because I don't really believe that that's what people meant when they said work-life balance. I think what they meant was just basically suggesting the notion that somehow the goal is to find a way to pay attention to what are the two most important spheres in most people's lives, and that is their work life and their family life, and find a fit that optimizes, to the degree that it's possible, both of those spheres in our lives.

Anita Brick: So where do you think companies are with this? I mean, are they viewing it as a strategic imperative, or are they viewing it as something that they feel that they must do or that they're even legislated to do? Like in the UK.

Brad Harrington: If you talk about the context in a place like Europe, you're talking about a very different context for companies than what we have in the US. I think in the US, unfortunately, companies are all over the map, so it would be hard to say categorically this is where companies are on this issue, because we find some companies are extremely advanced, very progressive, see this as a business imperative, and there are others that simply don't.

The ones that see this as a business imperative—generally, I would start by saying the first thing is they see it that way because they believe the war for talent never ends. Oftentimes the organizations that we interact with … at the center are people who want the best talent. They make no bones about that because they are after the best talent.

They don't think that, gee, if the economy goes down or there's a surplus of people that are unemployed or whatever it might be, that now we can retrench from our work-life programs. What they believe is the people they're going after are people that are always going to be employed and employable. So they need to be ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition in terms of being progressive about human resource practices.

The other things that are driving this, in general, I think are really a lot about demographics. The most obvious demographic that's driving this is the increasing number of women in professional and managerial jobs in recent years. That's obviously been the major thrust: let's move the work-life movement forward. Closely coupled with this is the idea of the changing nature of families and the very, very high percentage of dual career couples that we have, especially dual career couples with children that are quite young—under the age of 10 or under the age of 15.

We also have far more families that are headed by a single parent. And, like dual career couples, in a single parent head of household, there's no one home taking care of that side of life. Other demographic trends that I think are having a big impact is the rapid rise of older workers. I think in the last year or two, baby boomers started turning 60.

And as that enormous percentage of the workforce that are the baby boomers start to move toward 55, 60, early 60s and start to move toward what was historically thought of as retirement age, what we're finding is more of these people want to, and maybe need to, work longer than has ever been the case before, but they want to do that more on their own terms. And so they're willing to trade off income—because they may be in a position where they are financially secure—for flexibility and meaningful work.

Surprisingly, the last demographic I'll just share with you is the fact that the people on the other end of the spectrum—and that is the so-called Gen Ys, millennials—these folks also seem to have a desire for greater work-life balance that's based on partly changing values, partly the fact that they know they're going to be members of dual career couples, and that both spouses are going to have significant responsibilities for work.

And partly, I think, maybe being a little bit cynical, based on the experiences of watching their parents give everything they had to a company, give their life, give all their time and so forth—and at the end of the day, being downsized. I think this next generation that's come into the workforce just recently do have different sets of values about what's important to them.

And in surveys in the US and in Canada, you can see a dramatic rise in terms of, when new graduates are looking for good employers, what they list as their top criteria. Suddenly, work-life balance virtually always appears in the top 2 or 3 criteria for their selection of the employer that they want to work for, and I think that speaks to the fact that their situations are different and their values are different than was the case of their parents, for example.

Anita Brick: So what advice would you give someone who is looking for those companies that are looking for the best talent and are willing to kind of meet the needs of those different demographic groups? Like, how do you find them?

Brad Harrington: The most common way to find them is the so-called list. The lists that are quite popular would be Fortune's Most Admired Companies, the 100 Best Places to Work. Working Mother publishes The Working Mother 100 Best Companies for Working Moms to Work at, and I would say the criteria they use would be just as applicable these days to working dads as they are to working mothers.

And, you know, places like our center. If you go on our website at Boston College and look at the Center for Work & Family and simply look at the members, we have about 100 mostly major corporations that are employers, that are folks that we really believe have joined the center because they have a very sincere intent to try to do the right things for their company. At the same time, they're doing the right things for their employees.

So you can look at lists, you can look at, you know, websites like ours, but the other thing I would say is, and I'm probably less savvy about this than most people, is that a lot of young people these days are members of, you know, LinkedIn and Facebook and all these other social networks.

And I think one of the best sources of information they have is to link in to somebody who … some buddies who work in the companies and can give them some insight as to whether or not the companies’ commitment to work life is really rhetoric or reality. What I think about the University of Chicago and the alumni group that you must have, they probably are, and I shouldn't speak for you, but there are probably ways that your graduates can speak to fellow alumni and find out from them firsthand whether or not the organizations that they're considering working for really are family friendly.

Anita Brick: That's a really good point. I mean, there's a community directory, but there is also a Chicago GSB group within LinkedIn, and I belong to that. And that's actually a good way to kind of gather that kind of information. Good. Very good point.

Brad Harrington: Yeah, sure.

Anita Brick: As you approach this, usually creating some life-work integration or balance or fit requires some flexibility. How does a person assess, number one, whether a flexible work option is right for him or her? And what kind of option would be right? What's the best way to begin that self-assessment process in terms of life work integration, whether …

Brad Harrington: It's talking about, do I need a flexible work arrangement? Or something as broad as, do I need a different work situation, or do I need to be in a different job or a different career? I think you can kind of lump all those together under the header of, is what I'm doing right now working for me in the broad context of my life, even if I'm advancing professionally and moving along on a career path?

The important thing to ask yourself is, is that going hand in hand with my other life goals, or is it somehow conflicting with my other life goals? So whether it be a short-term need for flexibility or a longer-term need for a job or career change, I think the starting point is generally the same place, and that is knowing yourself.

And that sounds like a pretty pat answer, but I think one of the things we've done … you mentioned at the outset that I recently coauthored a book. The subtitle of the book was Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers. The reason my coauthor and I gave it that subtitle was because we really believe that—given the fact that even as recently as 10 or 20 years ago, careers were something that the company sort of described and defined and dictated.

You know, the old joke about IBM stands for I've Been Moved was a reference to the fact that if you worked for IBM and you wanted to be successful in that company, you had to follow a fairly prescribed career path that may require you to move from one part of the country to another in order to keep up your career progression within the company.

Certainly, if you look at organizations like public accounting firms, they had pretty much a similar kind of lockstep career path, which, you know, some described this sort of an up or out approach. And when folks came into careers, into organizations, and expected that they were going to spend long periods of time with those organizations, what mattered most was whether they were willing to fulfill the company's definition of what career development meant.

I think today, for a whole lot of reasons, both because organizations are much more dynamic and the career paths are much less predictable, and because people see themselves as more free agents, more self-employed, if you will; I think as a result of that, what you've got to start with is not what's the company's plan for me, but what's my plan for myself.

And I think that begins with self-assessment. By self-assessment, what I mean is really understanding what are my interests, what are my values, what are my skills? What are the demands that I have upon me outside of my work? What are the identities that I hold most deeply outside of work, and what are my aspirations? How do my career plans fit with my plans to be a community member, a friend, a family member, a parent—whatever it might be—or pursue outside interests?

I think one of the most important things for me, and a thing that we stress a lot in the book, and also that I stress in my course in the MBA program at Boston College, is I go through some rigorous exercises to explore, understand, and reflect on what really drives you and what are the things that matter most to you in your life.

And if you can figure those out, then you've got the starting point for then trying to determine, OK, what changes or modifications do I need to make in terms of my career or my present work situation in order to bring it into sync with what my other life goals are?

Anita Brick: I think that's a really good point. And there are some on the Chicago GSB career website. There are some self-assessment tools, and you very generously gave us chapter five of your book, which has some wonderful strategies to kind of get a handle on that. But that's … it's good. And I think it's one of those things that there's no instant gratification with it. Right? So people sometimes skip it and go right into implementation, and it derails the process.

Brad Harrington: Yeah. When I was leaving my corporate career after doing work with Hewlett-Packard, as you mentioned, for 20 years, one of the things I thought about was to be a career counselor. One of the things that scared me away from that line of work was the fact that I think very often the time they might seek out a career counselor is also at a time when they're in a difficult state, meaning they may have lost their position or may be in a position that they find untenable.

And a lot of times, the fear is that by the time they get to the point where they want to speak to a career counselor, they want to just simply find the next job and just get out of their present situation or find a position because they've lost one or been downsized, which has happened obviously to so many millions of people.

The problem is a lot of times, you know, they jump from one bad situation to another without taking the time to say, what can I learn from my present experiences? And other past experiences that can help me refine what I'm really looking for and make a better choice next time? And my fear, when I considered for myself going into the career counseling business, is that I would deal with too few people who really wanted to put in the time and energy it took to better understand what their values and priorities and so forth were, and as a result, I might be able to help people find the next situation.

But I wouldn't feel comfortable that I was helping them find a situation that was actually necessarily a better match for them. And I think the only way for the people to do that is to say, I'm going to invest some time in better understanding myself so that I can make better choices in terms of my career.

Anita Brick: Really good point. And I know that we had a similar podcast on the topic with one of your colleagues, Cali Yost …

Brad Harrington: Yeah.

Anita Brick: … last year, and the response was so great. We decided the topic was of great interest, and we see a lot of people … if they can, I mean, unless it's a very dire situation, at least take a little bit of time to step back. And I think it's very encouraging because it solidifies their success when they do that and say, you do the assessment and you say, OK, well, here are the places that currently fit.

Here are the things about my current position, current company, current career path that don't fit. And here are the things I'd like to see changed. How do you begin to build a compelling case to show that it's mutually beneficial, that it's a partnership between you and your employer, rather than you want special treatment?

Brad Harrington: It starts with, I think, an employer who doesn't view every employee request as some special accommodation. You know, the hope is that you enter into conversations like this as two adults and you assume that, you know, the employer assumes that what you're doing is in both your best interests and hopefully in the best interests of the company, because they believe that your intentions are good faith in terms of trying to foster the interests of the company and not pitting your interests against the company's interests as if they are actually competing.

I think what you do then is you say to yourself, probably before that conversation, what are the ways in which I can think about my position differently that would allow me—in this case, let's talk in terms of flexibility—that would allow me to gain more flexibility or have more time with my family or whatever it might be, that at the same time will not compromise my getting my major job objectives accomplished.

And if you think about all the forms that flexibility takes—sometimes flexibility is as simple as I need to start work at a later time, or I need to end work at an earlier time in order to do a drop off or pickup of the kids or whatever it may be. Sometimes it's like if I work a compressed workweek, I could get my work done in four days and have a fifth day to be able to spend more time doing all the domestic tasks and all the child-rearing tasks that aren't getting paid attention to by anybody else at home.

So I think there are lots of different forms that flexibility can take. Occasionally telecommuting or maybe regularly telecommuting to alleviate time spent … It's not really productive going back and forth in traffic in major metropolitan areas or whatever it might be. Before you go into that conversation, think very carefully about what are the organization's major needs and how can we continue to ensure those get met.

And at the same time, what are your needs and what are the things you will not compromise on that need to be met? And then think broadly about lots of different approaches that might be out there that could foster the organizational aims and your aims, and at the same time allow you greater flexibility.

Anita Brick: Do you think it makes a difference in how you approach this depending on the size of a company? If it's a smaller entrepreneurial company versus a multinational?

Brad Harrington: I think there's arguments both ways on that, because I think in—you know, small companies might look at big companies and say, sure, they can do that, but they can do that because they're a big company and there's lots of resources. And there may be, you know, 40 or 50 people who hold similar jobs. And so one person can back up another. There is some merit to that argument.

By the same token, though, I think sometimes big companies can get wrapped around their own policies and procedures and things like that. And smaller companies can be simply more pragmatic in terms of the way they make decisions. I manage a center right now with eight employees. Everyone works some form of flex time, and we make it work.

And I think a lot of it comes down to the will of the leader and the will of the members of the organization. Realizing that flexibility is not necessarily a right, it is a bit of a privilege, but if it's done correctly, it really does turn out to be a win-win for the employer and the employee. And in cases where somebody says, I'm not going to work on Fridays, I'm going to take a compressed workweek, there are going to be occasions where we may need them to do so.

And I think if the company does that respectfully and the individual does that respectfully, I think it can work in organizations that are 4 or 5 people all the way up to organizations that are 100 or 300,000 people.

Anita Brick: So it's really not a zero-sum game. It's really how to make it work and how to maybe create a more robust environment that accommodates more diversity in a whole variety of different ways.

Brad Harrington: Absolutely. Law firms—not that, you know, most of your graduates probably aren't working in law firms. But, you know, I've seen law firms be amongst the most intractable in terms of saying, well, we're not really going to entertain work-life balance. And especially if you're on the partner track, that's just not a possibility. And I've seen, especially in the Boston area, some smaller law firms pop up and really differentiate themselves, especially for women, as places where they say we're not the typical law firm and we are going to offer flexible work arrangements, and as a result, they get very talented people.

They may not be able to pay the salaries that some of the bigger, more so-called prestigious firms can pay, but they might attract a highly talented group of people because of the fact that they are offering what seems to be a much more reasonable career contract than some of the big firms who basically say, if you can't abide by our policies and our in our ways of operating, then we don't want you here.

Anita Brick: How does someone … I've been thinking about this a lot because I have people come in who are either interested in consulting or on the other hand, they want to leave consulting. We just did a program for about 65 alumni, and there were two groups there: one that was really excited to get into consulting, and the other one did get out of consulting and largely because of time demands, the travel demands.

How does someone who's, say, in a mid-level management position kind of take a stand and maybe even set a precedent to allow some of the people who work for him or her to have some flexibility?

Brad Harrington: Well, I think it is about taking a stand and setting a precedent. Was it George Bernard Shaw who said, you know, the world is changed by unreasonable people? And I think what he meant by that was simply that if everybody acts in exactly the same way and says, well, the way things have always been is the way; it is the reasonable way to operate—then nothing ever is going to be different.

I think there are a lot of organizations where, you know, we've taken on the idea that, you know, because somebody somewhere defined the workweek as 40 to 50 hours in an office from Monday at this hour till Friday at this hour, that that was cast in stone somewhere. And I think that that's not the case. But for whatever reason, the status quo in systems like that tends to die hard.

For people in middle management, they specifically are extremely influential in trying experiments, piloting things, letting people within their organizations know that they're open to these kinds of arrangements, and then realizing that in doing that, they are sticking their neck out a bit. So what they have to do is ensure that they make the flexible arrangements work for the employee, but at the same time, they don't compromise the results that their organization is delivering.

When middle managers deliver results and meet goals, whether those goals be sales quota or reduction of cost, or improvement of quality or customer satisfaction—When those kinds of goals are being achieved, I don't think upper management really cares, ultimately, what hours people are working, whether they're working from home or whatever it might be. I think what they care about is, what are the results?

And if the results are positive, the middle managers are going to end up being perceived as sort of heroic pioneers of the work-life movement.

Anita Brick: It's a good point. One of the weekend students has been developing kind of a flexible work option because of the time it takes to commute and the cost of gas and all kinds of things. His or her manager has been getting a lot of pressure because it kind of runs up against corporate culture. Are you aware of any studies that show specifically that cutting down the commute time or cutting out the commute time actually improves productivity and results?

Brad Harrington: There's sort of an obvious answer to that, but I don't have the empirical data to back it up. But if somebody is working from home and if they're in a major metropolitan area where commute times typically average around two hours to and from the office, yeah, on any given day, you can't help but imagine that those two hours will be much more productively spent if the person even spent half that much time at home working, rather than sitting frustrated in traffic or whatever it might be.

So I think that the sense that telecommuting in general can increase people's productivity—We did do a study on that, and we found that, you know, people who telecommuting were more productive, both in their own eyes but also in the eyes of their coworkers and in their managers when they telecommute it at least part of the time. Generally speaking, we're not big fans of people who telecommute 100 percent of the time, although that does sometimes occur.

The reason for that is there can be some negative byproducts of that: lack of understanding of the corporate culture, feeling cut out of the grapevine, not establishing good relationships with colleagues, maybe sometimes being overlooked for promotion, whatever it might be. But in general, I think people who telecommute are seen as being more productive from the results that we got from our survey that was done back in the early 2000s.

And certainly, you know, with the case these days for saving time and saving money on unnecessary commuting costs, I think that just further makes the case that you know, this is a good thing to do, and the downsides of this are just not that apparent. Ironically—I'm sorry, you need a better…. Ironically, the one downside tends to be more about the individual than about the company.

I think oftentimes you think, oh, it's the company that has to worry about telecommuting, because somehow the company is going to get the short end of the stick. But when we did our study, what we found is that the bigger worry was that employees who telecommute oftentimes are not as able to set boundaries if they work from home, for example, to set boundaries around what their workday is and when they're working and when they're not, because their office is also their home.

So a lot of time, the risk in telecommuting is less that the company will get less than they deserve, and more that employees will tend to allow a blurring between their work and their home life. That doesn't necessarily end up with them feeling like the telecommuting arrangement has necessarily fostered greater work-life balance if they have difficulty setting that boundary.

Anita Brick: It sounds like you have to be creative. Creative in terms of: some people want to curtail some of their travel. And if you can experiment with, say, using electronic meeting devices where you can actually, you know, see each other and all of that, I know it's not the same as being there, but maybe people can try those kinds of things.

And for this one student, it sounds like maybe having a trial period where, let's try … I'll work three days from home. And here, let's set some clear objectives. And at the end of three months or six months or whatever is a reasonable time given the kinds of projects, then they can reassess?

Brad Harrington: Absolutely. I think the problem for a lot of managers is that they think the paradox is if they offer flexibility, then the employee will be inflexible about the arrangement once it gets set. If I say to you, Anita, you've asked to be able to work from home two days a week, and I say, that's OK. If in a few months time I, as the manager, think this isn't working that well, or you need to work a different two days from home or whatever it might be, I think the fear is that when you go back to the employee, employer will say, no, no, no, we agreed this.

I'm not going to change. You know, once I got my flexibility, now I'm going to be rigid. And I think flexibility is a word that pertains to both parties. So I think the first thing is to make sure that both parties understand that it's not just the employee asking the company to be flexible. The company has to also feel the right that they have the right to ask the employee to be flexible.

But the point you made that I think is really a good one is that one of the ways to overcome the fears that might exist is to ask to do this on a pilot basis, or ask to do this on a limited-term basis with some review period, maybe three months out or whatever it might be. Then the manager has an out.

If the manager really feels that it isn't working, then they have a time designated where it's going to be reviewed, and the employee expectations have been set that this is not a forever arrangement. This is for three months, and then we're going to talk about it again. If that is the case, then that provides kind of a safeguard for the manager to say the control of this thing is still in my hands.

And the fact that I agree to this doesn't mean it's forever. It only means it's going to continue as long as it's working and the employee is continuing to be productive. I think what happens is—and we just did a study looking at the implementation gap around flexibility and why is it that so many organizations talk about it—and so if you do it, one of the things that was like a major finding, and we talked to 20 different companies about this and 20 different sets of managers.

One of the things we found again and again and again is initially, virtually every manager was fearful about embarking on this kind of an arrangement. And then after they had done it for a few months, their feeling was, I'm not sure what I was so afraid of. But if some kind of a short-term experiment allows them to get over that fear, and to see that offering this to employees is not going to, you know, have any detrimental effect on productivity or whatever it might be, then I think managers will be much more amenable to that.

And the final point I’d just make is, I think in your question, you also asked about just being open minded and creative. And I think that's the thing: for neither the manager nor the employee does it make any sense to come in and say, I know I need flexibility, and this is how I define it, and if it's not this, then it's not acceptable.

If either party comes in with that clear set or that rigid a set of expectations around what the arrangement is going to be, then I think there's the chance that they will alienate, for example, their manager. I think what they need to do is say, here's the things I'm trying to accomplish—now let’s brainstorm around possible ways that this could be done and the company's needs could still be met. And if people take that kind of an open-minded and creative approach, then I think they can come up with win-win solutions.

Anita Brick: Good. Now that's a very good point. So when I was talking to … you mentioned that it's easy to become marginalized. You're either … you're working from a remote location, whether you're telecommuting or not, you're in a, you know, you're not in headquarters, you're in a regional office, or you are working from home most of the time. How do you still stay competitive and avoid being marginalized?

Brad Harrington: I guess two things. One is, I think a minute ago I said, you know, we generally don't recommend that people, if they can avoid it, telecommute full time, for example, because I think when you do telecommute full time, you absolutely are out of the mainstream. You know, people just don't see you on a day-to-day basis. And that runs the risk of some, you know, some negative effects.

So in a situation like that, you know, I would say if possible … Some people telecommute to jobs that are a thousand miles away. And so it may not be possible to show up in the office once a week or whatever it might be. But if possible, if you're telecommuting to a job that's within reasonable commuting distance, then being present in the office two or three days a week as a regular habit is a good idea.

I think the thing that everybody has to understand when it comes to these things is sometimes the employees think, if I do this, I don't want there to be any compromise or for me to be marginalized in any way as a result of the fact that I have taken a leave of absence while I work part time, work from home, whatever it might … whatever the arrangement might be.

And I think what people have to do in a situation like that is sort of, you know, be aware of the reality. And the reality is the people who are in there 40 and 50 hours a week showing a lot of face time, getting good results, networking, establishing and maintaining a good relationship with the boss are going to have a leg up over the people that are not present in the office as frequently, and if both parties are getting similar results, my guess is the people who show up every day are going to have an advantage when it comes to promotional opportunities.

So I think people have to be grown up, if you will, when it comes to these kinds of arrangements and realize that nothing comes, you know, with just upsides and no downsides. And they have to realize that if I'm asking for an accommodation—like, for example, working part time—that may make me a less viable candidate, in the eyes of senior management, to move up to the next level within the organization.

And then they have to answer the question, am I willing to make that kind of a choice? We've seen studies of people who work reduced hours and if you're reducing your hours by 10 or 20 percent a week, those people still have a pretty high likelihood of being eligible candidates for promotional opportunities. But if you're working just a very, very limited number of hours, then the likelihood is you probably may be overlooked for promotions that come up.

And I think folks who are doing that should say, I know that's difficult, to feel that I'm being slightly marginalized or feel that I'm being overlooked, but I'm doing this because I have a compelling reason to do it. And the compelling reason that's causing me to work part time is more important to me than a promotional opportunity at this stage in my life.

Anita Brick: I mean, I think it's all—you have to have a really solid grounding in self-identity because it will change.

Brad Harrington: Exactly. And I think that's why we go back to this issue of self-awareness, identity, self-assessment. I've personally, in my own life, made choices that were difficult choices in order to do what I felt was the right thing for my family at the cost of career advancement. And I can tell you from personal experience that I'm sure hundreds of people could share the same kind of experience.

It's never easy when you turn down the promotion or turn down, say, for example, the big promotion because it requires a move that your family isn't prepared to take or you don't think is in the best interest of your family. Like in my case, it was moving to Silicon Valley. You still have this nagging feeling, oh, I could have … I should have done that job. I would have been great at it or whatever it might be.

So those nagging feelings are going to persist. The important thing is that you're able to say, gee, that is disappointing that I wasn't able to take that opportunity, but because I am aware of myself and because I understand what matters most to me, I can live with the fact that I didn't take that promotion and take on that greater level of responsibility, because in exchange for that, I was given an opportunity to stay and live in the community I loved, and I was given the opportunity to spend more time with the people I loved and the family that I wanted to be more connected to.

I think when you are making these kinds of difficult trade-offs and difficult decisions, what you have to go back to is who am I and what is it that really matters to me? And then it makes the difficult decisions somewhat more palatable.

Anita Brick: So let's say now you're in this kind of flexible work option. You know, you've created the flexible work option, and it's three months or six months or a year later and you want to step back, like we all should every year, and kind of evaluate the situation. What are the key things to look for that may indicate that it's working or that it's not working?

Brad Harrington: It's hard to say in a kind of a general sense, but I guess the most basic thing would be how do you feel about yourself? I think in the book I mentioned the fact that we really take a view of success—As you know, in the old days, success was: well, did you reach this job level? Did you make this much money? Do you live in, you know, this prestigious or affluent community or whatever it might be? If you've done all those things, then you're successful. If you haven't accomplished those things, then you're not a success.

Much like we think careers are moving toward being more self-directed, so is the definition of what is success. And for us, you know, success is whether or not psychologically you feel fulfilled in your work and able to balance work and family kinds of issues. And whether or not you feel like you're living a happy, fulfilling, and healthy lifestyle sounds like a cliché or something, but, I mean, I think the most important thing to do is to look at the situation and ask yourself the question, do I feel happy?

Do I feel fulfilled? Do I feel like I'm living a healthy life? Do I feel like I'm attending to all the different things in my life that matter to me? And if that's the situation you're in, then you're … Does it mean that you might say, gee, if I spent more time at work, I might get, you know, a bigger pay increase this year?

Yeah, sure, you can assess that. But then you've got to determine if the time that you invest there is worth it in terms of the compromise you would have to make in the other areas of your life. I think the most important thing to do and have kind of a broad scale is just ask yourself the question, do I feel like I'm being successful in achieving my life's goals?

Do I feel like I'm making a contribution to my employer? And do I feel like I'm, you know, paying attention to the things that matter most?

Anita Brick: Those make total sense, because if you're not productive, if you're not learning, if you're not happy, your family still feels that you're never present, right? I mean, obviously those are failures. What if you're going into a job where you're actually going to share the job with someone? One of the alums talked about returning from maternity leave in November and going into a job share.

Yeah, working three days. Both parties are working three days, one day of overlap. It doesn't seem like it's a job that's easily shared. It has strategic and operational responsibilities and managing a team. So how do you create one person plus out of that rather than two people who are not well integrated?

Brad Harrington: Job sharing is something that still is relatively rare. When you look at options like the ones we've talked about earlier, one of the ones that you don't see as common as others is job sharing. And I think the reason is there's a lot of complications that can arise with job sharing.

I'd say the most important factor in making job sharing work is, first of all, you have to have trust in the person you’re job sharing with. A lot of employers will insist that they not do the matching, but that you find the partner that you're going to job-share with. And I think part of the reason they do that is they don't want—the company doesn't want the burden of having to find the matching job-share partner, because if that job-share partner leaves, then it would be the company's problem to figure out how to fill the void.

Anita Brick: Good point.

Brad Harrington: And so I think what happens sometimes is you have the luxury, or the responsibility, of trying to identify somebody that you can job-share with and who wants a similar arrangement. I think you—first of all, you have to know that you are compatible with that person and that you trust them. And by compatible, I don't mean that you are alike in every way.

It may be that you're different in terms of your skills or in terms of your work style or whatever it might be, but the thing you've got to feel is that you can be open and honest with each other about how things are working and how one person is working with another. Because if there's any disguising of problems that exist between two people that are job sharing, that's going to come out and it's not going to be, you know, positive, right?

So I think one of the things you have to do in a job-sharing situation, it's like a marriage—you have to say, when we have problems with each other, we can be open and honest with one another and try to work our way through this because we both have a vested interest in making this work.

The other thing I would just mention is the one thing I've heard from people who have job-share that we've interviewed: don't ever make the job share the boss's problem. In other words, if you're job-sharing with Joe, Anita, and I was your boss and came to you and said, Anita, what's going on with XYZ project? And you said, I don't know, Brad, you'd have to check with Joe because I think he's managing that project.

Then suddenly it's my problem to say, oh, OK, so Joe's managing that project, so I'm going to keep that in my head. And then I'll go talk to Joe when he comes in on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and remember to talk to him about this kind of a situation. What people who job-share successfully have said is, we never make it the boss's problem.

It's— when the boss talks to one of us, we either have the answer for them or we get the answer for them. But we never put the burden on the manager to say, you need to figure out what each of us is doing and how we've split the job responsibilities, and you need to keep that in your mind in terms of the way you manage us, because what that does is it adds complexity to the manager's role.

And job-sharing is complex enough, and what you don't want to do with any of these situations, and specifically with job-sharing, is make your manager think, If I agree to do this, then my life as a manager is going to be harder.

Anita Brick: Right. Because then you have a big barrier to begin with.

Brad Harrington: Exactly. No manager I know of out there is saying, how can I make my life more complicated these days? Right?

Anita Brick: Good point. One question, and I may have one more follow-up after that, but one of the alums asks—and I think it's sort of a nice evolution to what we just talked about—this person wanted to know what are the next few critical steps to evolve careers at the executive level, so that you might envision CEOs, COOs, etc., who job-share?

Brad Harrington: That's probably going to be trickier in some ways, because my guess is that most people who are at senior levels in organizations—for the most part, those roles are populated by and dominated by people who are willing to work really long hours and do whatever it takes to get the job done because the roles themselves, getting to those roles is very demanding.

And so people who get to those roles tend to be people who, you know, are willing to put in a lot of extra hours and do, you know, heroic acts in order to show that they deserve to be at that level.

And the second thing is the people who get into those jobs oftentimes have a very strong career identity. So when we talk about identity, we talk about it sometimes as if it's one thing, but obviously we all have multiple identities. You know, I'm an executive director of a research center at BC. I'm a professor, I'm a spouse, I'm a son, I'm a parent, I'm a soccer coach. I'm a Red Sox fan. You know, all these different identities, and they each have differing degrees of importance in my life.

A lot of times when you look at people at very senior levels of organizations and you look at the number of identities they have, they're oftentimes dominated by people with a very strong career identity. Sometimes to the exclusion of others. The issue, I think, will be whether or not people who have more balanced lives—and by that I mean they attend to things like raising their kids, being members of the community, coaching or athletics or art or whatever; they support things that are of interest in the community—whether or not people who take time to do those kinds of things are going to be able to rise to those levels within the organization.

My sense is if people who have those kinds of balanced lives do rise up to that level of the organization, then they will probably end up being very reasonable managers and probably very successful ones, because they will take a broader perspective about things. I think unfortunately, today—and maybe a little bit of a truth going forward in the future—is that a lot of times, people who rise to that level of the organization do so as a result of the fact that their career identity is first and foremost in their mind.

So whether we will see senior executives job sharing or working reduced hours more frequently in the future is sort of, to me, an open question.

Anita Brick: OK, it seems like there is a trend among men and women who are seeking to kind of run their own shows, you know, creating their own organizations, right?

Brad Harrington: Yeah. I think one of the things that's interesting is, in a sense— there was a book that came out a few years ago in our field. It was called We Are All Self-Employed. And I think what that basically said is, even if you're not an entrepreneur, you might want to start thinking like one because we live in a time when thinking that you work for somebody else and that that carries with it some degree of permanence is really a bad idea, right?

So in that sense, we've all become more entrepreneurial in terms of our careers and more obviously self-directed, as I've already mentioned. You know, when you look at entrepreneurs, I think there's a lot we can learn from them. But I do think that there is kind of a new breed of entrepreneurs that have come up in recent years, and it's populated probably more by women than men.

But there are entrepreneurs who don't fit the stereotype of people who say, I'm going to work, you know, 100 hours a week, take an idea and bring it to market, and then I'm going to sell my company to some bigger company and make a bundle of money. And then I'll go to the next thing or I'll retire on my wealth or whatever it might be.

I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs these days who have decided to become entrepreneurs because it's a way in which they can have more control and give more direction to their own lives. I think there are a set of people who enter into entrepreneurial kinds of activities these days who are doing so, not in an attempt to get rich—or not in an attempt to sort of say, I'm going to dedicate every waking hour to this project—but rather to say, I'm going to try to be in a situation where I have much greater control and autonomy over the way I live and where I work.

Anita Brick: That makes a lot of sense. One final question. Any trends that you're seeing, either in the US or in Europe or Asia, that would be relevant as people are thinking about flexible work options?

Brad Harrington: Even to take the three geographies at the level of the US, Asia, and Europe is hard because within Europe and within Asia, you'd see lots of differences. But I mean, you know, in broad terms, you know, obviously what we see in Europe, for example, is that people by and large—and governments by and large—tend to pay much greater attention to work-life issues.

You know, governments do that in very fundamental ways by providing health insurance for all their people and free education through universities and by paid policies for maternity leave and so forth, which are far, far more generous than anything that we have in the United States. So I think one of the things we might find as we globalize … Some people say, well, as we globalize, we're going to find out that the people in the developing countries are willing to work, you know, whatever hours it takes at whatever salary they'll get paid in order to be competitive so that they can move up, you know, from a material perspective, and they'll be able to be upwardly mobile economically. And I agree with that. By the same token, we'll also work with folks from European countries who take an attitude that a reasonable workweek might be 35 or 40 hours and that that's OK. Taking four or five weeks’ vacation is the norm, and not something that you don't get until you've been with an organization for 25 years.

You know, setting boundaries around your work life is a reasonable thing to do. So I think as organizations are globalized, I think what you'll find is that some of the lessons are going to be brought back from countries, and I think it may lead to some harmonization within the United States, of saying we're forcing people to be too self-reliant, and we don't really think enough about balance in our lives and that kind of thing.

And there are some lessons we might learn from European companies about the importance of those kinds of things. And at the end of the day, they are very productive organizations. In spite of the fact that they may not work as many hours, may have more vacation time than their US counterparts—they may be just as productive, if not more productive, than we are.

So I think as we become more global, we're going to look at different models that exist within different countries.

Anita Brick: Well, and we certainly welcome feedback and thoughts about this because our the people listening to this are basically scattered all over the world. You know, with three campuses, I mean, generally four campuses, two in Chicago and one in Singapore and one in London. But it's very insightful. Lots of really good information, Brad, and we really thank you. I know you're very busy, so thank you for making the time.

Brad Harrington: Thanks very much for having me.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at the Chicago GSB. Keep advancing, keep advancing. Keep advancing. Keep advancing.