Taming the 4 headed snake …
The reason we need to take a systems approach to redefining career paths is because any other approach is like taming a 4 headed snake; while you are busy getting one head to behave differently, one of the other 3 heads can still bite you.
Why is this issue a 4 headed snake? Because multiple systems impact how we manage our careers – organizations, the larger business environment, public policy and families.
To learn more about this, join our free Thursdays with ThirdPath call on November 29th, with Peter Senge when we discuss how to “end the war between work and family.” Here’s a quick overview of the four different systems and what Peter and Jessica will be discussing.
The organizations we work in – We all know that where we work significantly impacts how successful we are around integrating work and life. Progressive organizations make a tremendous difference in our ability to redefine the arc of a successful career. Our Thursday with ThirdPath calls illustrate this very clearly.
But the speed up of work and a global workplace also impacts our ability to redefine a successful career. To get ahead, professionals have gone from working long hours to working extreme hours. However, our call this spring with Leslie Perlow, author of Sleeping with Your Smartphone, does a great job illustrating how the demands of our 24/7 workplace and the trap of instant responsiveness not only compromises our work/life integration goals, but also our effectiveness at work.
Public policy – Here’s where you have to be careful about being bitten by the other snake heads. Some people believe the role of public policy when addressing career path challenges is creating affordable child care, including full time care for infants and toddlers. But there are many others who would strongly oppose this type of public policy. Instead they believe the best thing for families is to make it affordable for one parent to provide the majority of care – most often the mother. Sadly the role of men and fathers is often completely lost in any of these discussions.
Therefore, to create lasting change and truly redefine the arc of successful careers, we also need to “redesign families.” Our Shared Care families and Whole Life Leaders are actively doing this. Not only are they stepping out of traditional gender roles, they are also experts in pushing back at our 24/7 work place so they have time and energy for their lives outside of work.
What will it look like when we’ve created a unified approach to change that addresses all 4 over lapping systems? I hope it means we will have created a world where men and women feel equally supported to create integrated career paths, male and female leaders model integrated lives, and all families – across the economic spectrum – have access to these solutions as well.