Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices

by Leslie A. Perlow

Why do Americans work so hard? Are the long hours spent at work really necessary to increase organizational productivity? Leslie A. Perlow documents the worklife of employees who assume that for their own success and the success of their organization they must put in extended hours on the job. Perlow doesn't buy it. She challenges the basic assumption that the more employees work, the better the corporation will do. For nine months, Perlow studied the work practices of a product development team of software engineers at a Fortune 500 corporation. She reports her findings in detailed stories about individual employees and in more analytic chapters. Perlow first describes the individual heroics necessary to succeed in the existing work culture. She then explains how the system of rewards perpetuates crises and continuous interruptions,while discouraging cooperation. Finally, she shows how the resulting work practices damage both organizational productivity and the quality of individuals' lives outside of work. Perlow initiated a collaborative effort to restructure the way team members worked. Managers who were involved credit the project for the rare and important on-time launch of the product the engineers were developing. In the end, Finding Time shows that it is possible to create new work practices that enable individuals to have more personal and family time while also improving the corporation's productivity.

Genres: Business

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Bryanna Raquel]

Jjmi Bimini

[Kelly Schuknecht · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the title Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices, I thought this book was going to be very interesting, but for me it fell short. It seemed more like a dissertation that got published. There was plenty of research, but very little practical application. Perlow demonstrates a lot about the problems within a specific corporation, which probably translate to many others, but doesn't spend enough time substantiating the solution(s) that the title suggests.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of a Stanford Project Management class and it was interesting, but not really in the way you'd hope. I seemed like a nice snapshot of a not very well disguised Xerox circa 1985. The case study was interesting but the situation was so dated and tied to that time that is was a little distracting to the message of the class.

[Diane Dreher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subversive study! Perlow's research shows that most corporations rate their workers on quantity (time spent at work), not quality (productivity). When we focus on the task and block out interruptions, we can get a lot more done and enjoy a more balanced life.