Work and Your Other Life—Navigating the Course

Eve S. Sprunt, 2006 SPE President • president@spe.org

My favorite adage about work/life balance is not the oft-quoted saying, “No one on their deathbed ever wished they’d spent more time at the office.” Instead, I prefer the advice to “write your own obituary.”

Although the first is a good warning, it doesn’t provide much guidance. In contrast, the second supplies a technique to help you plan your life even at an advanced age. Alfred Nobel made a fortune by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. In 1888, when his brother Ludvig died, a newspaper misattributed the work of Alfred to his brother and printed the headline, “The Merchant of Death is Dead!” Disgusted by the obituary of himself, Alfred Nobel decided to use his wealth to alter his legacy. When he died 8 years later, he provided funds for awards for people whose work was of benefit to humanity and in doing so successfully turned around society’s assessment of him. Today, almost no one associates Nobel Prizes with death from the use of dynamite.

The exercise of writing your own obituary and thinking about what you want to accomplish is a good way to clarify your priorities. Then, you can work the inverse problem to identify the steps you must take. As Alfred Nobel’s story illustrates, even if you are in the sunset of your life, it is not too late to ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the remaining time you have.

Meshing career planning with work/life balance issues is challenging, because we each have different dreams and priorities. One person’s perfect job is another person’s worst nightmare. Also, since our family situations and goals change with time, the ideal job at one point in our life may be totally unacceptable at another time. People are not mind readers, so we must not expect someone else to intuit what we want. We must be willing to tell them what we want or to figure out for ourselves how to execute an alternative plan. We must also recognize that the choices we make may cost us promotions or rapid advancement. For me, this is the central premise of being responsible for your own career.

Experience is cumulative. If, for work/life balance reasons, we choose to seek positions that do not provide the opportunities to develop certain skills, we must recognize the consequences of our actions. Later, it will be difficult to secure a job that has those skills as a prerequisite, unless we can convince people that we have equivalent competencies. Alternatively, we may be willing to take on the responsibilities of a position, but not be selected for a role that provides the experience we desire. In either case, to get past the roadblock we need to take independent action.

When I found that I did not have the managerial experience that I wanted, I adapted advice that is given to women who are attempting to re-enter the workforce. Homemakers often have extensive volunteer service that they can repackage and promote as demonstration of their business skills. Through volunteer organizations such as SPE, you can acquire valuable business and managerial skills that you may not learn in your job. I realized that I had developed skills that were well suited to today’s cross-disciplinary, matrix organizations – how to motivate and manage people without chain of command authority.

Even though organizations are offering more and more programs that make it easier to deal with work/life balance challenges (such as young children, aging parents, and family illness), outdated concepts about career timing can still cause problems. Companies tend to categorize people and have a linear model for careers. If someone takes a personal leave, works part-time, or avoids travel and overtime, they put themselves on a slower track. When they want to refocus on their career, they may find themselves typecast as lacking commitment. Their employer may be reluctant to invest in their career development and the jobs they desire may be reserved for those moving up the ladder.

The biographical sketch of the typical “high flier” describes the person’s career as a series of “positions of increasing authority.” Many talented and productive people have careers that do not progress through a series of positions of increasing authority. These people can end up frustrated, because only a fraction of their skills are being used. We must learn to make the most of talent that has not taken a linear path. The wisdom these people have acquired on their meandering routes may make them more insightful and stronger contributors than those who have taken the most direct path. Whether the reasons for the failure to progress are work/life balance or other issues, we should not ignore the mature talent that is buried in our organizations. We should avoid unconscious age discrimination, in which we focus too much on someone’s birth date and not enough on their energy and motivation.

When I was a graduate student at Stanford, one of my mentors was Prof. Welton J. Crook, a godchild of the Stanfords, who was then almost 90. Most of the students and staff were afraid to talk with him because of his advanced age and frailty, but I benefited greatly from his friendship. When I had a baffling problem with a leak in my high-temperature and -pressure experimental apparatus, he not only correctly diagnosed the metallurgical problem, but told me which metal alloy to use instead. Despite his age and physical condition, Prof. Crook was up-to-date technically and sharp as a tack.

No matter how successful we are, most of us hit points of serious career dissatisfaction. At those times, if we have a working spouse or other financial safety net, work/life balance issues may provide an excuse to quit. In particular, the attrition rate of mid-career women makes me wonder if child care responsibilities are a convenient excuse and in some cases the real reason for quitting is work frustration that, with appropriate mentoring, they could overcome. When I was in my mid- to late-30s, I became discouraged. However, I decided that I couldn’t logically use my children as an excuse to quit, because they were both in school and I had worked through greater logistical challenges when they were younger. SPE and other volunteer roles became my way of dealing with career frustration. Some men have shared with me that active involvement with SPE also helped them overcome career stagnation and disappointments.

Learning that we are not alone and that others have thrived after facing similar situations is a powerful re-energizer. SPE has some new programs to provide career guidance. SPE’s eMentoring [link](http://www.spe.org/ementoring) and professional networks [link](http://www.spe.org/web/pn.html), as well as informal advice from SPE colleagues, can provide valuable support when we are frustrated. I urge you to make use of the mentoring and professional networks. I believe so strongly in the professional networks that I am moderating the women’s network.

Mentors also benefit. In describing her participation as an online mentor in SPE’s eMentoring program, Joyce Holtzclaw of Bakersfield, California, observed, “Too often we see such situations as a one-way street and the reality is that if they work, both parties take away something from the experience. It is fun to see the world and the industry through the eyes of someone just starting out.”

Work/life balance is an issue worldwide. With the urgent need to attract more technical talent, increasing public awareness that many jobs in our industry are family-friendly is important to improving recruitment, especially as we seek to attract people from other technical disciplines. Also, we must improve retention and maximize the productivity of people in all phases of their careers. Employers would benefit from taking an open-minded look at all of their people and creatively addressing the concerns of underutilized staff members. There are real competitive advantages from devising new approaches to these challenges.

If you have energy around these issues, I encourage you to take a more active role. Join a professional network; sign up as a mentor; contact your local section and take the initiative to start a new program; write to me to share your ideas on what SPE can do. With the current hot competition for people in our industry, now is a great time to push for changes that improve job satisfaction and employee retention.