by Kim Taylor
When I saw this post from Harvard Business Review, I wondered if the author had been peering over my shoulder when he wrote it. I’ve been struggling with this one for a long time and it’d been the subject of a recent discussion in our office.
In a professional services business, you’re not selling jars of peanut butter, you’re selling time; and generally speaking, a finite amount of it. And while we’ve always proclaimed that our business is not an ‘8 to 5’ gig, we’re not brain surgeons, NASA engineers or first responders either, and therefore the workday should include a logical beginning and end.
How, then, do you reconcile that against growing competition, client demands and a recession-induced smaller workforce? It certainly seems that at some point the message we’re sending is mixed.
But more importantly, it creates a slippery slope, a “new normal” as the author points out:
“But once you begin expanding your work hours on a regular basis, working “normal” hours starts to look like slacking off. In other words, if you establish a pattern of staying late, your extended hours become the new normal.”
We periodically look for opportunities to close up a few minutes early—but convincing our team it’s actually OK to go is often a struggle.
What are your time management tips for avoiding the new normal?
[...] Avoiding the New Normal – October 25, 2011 [...]