You Will Never Find Work/Life Balance

You have been lied to and so have I. Blame our parents, teachers, and the last 20 years of business gurus for their deception. We have been aiming so hard for success -- under the guise of "work/life balance." There's just one problem: we've been grasping for the wrong trophy.

Let me share a little secret -- there is no "work/life balance."

I have tried to stay quiet on this topic for some time, but I can't any longer. For what seems like the 98th time since I co-founded Aha! (which is product roadmap software), someone asked me today, "How are you able to balance your work and life?" It's just a more elegant way of asking, "Do you work really hard?"

Of course I do. And I love every minute of it.

If you believe what you read, nirvana would be achieving perfect harmony in our lives between the version of ourself that toils and the other parts that don't. But what if real harmony comes from being happy in all areas of life?

My dear friend, Emily Hall, is the CEO of the strategy consulting firm Olive Grove. She recently pointed out that the fundamental problem with "work/life balance" conversations are that they assume these two things are oppositional. The starting argument is that work and life are in conflict with one another.

This is incorrect -- work is life, and life is defined by our efforts. This argument assumes that work makes us fundamentally unhappy, and only "life" can balance out that misery. It doesn't have to be like this.

To find joy in all aspects of life, we need to start talking about a new concept. I judge myself on my ability to achieve sustainable happiness, not "work/life balance."

If you remain unconvinced that we should change the conversation, consider the following:

You have one life

We have one life and we should fill it with what is most important to us. We are told to focus on achieving a positive "work/life balance," but rarely stop to question if that's what really matters. We should check in with ourselves even once per week to track what we do and how happy it makes us. If we did, we might realize that although we appear to be successful, we don't actually do much of what makes us happy. "Work/life balance" doesn't solve this problem; optimizing for sustainable happiness does.

Balance has no value

"Work/life balance" is an empty goal. It's a state of equilibrium, but nothing more. Our focus should not be to balance work with our life; it should be to design our lives so that we purposefully do more of what makes us happy. When we regularly engage what makes us happy, the feeling carries over into everything we do. This makes us more productive people -- better partners, parents, and professionals.

If you love it, do more of it

Fill your life with what you love. Fill it with your passions, family who you care about, and positive experiences. Sometimes, this involves small changes (such as taking a midday walk). Other times, bigger changes must be made (such as leaving a bad job or lackluster relationship that cannot be fixed). Make deposits every day and discard things that bring you down whenever you can.

Our ultimate goal should be sustainable happiness. By sustainable I mean that you must be able to continue to enjoy what you do for long periods of time -- and it must not impact other's ability to find their own joy. This inherently rules out quick-hitting highs and destructive behaviors.

I understand that sustainable happiness is not always possible. Some people are struggling with poverty and others are ill. Many people do not even have the fundamental freedom to pursue their own higher purpose or must serve others first. But for those who are free and can make intentional choices to be sustainably happy, the rewards are uplifting and lasting.

Sustainable happiness is a journey, because we all have lows. And life is unpredictable and even cruel at times. Reaching and holding on to this level of self-content is not easy to achieve, but it should be our ultimate aspiration.

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Best Advice: Sometimes Entrepreneurialism Is the Best Choice

In this series, professionals share the words of wisdom that made all the difference in their lives. Follow the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #BestAdvice in the body of your post).

I often think that the best, game-changing thing I ever did in my career was to hire the young, talented Don Tapscott to be the lead for our Office of the Future primary and applied research program at Bell Northern Software Research.

It was 1978 and over the next four years we delivered ground-breaking insights and built the first "integrated office system" based on a UNIX platform – before the entry of the standalone PC. We co-authored a book, Planning for Integrated Office Systems: a Strategic Approach, to share much of what we learned by researching, piloting, and developing the resulting technology. We had conducted pre- and post-tests to measure the business and knowledge worker impact of the use of our solution on a good number of diverse, large organizations. It became apparent that we had created a unique and complete solution at just the right time. Oftentimes you have one or the other but we had both in hand — so that got us thinking about starting our own business.

Don and I had many long discussions about what our new firm would offer, the team we’d need, how we’d get funding, and what to do about rights to the IP and system we were so dependent upon, and so on.

Leaving the executive track with the inherent security of a large company was scary, particularly since I had a young daughter to consider. Finally we came to the conclusion that we just had to venture out as the research agenda had been advanced as far as we could take it at the time. We sat down with the BNSR management team and came to agreement on the path forward. They couldn’t have been more helpful and supportive. I believe we had serendipity at play.

Don and I brought along key members of our team, including Morley Greenberg who was way ahead of his time in terms of behavioral and ergonomic design. We then had to figure out how to get funded and, unlike today, there were few options. We pursued all and finally decided that the best option (apart from family and friends) was to take our company public. We were young and gutsy and managed to do a "reverse-takeover" of a mining stock on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. It worked! We were launched and the rest was history.

As to whether or not we second-guessed our decision – absolutely so. There were lots of challenges and issues of being a public company, but overall, I believe that every one of us and our customers ended up with life-time value and an incredible learning experience. I doubt Don or I would say we made the wrong decision at that point in time, given our ongoing careers and quality of life.

Leaving the executive track, we founded Trigon, which we took public and the rest is history. Collectively and individually both of us and many of our early employees have remained entrepreneurs to this day. Don is a great example of a highly successful serial entrepreneur and his influence combined with his reach has motivated many more to take the step and start their own businesses.

One example of many: a couple of months ago, two of our early employees at Trigon (Louise and Paul Philp) who recently founded Amity arrived at my doorstep in the Bay Area, California to stay while they get their startup cranked and running, including raising funds. They found that after a year of trying, they were not getting enough traction in Toronto. Since their arrival, Amity has flourished with new customers in the red-hot Customer Success space focused initially on SaaS companies, many of which are startups themselves. They are also getting a lot of interest on the funding front both here and in Toronto now. So the entrepreneurial cycle continues…

The entrepreneurial spirit continues with our family: my daughter is the owner of The Cheese School of San Francisco; my son and his wife founded and run their own design-build firm LGA; and my son-in-law is writing an audio book of the History of Silicon Valley. Clearly, we’re very proud of them all — really the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and passed along. I believe they embrace entrepreneurship because they don’t fear it; having been a part of it their whole lives.

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My personal journey as an entrepreneur has continued by founding and leading a number of consulting firms. For example three years ago, I co-founded and run a consulting firm called Emperia LLC. We continue to build on many years of helping clients to focus on creating high value and exceptional experience for their customers. We transfer our methods and approach to create a sustainable "outside-in" customer experience business strategy. In addition, our team — alongside a newly formed, cross-functional client team — work together to assess and map the end-to-end customer value chain which reveals where things work well and where they need to change. We then redesign the key omni-channel customer interactions, define and make the shift from jobs to roles, design and implement the supporting technology solutions, along with continuous measurement and improvement. Designing and delivering an excellent customer experience is critical to the success of any new business as well.

To this end, I have partnered with TLC Mind founder Robert Kim Wilson to help entrepreneurs and innovators increase their probabilities for success. In Q1/2015, TLC Mind will publish a book describing our new entrepreneurial business model, which capitalizes on one of the most underutilized assets available to literally all aspiring entrepreneurs — their business ecosystem. We call our recommended version of a business ecosystem, a Purpose-Driven Business Ecosystem. The phrase Purpose-Driven is meant to encourage the mindset that any business leadership team can strategically plan and execute much of the ecosystem in which it lives and flourishes. The graphic below represents our current thinking on the participant categories that could play a role in creating and receiving value across the ecosystem.

Any business ecosystem will [by definition] produce results. But by exerting purpose and direction upon your own ecosystem, it will significantly increase the probability it will produce the results you desire. If your ecosystem has evolved and been shaped based upon the purpose and results you desire… It becomes purpose-driven. The entrepreneurial team can exert much greater control over the results of its optimal business ecosystem, by carefully exerting selective control over the process and context of ecosystem development.

Our book is titled: They will be Giants / 21st Century Entrepreneurs and the Purpose-Driven Business Ecosystem. It will initially be available in PDF form for limited free distribution.

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