Work IS Life

Please bear with me as I set up this topic.

One of my great joys in this business is interviewing new candidates. The interview represents the moment when the candidate’s hope wars with his or her insecurity as they dream about their future, while the hiring manager’s hope and vision for the future organization wars with his/her trepidation of making a hire based on limited information. This tension in a time of flux in career and organization is an amazing recipe for ideation – new and creative ways to find and place people into areas of greatest value for the individual and the company. I’m not sure there is a better picture of what business truly is than this.

So it was with great joy that I brought a candidate (let’s call him ‘Jim’) up to our vibrant corporate headquarters in silicon valley. It’s a great place for us to bring customers and candidates because they get to feel the electricity in the air. They get the palpable sense that things are happening and moving, and the feeling that we are leaning into the future with dreams of changing the world. So, I spend about a half-day with Jim. I ask him to consultatively position solutions, I test his technical depth, and we talk of his vision and hopes as they relate to career and mission, and then we go to lunch with a VP to give him another opportunity to make an impact on our organization. I invite him to stay and have dinner later that evening, but Jim has plans with friends, so we shake hands, I put my hand on his shoulder and tell him there are great things ahead … and I find out two days later that Jim never came home. A car accident that night claimed a brilliant career, and cut short dreams of a long marriage and days at the beach with his children.

I tell this story not to establish pain, but to provide a ‘why’ to this writing. You see, Jim was away from his family on a ‘work thing,’ and any life cut short leaves us pondering fairness.

Today, we talk about ‘work-life balance’ and how to be healthy and hale we must take these different segments, place them on a scale, and make sure that home gets its fair share of our time. We express sentiments through platitudes like ‘no-one on their death bed ever thinks about how they should have spent one more day at the office’ as ways to help us focus on those relationships that should be most important to us. While this is true, I think it can be a bit misleading and pushes us into a sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and choices when we segment our lives so starkly. This is not a question of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ where ‘office’ represents the evil empire and ‘home’ represents the good and holy republic. Of course no-one dreams of spending more time at the office, but we do dream of spending more time with people in whom deep relationships dwell. The office is just a building – the relationships we build in that office become an extension of our lives; they help define us and our view of self and the world.

To make this practical, I deeply love my wife, and through our relationship I see visions of a future holding each other in dark and in happy times. She challenges me to keep my eye on practical concerns (not forgetting the trees as I look at the forest) and she demands that I focus on intimacy of relationship – depth and quality of communication, etc. In my children I rediscover simple pleasures, I am reminded to communicate good character in challenging them to discover their own paths, and I see the world anew – they keep my mind young and full of dreams! These are absolutely a part of who I am, and they are the central core from which I evolve. But my life is also more … I have a mission and a purpose that extends from that base to impact the world around me.

I love the teams I work with. I am in meetings with people that report to me, and they present topics and vision that open my mind in ways I could never fully express my gratitude for. I feel a part of their lives, and hope I help them reach bigger and brighter things. I thank them constantly for their hard work, and while I think they assume I have to and that it’s just one of those platitudes their boss says to close a team call, I really do see them changing the world … and changing me. The same is true of my leaders. We face tough challenges, and I’m called upon to make tough decisions – hiring and firing is not just a task, it impacts the lives of the people we touch. Decisions which address business direction and product focus can impact the value perceived of our endeavor and everyone who is a part of it – and my leaders stand in the gap with me and my reports to navigate dangerous waters. My customers and partners constantly challenge me to see their world through their eyes so that, in my understanding, I can provide them aid as they chase after their own dreams. Visionaries at my company and in the industry at large impact me as I walk the halls with them. They bring the wider world into focus beyond where even my prodigious imagination can take me.

The point here is not to say that work is equal to home, or to challenge us to spend more time ‘at the office.’ Our lives most assuredly require balance, but what I have found is that when business and home are seen as a continuation of a single whole ‘you,’ we are healthier and more wise. I believe we have gone too far in our effort to ‘leave work at work.’ When we apply a hard segmentation to our lives, our family is disconnected and wanting. My wife will not understand where my heart is because I don’t bring enough work home for her to understand my passions, hopes and dreams for me, for us, for the kids, and for the world.

On the other side, our society has grown to see business as ‘evil’ in many cases. While there are abuses of power, I see many of these ethically questionable business patterns arising because we separate ‘home’ and ‘office’ so starkly. How can you steal money from people when you see them as part of your family? How do you abuse an expense policy when you see it impacting families who depend on paychecks and bonuses derived from your company’s profitability? Sociopathic behavior (as defined by acting in violent or negative ways toward another) takes place when we divorce ourselves emotionally from the target of our action. A lack of empathy can cause a world of hurt. We can cut someone off on the freeway much easier when all we see is another car on the road. It is much more difficult to be predatorially antisocial when you are cutting off Kate the young mother and her 4 month old son, Billy, who you care about. The point here is that we should bring much more ‘home’ into the ‘office.’ Those that I characterize as ‘my people’ include those I work with the same as they do those I meet outside of the office. You and I are but distant family.

I realize that this is a bit philosophical and ‘touchy-feely’, but I hope these recent events allow you to understand why I go there. In the very brief time that I interacted with Jim, I was impacted. Some small piece of him will be with me from here on out. I would have wished his wife and child could have had more time and that the future we were exploring together could have been more fully realized, but it was not to be. His death was a stark reminder to me that nothing is guaranteed, and, as is human nature, I ask ‘why?’ He was away from his family, he was ‘at the office’, etc. But that is too narrow a view. Jim was chasing a dream, and that dream included his family who he carried with him to the very last moments of his life. In some small way, I am proud that I was a part of his vision.

When my last days come, I will certainly not be thinking of the office. I WILL most assuredly be thinking about many of you: co-workers, friends, business associates. We are partners in a dream that is redefining many aspects of our world, and because of that you give me purpose and direction. My life is full because of all that I do and the relationships I treasure. I must relax with the ‘us vs. them’ mentality and rather look at life as a whole, prioritizing relationships over things, possibilities over limitations, and hopes above fear.

I pray that Jim’s family finds peace, and I am grateful for ‘the office’ that provided the brief moment I had with him.