Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1385

The Answer to Every Business Question Is “It Depends”

What happens when you put three business professors in a rental car and send them out to talk to owners and managers of small- and medium-sized businesses? Would they discover their MBA frameworks to be a bunch of academic mumbo-jumbo with no real applicability?

For the past several years, professors Mike Mazzeo (Kellogg), Paul Oyer (Stanford) and I (Utah) have been touring the back roads of America, knocking on doors, and asking business people how they do it. We trudged through ice and snow in Enid, Oklahoma, cruised over mountain passes near Missoula, Montana, and dodged mammoth raindrops in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We got lost dozens of times, ate some dodgy meals, and, most importantly, learned a lot about business.

Our learnings support a single point, which Paul and I named in Mike’s honor. Mazzeo’s Law: The answer to every strategic question is “It depends.”  Corollary: The trick is knowing what it depends on.

What we found is that there’s no best path to business success. Managers successfully address seemingly similar problems in very different ways and, as our corollary suggests, the trick is to find which solution fits with the specifics of your business.

In Johnson City, Tennessee, we chatted with Elisa Comer, the owner of Eagle’s Landing Informatics. The firm, which does medical transcription work, employs a couple dozen medical language specialists who listen to recordings of a physician’s spoken notes and generate typed records. We asked Elisa how she pays her transcriptionists, all of whom work remotely from home. “[They] are paid some number of cents per line based on the contract and the turnaround time,” she explained. “If they’re working extra, they get a few cents more per line.”

Elisa identified the performance she hoped to elicit from employees and simply tied pay to a measure of this performance. But, while this plan effectively aligns the interests of the employee with those of the company and motivated speeds, we worried about the side effects. “Are you concerned about accuracy?” we asked.

“Absolutely,” Elisa said. “’Is’ or ‘Is not’ is a big deal in medicine, and the doctors are not always helpful by dictating at a normal speed.” So Eagle’s Landing also employs a staff of quality assurance specialists to check on transcriptionists, especially new hires.

In Saint Joseph, Missouri, we met with JR Cheek, owner of JR’s TBA (for tires, brakes and alignment), who faced a similar problem but decided on a different solution. JR described the issue as follows: “Say a customer comes in for an oil change. I’m not here to rob anybody, but [when] the tech put[s] your car up in the air … he might uncover a want or a need that you have. If he asks for that order, that’s where I become profitable.”

Based on this description, we expected that JR could align employee and corporate interests by paying his technicians a commission based on the additional revenue they generate by identifying “wants and needs.” But JR told us that pay-for-performance didn’t work for him. Employees, he found, focused too much on uncovering problems with customers’ cars, creating an incentive to do a hard sell, or worse, to suggest unnecessary repairs, which turned people off and, JR believed, cost him more in the long run. His solution was to monitor and encourage the right activities, but to pay by the hour instead of connecting it directly to revenue.

Elisa resolved her speed vs. accuracy trade-off by paying for speed and monitoring accuracy, while JR Cheek resolved his “identify wants and needs” vs. “don’t hard sell” trade-off by abandoning commissions. So who’s right?

Probably both. The key to making good business decisions is to assess how the potential benefits and potential costs of a particularly strategy, in this case an incentive plan, pertains in your specific situation. Following our encounters with Elisa, JR and many other company owners like them, we have come to view business frameworks as a set of tools to help managers resolve the “what it depends on” question.

Use a Brand Council to Help Steer Strategy

David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, once observed that “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people.” A more current corollary might be, “Brand-building is too important to be left to the brand people.”

The historical role brands have played – serving as symbols to guarantee a certain level of quality or as images to attract attention – is no longer relevant or useful today. A brand can’t just be a promise; it must be a promise delivered. And brand stewardship can no longer be under the exclusive purview of marketing departments and brand managers.

A 2008 survey of chief marketing officers and brand managers by the Association of National Advertisers found that 64% say their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies. Brands may drive communications activities, but little else. This means that nearly two-thirds of companies are pouring millions of dollars into marketing and advertising to promote certain values and attributes that may or may not be aligned with the reality of the business. Customers no longer tolerate the disconnects that arise from such gaps – and companies can no longer afford to keep brand-building a costly, discrete, and subjective set of activities.

Brand-building is a function that business leaders, owners, and general managers – the people responsible for the culture, core operations, and customer experiences of an organization – must drive. Smart companies form brand councils to meet this leadership imperative.

Brand councils are comprised of senior executives from a range of company functions: key business unit leaders, influential staff leaders from human resources, marketing, legal, and finance, and sometimes even the CEO. On occasion, these senior executives may designate lieutenants to sit on the brand council as their representatives, but they ensure the designees have the social capital, as well as the authority, to participate fully.

The brand council is charged with using the brand as the lens for strategic business decision-making. It uses the brand identity and positioning as guardrails to assess the appropriateness of proposed initiatives and as standards to evaluate their execution. The charter of a brand council is usually limited to oversight and approval, not implementation, so it draws the line between what is on-brand and what is not, and holds project teams and working groups accountable to it.

Brand councils usually devote the most attention to three areas of the organization.

Product development often requires strong executive brand stewardship because the pursuit of innovation and the pressure to fill the pipeline often cause teams to veer off-brand. A brand council can resolve conflicting priorities, or at least bring the parties with different interests together in a brand-focused discussion.
Partnerships are also potential brand stumbling blocks that deserve attention. Whether it’s a strategic partnership, a distribution deal, or a co-marketing campaign, companies often enter into agreements with a focus on the business opportunity and the business terms of the contract. A brand council can ensure brand objectives are also met and brand equity is protected in the arrangement.
Brand councils are actively involved in people issues. Not only do they shape people strategies throughout the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to transition, but they also serve as champions for brand alignment and engagement throughout the organization. Brand councils often oversee the development and deployment of brand guides and tools, and they may provide leadership for brand rollout meetings and experiences. Brand council members also represent their functions on the council, giving them voice and visibility to other executives by recognizing their brand-related successes and raising their brand-related concerns.

Forming and running a brand council requires a significant investment of time and energy by executives who already have very full plates. But companies must stop thinking about and using brands as static outward-facing, image-oriented objects. No longer is a brand an experience mediated through messaging and marketing communications. It is the experience that is actually delivered and expressed through every single thing the organization does, every day. As such, brand-building needs to be led at the highest levels of the organization. It can’t be delegated to a marketing department or an advertising agency. It must be driven – and embraced – as an enterprise-wide approach. A brand council is how savvy companies ensure this happens.

Ultimately, though, the best brand councils operate with the goal of making themselves unnecessary. Rather than relishing the role of brand police, they inform, inspire, and instruct the organization on stewarding the brand, so that over time, everyone in the organization knows how to appropriately interpret and reinforce the brand.

The Emotional Boundaries You Need at Work

To develop meaningful and mature relationships at work or at home we need to develop two filters. The first filter protects you from other people. The second filter protects other people from you.

Filter 1: protect yourself from others. I once worked with a manager who gave blunt feedback in perpetuity: “You’re not a grateful person!” and “You’re just not a great writer!” and “Well, that was dumb!” My response, at first, was to listen as if everything he said was true. On the outside, I became defensive — but on the inside, I returned home emotionally beaten up. Every night my wife, Anna, would listen to the details of the encounters and help me to discern truth from error. One day she just said, “You’ve got to learn to consider the source!” My error was not that I didn’t listen, but that I listened too much. In other words, I needed to learn to filter the feedback.

Filter 2: Protect other people from you. On the other hand, I once worked with a leader with whom I felt I could be completely open. One day she said to me, “I value what you have to say, but sometimes it feels like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus when we talk.” Clearly, I was not doing a good enough job at protecting this colleague from me. I needed to increase the filter of what I shared and how I shared it. (For further reading see Pia Mellody’s work on boundaries).

Learning to apply enough of both filters — but not too much — is tough. Too much or too little can create relationship conflict as depicted in the matrix below (with a hat tip to “The Relationship Grid” by Terrence Real)

Here’s how it works:

If both filters are low, you’re volatile.This is the worst position to be in: you don’t protect yourself from other people or protect other people from you. If you’re in this place you will act like a wounded animal. You will feel hypersensitive to what someone is saying to you but you will speak defensively. You may feel like a victim but will act like a bully.

When you find yourself feeling this way, ask, “Am I seeing the situation clearly?” and “Do I feel like I am overreacting here?” and “Does it seem like the other person is overreacting here?” Apply a tax to what the other person is saying; assume he isn’t 100% accurate. Look for one thing you agree with and discard the rest. Hold back your own words until you feel clearer. Write down what you feel like saying to him (and do it on paper so you can’t send an outraged email accidentally), then review it later.

If you have one high filter and one low filter, you’re either overbearing or vulnerable. If you’re overbearing, it’s is a tricky position to be in; you feel confident but may be unknowingly causing offense. You’re saying what you believe, but may seem too outspoken. The problem is that you may not be adjusting well to other people because you’re not really hearing them. You’re communicating like it’s a one-way street.

When you sense this situation, say, “Perhaps I am being a bit bombastic about this. Do you see this differently?” or “You know, I have been wrong before. What are your thoughts?” Hold back more than you feel like doing.

When you are vulnerable, you protect other people from you, but you don’t protect yourself from other people. You take feedback personally but also struggle to push back on others.

Remember you have the right to be treated kindly. When you find yourself in this situation, think of the words of Dr. Maya Angelou: “There’s a place in you that you must keep inviolate. You must keep it pristine. Clean. So that nobody has a right to curse you or treat you badly. Nobody. No mother, father, no wife, no husband, no­­­ — nobody. You have to have a place where you say: ‘Stop it. Back up. Don’t you know I’m a child of God?’”

And when both of your filters are too high, you’re walled off. In this position, you are basically withdrawn. You’re being overprotective of what you say and what you absorb. You’re not going to give or take offence, but you can seem aloof and a bit cold.

Try opening up a bit. Say, “I want to share something with you, but I want you to be gentle with me on this.”

When we find the right balance with these two filters, we find the sweet spot, and become invincible. Here, we have the ability to know and be known. We can listen without risk of permanent damage and speak without risk of offending. We can navigate complex relationships because we can adapt without losing sight of who we are.

The truth is that we can be in different places with different people. The challenge is to figure out where we are in any particular relationship and then to adjust towards the sweet spot, where relationships thrive.

Don’t Let Your Head Attack Your Heart

I had been planning a dinner party for weeks. There were twenty people coming, some family, some friends, to celebrate my wife Eleanor’s birthday. I designed a ritual for her:  my goal was to create a space where people spoke from their hearts in a way they don’t usually do.

I prepared questions I wanted us to explore together, questions like: What do you feel grateful for in your life? What new things do you feel are struggling to grow and be born in you? What do you want to let go of, so that the new can be born?

Before I go any further, pause for a second, imagine yourself at the dinner, and notice your own reaction to those questions. Are you rolling your eyes at the touchy-feeliness of them or do they excite you? Would the answers you shared be superficial or deep?

I was excited and nervous as I introduced the initial question. I shared from my heart. Then, one person, David*, made a joke. It was light fun, but it was directed at my response and felt biting. Others laughed and chimed in. Then more jokes. I tried to keep the focus of the group but I failed.

I had been so excited and now I just felt sad, angry, vulnerable, and disappointed.

This is what I discovered that night: The heart is an easy target of the mind.

I was asking questions of the heart, and the mind fought back. We are trained and rewarded, in schools and in organizations, to lead with a fast, witty, and critical mind. And it serves us well. The mind can be logical, clear, incisive, and powerful.  It perceives, positions, politics, and protects. One of its many talents is to defend us from emotional vulnerability, which it does, at times, with jokes and quick repartee.

The heart, on the other hand, has no comebacks, no quips. Gentle, slow, and unprotected, an open heart is easily attacked, especially by a frightened mind. And feelings scare the mind.

Why are feelings so scary? I asked my friend and colleague, Jessica Gelson, a traditionally trained psychotherapist who specializes in body-based techniques to help people unblock their feelings.

“People are afraid of feelings for the same reason people are afraid of ghosts,” Jessica told me. “You can’t see them. You can’t put them in a box. And you can’t really control them.”

Most of us are never taught how to experience and understand our feelings. And since our mind hates things it doesn’t know, it reacts like a guard fending off an attack.

But why is that bad? Why not just rely on your agile and capable mind instead of exposing your heart, especially in a business or professional environment?

Because our hearts are the source of our real power.

The heart is how we connect with others. It’s how we engender trust. It’s the heart — both ours and theirs — that makes people want to follow us and throw everything they’ve got into making something successful. People follow leaders who show competence and warmth, head and heart. And there is a growing body of evidence that suggests we should start with the heart.

It takes tremendous courage to lead. And it takes even more courage to lead with heart. But that’s what leadership call us to do. Mostly, when people want to develop their leadership, they try to learn more about what to do. Which is precisely why most leadership programs fail. Because the hard part about leadership isn’t knowing what to do, it’s having the courage to do it.

Are you willing to experience the discomfort of speaking from your heart? Yes, it’s a risk. But a risk whose payoff includes the commitment, loyalty, and passion of the people around you.

Now, think back to how you answered the question at the beginning. Was your instinct to protect yourself and your open heart? Would you have resisted answering those questions honestly and openly? How can we be more emotionally courageous in those situations, both as the listener and the speaker?

Notice. Notice when your head wants to protect your heart. Notice how you might use humor to avoid feeling something. I am now aware that I do this myself. Honestly, I like the positive attention I get when people laugh. But I’m now sensitive to the cost. How it shuts me – and other people – down. When your instinct is to make a joke, see if you can pause without saying anything and notice what you feel.
Take risks. Taking risks builds your emotional courage. And you don’t even need to take big, emotional risks. Maybe your risk is speaking up in a meeting, or not speaking up, or asking about someone’s day, or giving someone feedback. Courage begets courage. The more you take even small emotional risks, the more you’ll be willing to show up authentically in all areas of your life. You’ll have a chance to practice this, right here, in a moment.

At Eleanor’s birthday dinner, I wavered. But, once I realized it, I saw it as an important opportunity to practice emotional courage. My risk was to call David, the person who first started the joking, and tell him that it felt hurtful. Without attacking him, I shared my disappointment and sadness.

He was defensive at first, but soon we engaged in a deep and real conversation about his discomfort and how hard it was for him to share his feelings at the dinner. We both learned some important lessons and felt closer after that call.

I’m still interested in how people choose to answer the questions I asked at that dinner party. I’d love to see your responses in the comments, if you feel comfortable sharing them. What do you feel gratitude for in your life? What new things do you feel are struggling to grow and be born in you? What do you want to let go of, so that the new can be born?

*Names and some details changed.

 

Design Offices to Be More Like Neighborhoods

As more people flock to urban areas (about 80% of the U.S. population lives in cities), government officials and academics are becoming more interested in the study of urban space. This has coincided with a boom of new methods to study cities on a macro scale – but many of these techniques can also be used on a micro level to understand and improve workplaces and employee conditions. One practice in particular – integrating urban physics in workforce planning – has the potential to make waves.

Urban physics, a more recent addition to Urban Studies, is currently being used by researchers at MIT and NYU to determine how systems within a city interact with each other and with individuals. Marrying traditional research principles with Big Data, urban physics involves monitoring and analyzing an endless supply of urban variables — crime rates, traffic flow, spread of infectious diseases — to understand emerging patterns, problems, and opportunities for change. Urban physicists are applying this research to reimagine a number of concepts, including the energy efficiency of city buildings, infrastructure conditions, and emergency detection.

The basic principles of urban physics can prove equally useful in planning office spaces. Its use of quantitative information can help organizations optimize their spaces in a way that positively reinforces their overarching mission, and accommodates the unique work styles of their employees. Urban physics has the power to transform workspaces to reflect companies’ true ethos and values, to instill a sense of belonging in employees, and to encourage productivity, engagement, and overall happiness.

Companies across the globe are forging into the future by using urban physics to rewrite the commonly held definitions of office space. Google, for instance, has a room in their Chicago office crafted to resemble an intimate speakeasy, a common space for employees that promotes cross-departmental “serendipitous encounters.” Or take Groupon, which uses carnivals, tiki huts, and enchanted forests motifs to spark employee creativity. The “conventional” workspace (drop ceilings, monochromatic cubicles and all) is being phased out in favor of connected spaces that encourage innovation and demand collaboration while still prizing individuality.

Google’s speakeasy room taps into the relationship between an interesting workspace and employee engagement.

More businesses are striving for vibrant, youthful spaces, but they must be careful not to let eco-friendly water coolers dilute the bigger picture; wall decals and a foosball table don’t equate to company culture or employee satisfaction. By applying urban physics to office decisions, companies can actually improve workflows and organizational culture.

Groupon’s tiki bar “conference room” acts both as an escape from work and as a space that encourages innovation.

Infusing science into office planning doesn’t mean you need to have a Ph.D. on staff. Consider these ways to think more like an urban physicist in your next office steering committee meeting:

Generate more data. Apply your company’s CRM or business intelligence systems to internal operations. Start gauging employees’ peak workload times, and think about how your physical space can mitigate extended peaks or encourage more departmental cross-pollination during down time. Google provides a model for putting these kinds of insights to work in the workplace. Executives at the company’s Chicago office realized that employees went to coffee shops when they were busiest. So the company built its own in-house café, letting staff sustain their ingrained habits while creating an atmosphere for peak productivity in the office.

Go straight to the source. Use your company’s intranet or another internal communication tool to provide an outlet for all employees (from intern to executive, remote to in-office) to ask tough questions or offer opinions about your office environment. Sustain a consistent feedback loop to measure what the staff thinks about their current workspaces, and what is due for an adjustment. This is exactly how voice-based marketing automation firm Ifbyphone found success. By surveying employees prior to designing their space, executives learned first-hand how personnel at all levels wanted their new environment to look, act, and feel.

Find your feng shui. In a non-intrusive, transparent way, track employees’ movement within the office to identify which conference rooms or meeting areas see the most traffic, and which areas get minimal use. Depending on what trends and habits appear in the data, even small physical rearrangements could help improve certain processes, decrease idle time, and boost productivity. Take online advertising and media buying firm Centro, for instance, which boasts glass conference rooms to reflect the firm’s emphasis on transparency. Providing executives with full viability allows them to easily measure which spaces are employee favorites. Firms should optimize the most popular spaces, and reform conference room duds. Coffee bars, quiet rooms, and intern “housing” all make for more productive uses of space than underutilized conference areas.

Use technology for smarter scheduling. Establish a greater connection between technology and employees — beyond the one they have with their own iPhones. For example, digital consulting firm Rightpoint uses a connected tablet system on conference room doors to let employees know when rooms are free. Conference room technologies can also house room reservations and meeting agendas. In smaller offices where meeting spaces (that aren’t the kitchen) come at a premium, a small addition like this can help employees determine room availability and avoid an eleventh-hour scramble.

Space is both a reflection and projection of company culture. By embracing modern science and diving into the interactions between system and individual, firms can construct a space that addresses employees’ obvious and more obscure environmental needs. Applying urban physics to your office space requires a new kind of thinking toward something that often boils down to desks and chairs, but in today’s business world, the extra thought counts.

Should Couples Go into Business Together?

There’s a ton of advice aiming to answer whether or not couples working together is a good idea, as more and more couples are choosing to open joint firms. It’s been estimated that 3 million of the 22 million U.S. small businesses in 2000 were couple-owned, and that number has likely gone up.

But to really answer this question, we have to ask: Why do couples choose to go into business together – and what are the benefits? New research from the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) looks into this. Using a sample of 1,069 Danish couples that established a joint enterprise between 2001 and 2010, the study revealed that couples often establish a business together because one spouse (usually the female) has limited outside opportunities in the labor market. And it found that starting a business together led to significant income gains for both spouses (but especially the female), both during the life of the business and post-dissolution. The research suggests that starting a business together is typically a sound investment of both spouses’ human capital, and it has the added benefit of reducing income inequality in the household.

To identify the labor market prospects of these entrepreneurs, the study looked at how much they made before starting their venture. The data shows that, on average, women in co-entrepreneurial couples earned 27% less beforehand than women in couples where each partner owned their own business, and 33% less than women in couples where only one partner was an entrepreneur.

This indicates that wives who choose to open a firm with their spouse come from a less advantageous labor market position and join the business because the opportunity cost is low. And the authors concluded that this decision wasn’t due to these couples being any more traditional than others. Since co-entrepreneurial wives see even higher income gains than their husbands (because they made significantly less pre-venture), the earnings difference between both spouses shrinks. The study also found that couples that open businesses together are no more or less happy than other couples (measured by usage of antidepressants or anxiety/insomnia medications), and they’re no more or less likely than their counterparts to separate, divorce, or have children.

Viewed through the lens of income, this research suggests that couple-founded companies have the potential to mitigate gender inequality. Unfortunately, previous studies reveal a different picture. A 2013 research paper out of UNC Chapel Hill found that gender inequality in the distribution of control was more likely to occur within spousal teams. According to the authors, “women have reduced chances to be in charge if they co-found new businesses with their husbands,” because certain expectations around gender-typical work (breadwinner v. homemaker) affect wives’ and husbands’ power positions – as do other family conditions like having children. So husbands are more likely to take the lead of new business, while wives end up in a subordinate role, and gender ideologies that shape their social roles and responsibilities at home reinforce these positions (a tension we’ve highlighted before in a case study).

Other research hints at differences between women who start businesses with their spouses and those who venture out on their own. Kathy Marshack, a clinical psychologist who studies entrepreneurial couples, pointed out that co-entrepreneurial wives often feel it’s their job to make their husbands “look good.” She often found that even if the wife is the founder of the business and her husband joins later, she may identify herself as a “co-owner” rather than the founder or president. “I found that the wives were not as independent as women who were in a career separate from their husbands,” Marshack said. “On a test of sex role orientation, they tended to score high on desirable feminine traits, whereas dual career wives scored high on desirable feminine traits and high on desirable masculine traits. The latter is what we tend to see with women who function as more independent professionals in the work world. They also have more egalitarian marriages than the copreneurial wives.”

While the IZA’s research points to higher incomes for co-entrepreneurial wives (and “cautiously” infers that spousal teams have productivity advantages), going into business with a spouse is bound to be challenging – and often comes with its own set of gender biases.

Families and couples working together has always been the norm, from family farms to mom-and-pops to Walmart. And there are plenty of couple-founded business success stories, e.g., Kate Spade and Flickr (before the founders split). But today, most of the challenge around erasing that work/home line stems from couples’ unclear working roles (a lack of “defined working roles” is apparently one reason why VCs may be reluctant to invest in a husband-wife start-up) and the need to also balance family responsibilities.

So should couples go into business together? There is no easy answer. Taken together, the research suggests that there are often real financial benefits to doing so, but that gender inequality often comes into play. It also provides advice for those thinking about taking the plunge: consider what your other career options are, and be sure to talk openly about how you plan to share responsibilities, at work and at home.

Xenophobia? What Xenophobia?

A study in Germany shows that the presence of partially assimilated immigrants increases native Germans’ general satisfaction with life: A 1-standard-deviation rise in the percentage of immigrants in a given region is associated with a 0.142-standard-deviation increase in natives’ subjective well-being, says a team led by Alpaslan Akay of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The reasons are unclear but may have to do with natives’ liking to live in a society that includes immigrants who hold jobs and can speak German, the researchers say.

No One Should Have to Choose Between Caregiving and Work

Years ago, I regularly saw a neurologist who was treating me for chronic headaches. On one particular appointment, my doctor deviated from his usual laconic manner and asked me a few questions about my daily life. I explained that like many 40-somethings, I had a busy schedule. I worked full-time, had three kids and a husband who traveled. And by the way, my father had dementia and was going to stay with me during my mom’s recuperation from hip surgery.

“Hmmm,” the doctor muttered disapprovingly. “That’s too much.”

“Well that’s my life.” I replied defensively. “No different from lots of other women out there.”

“It may be.” the doctor responded. “But your body is telling you this is more than you can reasonably handle.” Annoyed, I initially pegged him as a guy who doesn’t get it. But in time, his message sunk in.

Like many caregivers, I was in the workforce – while sandwiched between the needs of my kids and aging parents. Along with 65.7 million Americans, I was part of a large contingent of people who provide 80% of long-term care in this country. Most of us don’t even identify ourselves as caregivers; just good daughters, sons, mothers, and fathers trying to do our best, yet constantly feeling like we are falling short of doing an adequate job of anything.

The stressors of being a sandwich-generation caregiver can take their toll physically, emotionally, and financially. On an individual scale, providing care for a senior family member can cost families upwards of $5,000 year.

Add to the mix your own children (mine were teenagers at the time needing my attention, but acting like they didn’t) and there’s a significant price to bear — for the caregivers, of course, but also their employers.

On average, caregivers miss 6.6 work days a year. The lost productivity adds up to a big cost to companies — to the tune of $17 to $33 billion annually. And since getting rid of children or parents is not an option, exiting the workplace is often an overwhelmed caregiver’s last resort. While the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) allows employed caregivers to take up to three-month leave from their jobs, most people don’t get paid during that time. And for those who walk off the job entirely due to caregiving responsibilities, total lost wages are estimated to be around $324,000 for women (including any Social Security they would have earned) and only slightly less for men.

But what if your job could ease the burden? Some companies are making it easier for caregivers to stay at work. Once afraid to speak up, caregiving employees are now giving voice to the realities of what they are up against: When your cell phone rings and you get that unexpected call, you can’t really hide the fact that Mom’s home health aide didn’t show up. You are going to have to blow off that mandatory management meeting to take her to the doctor instead.

Companies support these workers first and foremost by providing flexibility. A surprising number of caregivers have told me stories of being unable to leave work early or come in late to help care for mom or dad, even though they had a plan to make up the time. Not only do employers run the risk of caregiver workplace discrimination lawsuits, but word spreads fast and competition for talent is fierce. A 2012 National Study of Employers by the Families and Work Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) supports this notion: “Organizations that can offer more flexibility around reduced time, caregiving leaves and flex careers will have a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining employees as the aging workforce and dual focus on personal and professional lives among younger employees become increasingly important drivers in the labor market.” Being known as a flexible supportive work culture is not just good management, it makes good business sense.

But employees often need more than just flexibility — they need help. According to a recent study by ReAct (stands for “Respect a Caregiver’s Time”) and the National Alliance for Caregiving, best practices in workplace eldercare include access to web-based information, resource and referral programs, discounted backup home care, and paid time off. Companies often start by surveying employees to determine areas of strongest need. One organization offered seminars on caregiving topics such as, “Should Dad Still be Driving?” and “Caring for a Loved One with Dementia.” When the seminars were over-subscribed, it was clear there were employees out there in the throes of caregiving. The organization subsequently moved forward with a resource and referral program as well as on-site support groups.

Employees who work at companies that offer eldercare benefits are more apt to reach out for help and, as a result, are more likely to stay on the job. Take Nancy for instance; a 48-year-old single mother who works full-time as an administrative assistant at a university. Nancy’s 85-year-old mother lived alone and was beginning to show signs of dementia.  When Nancy learned her organization offered an eldercare benefit called “Senior Care Planning” (part of Care.com’s Workplace Solutions program), she was relieved. Through this benefit, Nancy was connected to a master’s-level social worker who helped her come up with a plan.  Since the university also had a back-up care benefit, the social worker found a home care agency that could provide Nancy’s mom help with basic transportation and errands ­— tasks that Nancy would have done herself otherwise.

Ultimately, the social worker identified an assisting living community that would meet mom’s needs over the long haul. Nancy’s response: “This certainly made a lot of this easier. You almost need a degree in this sort of thing to be doing it! This is a wonderful blessing.”  And for many folks who are trying to figure it all out on their own, this type of expert assistance can be a lifesaver. If you spend all your time as a caregiver stressed out and figuring out logistics, you may miss out on the good stuff – and that includes being engaged in your job while spending precious time with your family.

My own three children are grown now. My home is quieter — my life less hectic. Since my dad died, I am more acutely aware of how fleeting life in the caregiving sandwich can be. Although there were some calamitous moments – I brought my dad to work one day when his caregiver didn’t show up — I don’t regret the path I chose. And I know that the time spent caring for my father and children, despite all the stress and uncertainty, had moments of joy and sorrow, with a large sprinkling of gratitude.

But as I talk with working caregivers across the country, and despite the progress some companies are making, I still see similarities with my own experience as a working mother of three children and adult daughter of aging parents: the secrecy, frantic calls to find last-minute care, and the frustration and fear that grew as I tried to do it all without letting my employer see me sweat — or more likely, cry. As caregivers, we can’t do it alone. Backup care programs, resource and referral services, and expert guidance can provide real solutions, but they can only be effective if the work environment is caregiver-friendly.  Ultimately, we are all in this together. At some point, most of us will either be caregivers — or need them.

4 Things You Thought Were True About Time Management

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t struggle with how to make the most of their time at work. How do you stay on top of an overflowing inbox? How do you get work done when your day is taken up by meetings? How can you get through a continually expanding to-do list? How do you even find time to make a list in the first place?

To make matters worse, there are lots of misconceptions about what time management really comes down to and how to achieve it. Let’s look at some of the most common suggestions and assess whether they’re actually true.

It’s about managing your time. False.

Time management is a misnomer, says Jordan Cohen, a productivity expert and author of “Make Time for the Work That Matters.” He says that it’s really about productivity: “We have to get away from labeling it ‘time management’. It’s not about time per se but about how productive you can be.” He likens it to the difference between dieting and being healthy. “You can diet all you want,” he says, “but you won’t necessarily be healthier.” In the same way, you can pay close attention to how you spend your time, manage your email, etc., but you won’t necessarily be more productive.

Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of The Progress Principle, whose expertise in this area comes from reading the work diaries of thousands of workers who documented their struggles to get work done, says it’s more about managing your overall workload. Many managers simply take on too much. “If you don’t keep an eye on the commitments you’ve made or are making, there is no time management technique that’s going to solve that,” she says. Sure, this might be an organization-level problem — many managers overload their team members ­— but she says that most professionals have more control over their workload than they might admit. “It is possible to say no. It is possible to negotiate,” she says. Cohen agrees: “While your schedule may not be yours per se, you can be judicious about what you go to and how you manage it.”

You just need to find the right system or approach. False.

“Having a system can be useful, but it takes more than that,” says Amabile. “And what works for each person, like spending an hour and a half on focused work at the beginning of the day, will not absolutely for another person.” The key is to continually experiment with techniques. “Some things may or may not work in a particular context or situation,” says Cohen. Try lots of different approaches — really try them. Don’t change the way you check email for a week and declare it a failure. Set metrics for measuring success, give the approach time, and consider involving someone else — your boss or a coworker — to help you evaluate whether it really worked.

You need to devote time to change. Somewhat true.

One person I spoke to said her biggest challenge was finding time to put time management systems into place. She didn’t have the day or two she felt she needed to set aside. Amabile says this may not be necessary: “Small tweaks can make a big difference. The best approach is to start out with a few small things. Progress in this context might mean that you find yourself with some additional time each day when you can reflect and think. Even if it’s just an additional 20 or 30 minutes each day, that’s progress.” But it depends on how bad your situation is and how desperate you feel. Amabile mentioned one person who decided to use her vacation week for a major overhaul to achieve less stress. She looked at how she was using her time, her level of commitments, and experimented with a few techniques that people had suggested. “She felt things had gotten so out of control that she wanted to give herself the gift. But that was an extreme measure that was necessitated by the extreme situation,” says Amabile.

It’s up to you — and only you — to get it right. Somewhat true.

This may be partly true. “There is no one who’s responsible for how productive you are,” says Cohen. In that sense, this rests on your shoulders. He is clear: “You’re expected to be productive, so you better take this puppy on yourself.” But Cohen and Amabile both say you can’t do it alone. “If you’re in an organization where there are pressures for immediate responses or turnarounds on all requests or there is no room for any kind of slack, it’s very tough to do time management on your own,” says Amabile. She points to Leslie Perlow’s research about small tweaks you can make in any work environment. Still, it may be tough. “Organizations unknowingly put a lot of barriers in front of you to get your work done — unclear strategy and clumsy processes, to name just a few,” Cohen says.

If this sounds like your company, Amabile suggests you make attempts to change the culture. “I would urge people to push back in ways that they believe will be effective,” she says. Raise questions like, “How can we be more productive around here?” This can often be more effective than focusing on getting out of your own bind. “You have a responsibility to push back on the organization,” she says. Cohen also thinks it’s worth talking with senior management, because it’s often bigger than any single manager. “It requires a redesign of how work gets done, where decisions get made, how they get made. There’s only so much that a system can take,” he says.

For the lone professional, getting control over your workload and schedule is daunting. But knowing the difference between what people say will work and what actually does may be the first step in the right direction.

Expressing Your Vulnerability Makes You Stronger

Can vulnerability fuel growth and success? Consider the landmark research of psychologist Brené Brown as described in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. It shows that we thrive in our relationships and careers when we engage deeply in complex, stressful scenarios. Success is about participating proactively in life—not about winning a game or profiting monetarily. “There is no triumph without vulnerability,” she writes.

Brown’s research resonates with ideas Malcolm Gladwell developed in his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Gladwell delineates how vulnerable individuals and groups often achieve surprising victories because of their hidden assets and virtues. Similar findings suggest that workers who allow themselves to be vulnerable to expressing genuine emotion with customers display enhanced attention and performance.  Other research suggests that “mentalization”— the process of making oneself vulnerable to the feelings of others (even opponents and enemies)—propels human connection and well-being.

In my practice as an executive coach, I’ve been inspired by these ideas and have seen them in action. Many of my clients have achieved remarkable success by apologizing for errors, seeking help from competitors, and otherwise expressing vulnerability. Some of my CEO clients have made themselves vulnerable to criticism and failure by focusing less on short-term profits and more on transforming their companies into good corporate citizens and generous employers. They used the coaching in part to implement the character virtues that research shows to be so beneficial.

These values have guided my career and, increasingly, other areas of my life where vulnerability can beget success. Here’s a case in point. When I agreed to be head coach of my son’s Little League team, I anticipated a nice break each week from my executive coaching practice. It didn’t cross my mind that coaching a group of 10 year olds in baseball would teach me valuable lessons that I could apply to coaching executives.

Nearing the season’s end, my team—the scrappy Mariners—was facing the mighty White Sox, who were the strongest in the league. In the final inning, the umpire made a controversial call in our favor. The other coach vigorously protested the call on the field —and later with the league commissioner. The remainder of the game played out under a dark cloud. We won, but Little League rules allow the commissioner to determine that a protested game must be replayed from the point in question.

Emotions ran high as we awaited the commissioner’s decision. I was feeling angry about the protest, but also concerned that I (as well as players and parents on our side) was vilifying the other coach. After losing a night of sleep about this, I knew I needed to reframe the situation and think more productively about the incident. I felt vulnerable knowing that we could lose the game and also that I wasn’t handling the situation optimally.

I took some deep breaths and emailed the other coach to apologize for not yet considering his position seriously. By the next evening, we sat together at a local watering hole talking about baseball, family, and other shared values. He explained that his protest was rooted in a concern about preserving the integrity of the game by correctly applying the rules. While I wouldn’t have protested the call myself, I was heartened to learn that his action was principled and reasonable.

By humbling myself with an apology and reaching out to this fellow coach and dad, I realized that I was taking a leadership step that I encourage in my clients. When angry or fearful, step back and be self-reflective. Don’t vilify your boss or co-workers or employees or competitors. Strive to put yourself in the shoes of your perceived adversary. Avoid impulsive statements and actions. Express regret or apology. Gain strength by allowing yourself to be humble and vulnerable.

After the commissioner allowed the protest and replaying of the last inning, the White Sox’s coach graciously offered to drop the protest and concede the win to us. But I worried that this kind of win would be unfulfilling and fundamentally wrong. So I advocated that we finish the game, even though we would risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

We replayed the inning and lost the game. My son was the pitcher who gave up the final run. After he wiped away some tears and I gathered my thoughts, we left the field together proud of how we’d handled the situation. The experience had drawn us closer as father and son—and that in itself was a win. It also allowed me to model for players and parents how vulnerability can solidify core values such as sportsmanship and civility, which ultimately are far more important than wins and losses.

The Mariners had “dared greatly” and lived the season to its fullest, as Brown’s research exhorts us all to do. And I exposed my own vulnerabilities, in exactly the same way that I coach my CEOs to express theirs.  I was now positioned to coach even more effectively in the future (I was “promoted” to coach a summer travel team!), and our players were poised to continue growing as young athletes. The Mariners were a winning team because of vulnerability and courage. Those are exactly the personal traits I strive each day to develop in myself, my children, the players I coach on the ball field, and the clients I coach in the C-suite.