If you are under the impression there is such thing as an eight-hour workday for professionals, you must have been on planet Mars for most of the last decade. We live and work today in 24-hour time segments, and it really makes no difference if you are behind a desk, driving your car, taking a shower or washing the dishes.
Time is not a thing, but a state of mind.
Intellectual work - that creative and strategic thought you bring to your job - cannot be lassoed and contained within a glass cubicle any more than it can be sustained in a petri dish for study. No self-respecting professional looks at the clock on his desk and automatically shuts his or her brain down when the sun goes down. It is, in fact, a misnomer to label work by that traditional name, sort of like calling a car a horseless carriage. My suggestion would be to simply call it paid time.
Paid time can and does occur anywhere, and it is a 24-hour phenomenon. To my knowledge, there is nothing written, in the Scriptures or elsewhere, that describes a workday as eight consecutive daytime hours. As professionals, we have become too sophisticated, too mobile, and too global to think within the narrow confines of traditional paid time.
Business time is all the time, and it has been for at least the last decade, though many companies have yet to realize it. Once they do, they will also realize that an individual worker's paid time can be adjusted to fit global circumstances, and not just the mere conveniences of fellow workers, even bosses. For those who prefer the 9-to-5 tradition, fine, but all should realize that it is simply one option.
This does not mean that people should be workaholics. Workaholics are bores. They are suckers and suck-ups; and, frankly I consider them to be the intellectual equivalent of algae. Most are constantly showing movement but very little action. They think the more time they spend in the office actually means something. They are like snails crossing a simmering-hot road, leaving all that goop behind, and taking all day to move a couple of inches.
My advice to CEOs is that they think of their professional employees as having an entire 24-hour day, and during that span those employees have all kinds of activities to perform or not to perform. They have, of course, paid time, sleeping time, television time, goof-off time, card-playing time, cooking time, children's quality time and so on. Give them the freedom to decide, as much as possible given usual client and customer constraints, at what time they wish to perform each duty or leisure so long as crucial deadlines are met.
I hear this tremendous echo, followed by a moan and a groan. Finally you say, "There would be anarchy!" No, there would be much more order than exists in the traditional workplace.
Let me count the reasons: Primarily because the world we live in now is not the same one in which our parents dwelled. Primarily because a little thing called the Internet has changed the world more dramatically than we care to admit. Primarily because of globalization, and the fact that if your office is not working between differing time zones, you have a genuinely small business. Primarily because competitive pressures will eventually either eject you into the 21st century or push you back to the Dark Ages.
The office is more of a clubhouse where people gather for the occasional face-to-face meeting or when a client needs
a briefing using electronic visual technology. Also, an office is a storehouse for the expeditious delivery of business, such as those mammoth copiers and heavy-duty printers.
Additionally, there is no such thing as absentee leadership. Napoleon, to my knowledge, never directed a battle from a bistro on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Likewise business direction, telegraphed from afar, has far less impact then the tone of the boss's voice, which needs to have various volumes, attitudes and continence, from syrupy sweetness to General Patton directness. Maybe a disembodied voice worked on Charlie's Angels, but that was, indeed, fantasy.
But the modern paid time atmosphere for professional employees needs to recognize the 24-hour rule, that one professional taking a long lunch to shop for disposable nappies is not mutinous but, most likely, necessary. Life is complicated, more so, I believe, for female colleagues where tradition has bestowed on them many more "real life" responsibilities, like grocery shopping and making sure the kids are ready for school. There has been some societal change in this, but it is far from a sea change, particularly in more conservative and non-secular countries.
It all goes back to simply this: Getting the job done, and done well. This should be thought of as a 24-hour assignment outside the rigidity of an eight-hour workday or a 40-hour week.
The Workplace is a new column by publisher Mike Willard. Willard's new book, "The Portfolio Bubble: Surviving Professionally at 60" will be released in November.
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