Get a Life: Working 24/7

Writers Jody Miller and Matt Miller were online Thursday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m. ET to discuss their "Fortune" magazine cover story titled "Get a Life," about how companies are starting at the top of the corporate ladderto help executives escape the 24/7 grind, achieve a better work/life balance and be better for business.

Read the article: Get A Life! (Fortune Magazine, Nov. 28)

A transcript follows.

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Washington, D.C.: Why has work become so all consuming? Was it always like this or is it a result of this computer age?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: I think it's a combination of things. First, businesses are much bigger today and more complex. They're global; they have consolidated. You look in 1970 as Lowell Bryan noted in our Fortune piece. In 1970, the world's 50 Biggest companies averaged $29 billion in revenue and not they're $100 billion. Basically businesses are bigger; they're more complex.

MM: When it comes to technology, we're in this transition period where the fact that senior people have not been able to put boundaries on how accessible they are, the technology ends of being more of a prison than a liberator.

JM: I think it's both a prison and a liberator.

MM: ... And one way to start to solve this is to make sure the BlackBerries and e-mails really become liberating and let us control our lives better instead of having these things control us.

JM: There's no question that if properly controlled, technology should liberate us.

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Arlington, Va.: Do you think employees who work in an office are treated better than those who work primarily out of their homes? For example in terms of travel plans? It's been my observation that if you work from home most of the time the boss thinks you're always available and doesn't take into account family/home responsibilities when assigning a person to travel? I suppose that what I'm asking is do we forget that virtual workers are indeed real people with lives outside of work?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: That's a really interesting question. Whether you're in the office or working from home, it's first and foremost the responsbility of each working person to be open and clear about what their own expectations are and what their own limits are. In other words, we hope that articles like the one we have in Fortune will encourage and make it safe for these kinds of conversations. It's still going to be up to the employees to make it clear what will and won't work for them.

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Bethesda, Md.: I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but besides offering telecommuting from homes, shorter work days, etc., is there really anything a company can do to give an employee a better work/life balance? It seems to me, that it's really a personal choice depending on the personality of the employee. I've known many workaholics who work long hours because they like to and want to -- they wouldn't know what to do with extra free time if it landed in their lap.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: MM: Yes, there are things you can do besides what Bethesda mentions. The most important is there are ways to restructure the ways the work gets done. They can actually improve business performance and leave people with more time if they want it for things outside of work. For example, we featured the story of Gregg Slager, a high-powered partner in the mergers and acquisition area of Ernst and Young, who hit the wall -- his whole department hit the wall -- in terms of endless 80-hour weeks and found that when they rethought how the work got done, they ended up with better client service and better lives. I think if everybody thinks about their own companies most people know that they're not operating at peak efficiency and if the climate is made safe to talk about how to do things better you can end up making serious progress on this.

JM: If you haven't read the piece, there is actually no mention of telecommuting. It's all about innovative ways to fundamentally restructure work and evolve the culture around what senior jobs really require.

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New York, N.Y.: Great article. Working in Lower Manhattan I can't really see this becoming a reality, but there is hope! How long to see you this need to evolve to the point where it is the norm?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: The faster than men, in particular, start to step up and raise these issues, the sooner we'll all get there.

MM: I would add that I'm perfect evidence that men can be trained on this subject. I used to not focus on this as much and with the help of my wonderful, cajoling wife have come to realize how central this is for everyone's lives. That's why we're very big on people understanding this is not a "women's issue," it's a human issue and that's why the Fortune survey in the piece that shows that men want saner lives too is so important.

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New York: Hi Miller and Miller ...

Thanks for addressing the work/life balance' stereotyped as only a women's problem. Do you find that women have it tough, whether they're single (seen as 'unstable', 'threatening'...) or with family (seen as 'unambitious', 'not hard-driving')?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: I think that everybody's got it tough. Men have stereotypes that make it harder for them to address these kinds of issues and wanting balance. Many of them feel the penalty for them would be much greater than it is for women which is maybe why it has taken longer for men to feel comfortable talking about it. Of course, there are people who have stereotypes about women and we have to overcome that with performance.

MM: The biggest stereotype in this whole debate is that you can't really do anything to change the way work gets done in these high-powered jobs. And one of the things we hoped to show in the piece is that there are examples of very senior folks who are showing ways to get things done so that there's hope. This is not a hopeless cause; it's about changing people's mindsets about how to accomlplish work in organizations.

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Woodbridge, Va.: Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I don't buy the work/life balance line that many companies preach, but few practice.

The top tiers of the corporate environment are as unsuited to a balanced life as a bicycle is to a fish.

I'll bet the manager who took time off to be with his daughter who broke her arm was juggling a BlackBerry and a cell phone the whole time. That's not balance.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: Look, if you want to be successful, work is still work but we actually believe from the reporting we've done that you can make it much, much better for the people in these jobs and improve productivity.

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Washington, D.C.: Did you look at SAS at all in your research for this piece? I was bowled over by the 60 Minutes piece about the company and the CEO's emphasis on quality of life for his employees. Google is also doing some interesting work along those lines.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: MM: Yes, we talked to Jim Goodnight, the CEO of SAS (software company in N.C.), and although some of that conversation didn't end up in the piece, he is the apostle of the higly efficient 7-hour workday. He says if you work longer than that you're not productive and he's built a company esentially from scratch that's globally a leader where people have sane lives. So it can be done.

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Washington, D.C.: Have you gotten any feedback from our Fortune magazine cover story?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: Yes, in particular, from many men and many serious business people who we understand are sending it around to whole senior management teams. We've also gotten some skeptics who believe this will never happen and even some who think it shouldn't happen.

MM: There's even been interest abroad. We've heard from folks in Europe and I heard today that someone who was involved in focus groups in Hong Kong in these issues were talking about the piece and noting that just the existence of a cover story in Fortune making these arguments made people more comfortable raising these questions in their workplace.

JM: And that's exactly what we hoped would happen. Make the world safe.

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Washington, D.C.: Just a comment. Interesting article, however having a "life" and a successful professional career is difficult, if not impossible in today's competitive environment. I started my own company two years ago and I work 18-20 hour days, 7 days a week, including holidays. All of my socializing revolves around networking for business. I cannot slow down because there is so much competition and I have so much to lose. When you compete with multinationals, it is extremely difficult to survive as a small company, no matter what your business field. For the past ten years I have watched numerous small, indepedent businesses fail and I am determined to beat the odds and survive. Thus I work and work and work. My employees depend upon me for their jobs and for the first time in my 26 year career I am happy and I feel that I am actually doing something worthwhile.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: First, there's no question that being an entrepreneur in a small, startup environment is among the biggest challenages when you're trying to create a balance between your work and life; however, a lot of it will depend on economics. If you don't want to work as hard then one option is to take less equity for yourself and bring in more senior partners to help share the burden.

MM: But if you're happy then good for you! There's no one size fits all answer; these are very personal choices about what matters to you in your life. All we're arguing for is that it should be possible in corporate America to work at senior levels of responsibility without working 18 hours a day and we think that the organizations of the future will find ways to accommodate different levels of time commitment from talented people: a 24/7 person can coexist in an office with somebody who's not and that's okay.

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Iowa City, Iowa: Hi! I work for a non-profit and although I don't work 80 hour weeks, I do put in a lot of time in the evenings and on weekends. We hold a lot of special events for fundraising purposes and it is exhausting. I would love to work part-time (I manage PR) but my boss says no. It's purely for appearance's sake that the staff remain full-time. I wonder why companies, corporate and non-profit, still frown on part-time hours. I'm on my husband's health insurance as it is so benefits are not an issue with me. Many of my friends (women, either with children or without) would love to work part-time and it's practically non existent in the work place. What gives?

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: A lot of it is just cultural and "this is the way we've always done it." I think there's some fear which a number of CEOs that we interviewed had expressed, like Jim Sinegal of Costco and David Neeleman of Jet Blue, that if employees are not there full time or close to full time that they will not be effective, they won't be enough in the "game." However, the two women who job-shared at Fleet Bank that we profiled in our piece showed that you can be even more effective and more focused with a part-time role. There needs to be greater acceptance of this and greater ways to match up the part-time desire of business with corporate needs. The infrastructure for that does not exist today which is why I have actually started a business do just that. (www.unitedtalentgroup.com)

MM: Check out the site. The revolt of talent is coming!

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Bethesda, Md.: How about taking it down to the level of the workers who actually do the things that get the execs their overinflated salaries?

Just another case of the ruling class taking care of themselves without realizing that it's the work and sweat of the folks working in the cubicles that allows them to get obscene bonuses and rosewood desks.

You'll excuse me for not feeling too much sympathy for a Ken Lay or Bernie Ebbers or a Dennis Kozlowski feeling like they have to spend so much time cooking the books they can't have a life.

Cry me a river.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: First of all, I'm glad we've gotten this question. The focus of this piece was at the top because most efforts to try to make work better for employees are actually focused on the mid and lower level of the corporate structure. Virtually no one has looked at this issue from the perspective of senior executives. And while we know it is obviously not the most pressing problem facing the country today it seems to us that the top levels of companies should not be reserved only for people who are willing to give up most of the other things in life that matter. We believe you will both improve productivity and create the opportunity for a new class of leaders who may have different attitudes that will trickle down throughout their companies and the culture at large.

MM: It think you have a future as an editorial writer.

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Greenbelt, Md.: How big a role does peer pressure play in the work/life scenario? There are times when I am made to feel guilty because after an eight-and-a-half hour workday in which all of my tasks are done, I have co-workers who stay beyond their time and make cracks about me working "bankers hours."

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: MM: I think there is a lot of pressure to put in face time at work and a big reason for that is that it's hard for managers to really understand the value of people's contributions and so many of us end up feeling that putting in time is the one way to show our commitment in a way that bosses understand. We think one of the keys in changing this culture will be improved performance measures that let managers better understand the value of each person's contributions to a team effort without using face time as the proxy.

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Arlington, Va.: Have you interviewed any work-driven people either at the end of their careers or near the end of their lives to find out if they thought it was worth it?

I could work more and probably be higher up on the food chain, but when all is said and done, the only thing that's going to matter at the end of my life is what my family thinks of me. It's too bad more people don't realize this.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: In a Forune survey for the piece, over half said they wondered if the sacrifice for the career was worth it. And these are people who are currently working so I think it's a good sign that the people are asking the right questions.

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9-11 hours per day: I left a job last year similar to those described in the article. I love my new job, the hours are no where near as bad but I have a problem.

I get to the office at 7 a.m., work through lunch and usually plan to leave around 3:30. However, I start to feel guilty because others will be here for hours after I leave ... mostly because they arrived hours after I arrived.

How do I make the guilt go away?!

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: I think it is important for you to recognize and feel comfortable about the job you're doing. It sounds like you're doing what you need to do.

MM: If you can stop worrying about what other people think about you you'll be happier.

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New York: My jobs where there was the best balance of work and life were at universities (including hospitals linked to universities.) They made sure to balance my overtime i.e. if I worked 12 hours in one day due to absolute necessity, like a patient visit, I could come in 4 hours late on a pre-approved day. As long as I put in 40 hours a week and got all my work done, they were OK with it.

They also gave the best health, dental, education benefits, offered child care and gym memberships, and discounts on cell phones, subway passes and car insurance, among a ton of other things. And employees got to participate in everything the university had to offer, like cultural events and lectures.

Jody Miller and Matt Miller: MM: That's great for you but the whole Larry Summers controversy earlier this year was all about the fact that he said women professors aren't as inclined to work 80-hour weeks to get ahead. So my guess is not everyone in academia is enjoying the quality of life you are enjoying. It's really an issue for every business, non-profit and governmental organization.

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Jody Miller and Matt Miller: JM: At the end of day we think there are four things that can really move the ball forward. 1) recognizing that it's a human issue and a woman's issue. Men want saner lives too. 2) It's good for business to figure this out. It will be a competitive advantage. 3) There are reasons and examples to believe that progress is possible. 4) We have to make the culture safe.

MM: Some skeptics of these ideas say that we're trying to "have it all." But let's talk about what "all" really is. It means people want to work at the level they're capable of and still have the sustenance from their family or communities with which they're blessed. Saying people have to choose between these two things is like telling them they have to choose between food and water. People need both. And when enough talented people insist on humanizing the workplace they'll be able to have it.

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