Blood, Sweat And Tears
Did you know that there are people go around telling aspiring entrepreneurs not to work hard?
No, me neither. However, this was what was alleged by a ‘thought leader’ in the entrepreneurship space this week. He (yeah, obvs) was making the point that you need to work hard to succeed and there was nothing wrong with doing long hours but asserted that people were wrongly being told not to work hard.
There’s quite a lot to unpack here. It was a roundabout defence of ‘hustle’ culture, of pulling ‘all nighters’, of ‘always be closing’ and all that stuff.
It’s also based on personal experience, the ‘it didn’t harm me’ and ‘everyone I know who’s been successful did it’ line of argument. You know, the same argument that is used to justify working lawyers and investment bankers to near death in their early years.
Let’s be clear, very few people are successful without putting in a lot of effort. However, it’s not uncommon for them to harm themselves in the process, to sacrifice many other aspects of their life like relationships and their health and wellbeing.
I think what’s he’s referring to is the counter-narrative to the ‘hustle culture’ that is extolling the need for balance, warning of the dangers of burnout and of mental collapse. There’s plenty of cases of people who pushed too hard and crashed and burned, particularly in the tech and entrepreneurial space.
This counter narrative is pointing out that there are many aspects of life and focusing on one single one, be that business or work or whatever, can be damaging and ultimately unsustainable. It can also prove counter-productive as we know we have limited capacity for cognitive effort and that overwork degrades our decision making and leads to more mistakes and missteps. Not exactly a recipe for success, is it?
In the case of the person who posted, he actually said he rather missed the long days. That’s a key point, for many who ‘work hard’, it doesn’t feel like an effort. They are doing things they enjoy, it fits into the lifestyle they have. They are fascinated and absorbed by their work, by business, by the activities they do. A lot of it is just flow for them.
Others have different motivations. Bruce Daisley found whilst researching for his book ‘Fortitude’ that top achieving athletes often have some experience of trauma in their childhood. Andy Murray was present at the Dunblane shootings as a terrified schoolchild. Mo Farah was a refugee and, as he recently revealed, trafficked. A lot of high achievers are driven by deeper psychological reasons, not always in a healthy way.
What is required here is balance. I am very much against the ‘always be hustling’ narrative and it’s pernicious cousin ‘the side hustle’. We all need to be able to stop and smell the roses. But you won’t succeed without effort, either.
The secret is to find out what effort works for you. If you find something you love, it’s not really effort. If you find a pattern of work that comes naturally to you, you’ll be able to carry on doing it all your life. Some of us are sprinters, some of us are ultramarathon guys. Let’s all run the race that we’re suited to.
Everyday People
In one of the conversation threads on this post, one ‘I run ultramarathons, eat iron bars and work 26 hour days and that’s why I’m successful’ bro’s actually said I was settling for mediocrity.
Quite a statement, eh? It contains the massive assumption that I think he is being successful, that I measure success by the same metrics that he does. Which I don’t. It also assumes he is in a place to make judgement, which he isn’t.
A dictionary definition of ‘mediocre’ is ‘of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate’. Is that such a bad thing? If most people were mediocre in their jobs that would be an absolute blessing. If they were mediocre in their relationships, the world would definitely be a better place.
He’s probably thinks he’s better than average in most things. Most of us do. Which, somewhat ironically, makes him mediocre.
Love Is The Sweetest Thing
All this begs the question ‘What should work be about?’.
I am firmly of the view that work should be a place of growth, an opportunity for us to explore our potential, an environment in which everyone can thrive. All the other stuff follows out of this. Creativity, innovation, collaboration, excellence, joy and, yes, profitability.
I love what Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry Wehmuller, says:
“Leadership is the stewardship of the precious lives that come to you by people walking through your door and agreeing to share their gifts with you.”
That’s a fundamentally different approach to what has become the dominant attitude in the past 40 years. It’s actually something of a return to the paternalistic approach that emerged in the 1950s and that I experienced when I entered the workforce in the 1980s.
Then along came the doctrine of ‘shareholder primacy’ and the market-led neoliberal ideology of Thatcherism and Reganism. Look where that’s got us. Pitiful levels of engagement, faltering economic performance and a global epidemic of unhappiness.
Chapman makes the key point with this quote: “Business growth and people growth aren’t separate ideas; they are complementary pieces in creating value.”
Value-creation is what it’s all about, and that value is not just restricted to the bottom line and the share price. It’s in the human beings too.
Working In The Coal Mine
We’re no longer working in Blake’s ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ but the modern work environment can be just as dangerous. Health and Safety may have caused a reduction in workplace accidents and fatalities but there’s a whole different, hidden set of dangers today.
I had a great uncle who worked as stoker in a foundry, spending all day shovelling coal into the furnace. It was physically hard work in a dangerous environment. I remember going to see where he worked once when I was about 6 or 7. We stood by the entrance to the foundry and it was like something out of Dante’s Inferno. The oppressive heat, the smoke and flame, the percussive noise and clanging of metal, the roar of the furnaces. Imagine what it was like actually inside! His body was worn out by the time he got to his mid-fifties and he never got to enjoy retirement. The job killed him.
We don’t have clearly dangerous work environments like that any more (at least, not in the advanced economies) but what we have can be just as dangerous and damaging to health.
‘Toxic workplaces’ has become a bit of an over-used label these days but we all know exactly what it means. As Jeffrey Pfeffer pointed out in ‘Dying for a Paycheck’, nice ‘white collar’ jobs are still injuring and killing people but in less obvious ways.
The hazards are very different. The lack of safety and security, the precarity of employment, the constant scrutiny, the relentless pressure to do more, the stress, the demands that you be ‘always on’, the lack of meaning and purpose in your work, the quixotic behaviour of management and the capriciousness of corporate life.
These roar quietly, in air-conditioned surroundings and pastel shades, but are just as deadly. It’s about time we updated our approach to Health and Safety to cover these present dangers.
The workplace should be a generative one, not a killing zone. It’s time to build a new Jerusalem.
No Excuses
I am sometimes surprised at how angry I still get about this stuff. There has been a lot posts in LinkedIN about the latest antics of a certain newly-installed owner and CEO of a social media platform (ha, see, I said I wasn’t going to mention Musk this week!) (Oh, bugger…).
To treat people badly just to make a few quid or create another useless bauble to briefly amuse people is utterly appallling. To do so just to satisfy your ego is even more reprehensible, not say sociopathic.
There is no justification for treating people badly. It’s never ‘the only way’. We are all human beings and we deserve dignity and respect. This is a hill I am prepared die on. I invite you to come and stand with me
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