Post #3 in a series of 6 posts on balance: Why can’t you have it all—or can you?

In “No, You Can’t Have it All,” Harvard Business Review (October 2012) guest author Eric Sinoway presents a framework he designed with business professor Howard Stevenson “to help ambitious executives understand their limits and make tough trade-offs. It starts with considering all the dimensions of your life, developing a vision of yourself for the future, and then evaluating how your options advance you toward your goals.”

Simple, right?

To guide executives through this process, the framework provides the following five compelling questions:

1. Where do your options fall on the needs-wants spectrum? Most things fall somewhere in the middle. Some wants are so strong that it’s difficult to separate them from needs.
2. What are the investment and opportunity costs? Most decisions involve both kinds of costs. The challenge is to understand if incurring them will help you achieve your goals.
3. Are the potential benefits worth the costs? Does the benefit you’ll receive warrant the investment you’ll have to make?
4. Can you make a trade? Many of us try to exchange something we want for something else that we want. But sometimes the two items can’t be traded. Money, for instance, cannot buy health.
5. Have you considered sequencing your most valued options? Consciously staggering your goals may enable you to be equally successful over time.

Next time, I’ll try to answer the questions!

Post #2 in a series of 6 posts on work/life balance: Where to begin?

When thinking about work/life balance, it’s also useful to consider where you are in your life. Young and unencumbered? Seems like the logical time to put every bit of your energy into building your career or business. Married with small kids at home? Maybe that’s the time to build more family time into your daily routine, even if that means some of your career goals need to go on the back burner for a while.

This sort of thinking seems like conventional wisdom. But what if your parents are elderly and need your help, even as you are in your prime career building years? What if you have a burning desire to spend a year in Africa building schools or helping a local community build desperately needed infrastructure? Or what if you’re a business owner trying to grow your fragile enterprise by squeezing every last ounce of productivity out of your people? Isn’t “balance” the enemy of growth and profit?

Obviously, when it comes to balance, there are no easy answers. That’s why I’m so intrigued with the framework developed by Eric Sinoway and Howard Stevenson, detailed in the October 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review (“No, You Can’t Have It All”). As noted in the article synopsis:

Many of us are struggling to chart a path toward success in our careers and a sense of fulfillment in all aspects of our lives. But we can’t excel simultaneously in every role. Instead, at various points in life we must choose what to emphasize and what to relinquish. The goal is to make the decision consciously instead of unwittingly letting go of the most important item.

All of the above resonates for me… the first two sentences, remind me of a conversation with my brother-in-law (thanks Jon).  It was one of those conversations; where you keep replaying it.  I shared, I felt guilty.  In the past two years, with the death of my dad, significant accident of a friend, two adoptions, and health issues with my wife, I’ve been involved but working less on the business.  In spite of this, Intertech has had its best two years ever.  I’ve been tremendously lucky in having business partners who’ve “stepped up” (thanks Ryan, Dan, Jim, and Dave).  Jon shared there will come a time when others will have similar issues and I’ll be more present in the business while they take care of their families.  Simply, it’s life.  It’s O.K.

Per the last sentence of the italicized paragraph above, when I was in the early stages of building Intertech, I put the most important relationship in my life—my marriage—at great risk, unwittingly of course.  I was younger, ambitious and determined to make my company successful. That meant a lot of long days and many nights working into the wee hours, ignoring my wife and doing less than my fair share around the house.  For my first wedding anniversary, I asked my wife to get herself a gift and get takeout… not good ideas!

My drive to succeed could have cost me dearly if my wife hadn’t insisted that I slow down a bit and take a look at my priorities. This is not to say that I lost my ambition or my work ethic, but I slowly began to realize that building the company could not be the only place I put my energy.

Next time I’ll tell you about the framework for making balanced decisions developed by Eric Sinoway and Howard Stevenson.

Post 1 of 6 posts of balance: Finding the elusive personal mix

When we think about a strong investment portfolio, the word “balanced” frequently comes to mind. Why do so many smart people get the importance of balancing investments yet totally overlook the critical nature of finding balance in business and in their personal lives?

As a leader, I think about this issue relative to my employees and my company’s priorities. And, of course, achieving balance in my personal life is of paramount importance to me.

Seems I’m not the only one pondering these issues and trying to make sense of it all. A recent article in Harvard Business Review, “No, You Can’t Have It All” by Eric C. Sinoway (October 2012) provides a thought-provoking framework for “deciding which work-life goals to pursue when.” There’s also a nice Perspectives piece in the November 2012 Minnesota Business magazine called “Keeping the Balance,” which features thoughts on maintaining work/life balance from executive coach and motivational speaker Dr. Verna Price. And I even noticed a recent Star Tribune article, “Street-smart yoga” about a local yoga studio giving free classes to homeless kids to help them develop—you guessed it—balance (and I’m not talking about standing on one leg!)

My next series of posts will take a closer look at an assortment of balance issues—you could say I’m going to take a balanced approach to the topic–as explored in these articles and from my own experience. I’m hoping these posts will inspire you to ask your own tough questions so you (and, if you’re a business owner or manager, your employees) can begin 2013 with a little more balance of your own. With the holidays just around the corner, I realize I could be setting myself up for a pretty tall order!