Workplace Balance

An interesting blog post on the Harvard Business site yesterday stated that if you slow down you can do more. I of course got to thinking about this statement and decided to post my own perspective on this issue. The article extended the claim from a business setting to marathon running. There have actually been studies done that show that marathon runners can beat their race times if they actually stop and walk part of the race instead of running the entire race from start to finish. This is a pretty incredible claim that is counter intuitive to many.

I think that the idea of doing less to achieve more speaks directly to the idea of balance in anything we do. As part of my martial arts training balance is a key factor, both physically (for those high round house kicks or spinning wheel kicks) but also for the training methodology and interaction with self and others. The way that most of us start to understand balance is through imbalance. For those of us that are athletes, this is obviously the case as the body adapts to moments of imbalance by correcting itself and learning the correct placement or the body etc. This is also very applicable to work life and life in general. If we have moments of imbalance in our workplace or private lives that create problems or issues (physically, relationships or work product wise etc.) we learn to adapt and to move back towards a more balanced approach that achieves greater results or suffer the consequences or remaining out of balance. Sometimes it may not even be a noticeable or conscious change or decision. A decision can occur by merely not making a decision in some cases. Injuries or illness often provide us with this feeling of imbalance and allow us time to reflect and readjust our schedules and actions.

Madison Pension strives to create a balanced workplace. Employees are given the ability to work from home if needed via state of the art secure remote login access. Our company’s visionary approach to harnessing current technology (paperless office, salesforce, twitter, e-fax etc.) allows our employees to have all their work papers and tools at hand from wherever they may be. We provide summer hours which provide free Friday afternoons to all employees. Longer weekends tend to reset our staff and everyone is much more focused and relaxed when returning to work on Monday, which is passed along to our clients in increased efficiencies and friendly, happy, approachable consultants and staff. We sponsor company outings, like the Yankee game that we went to in June. We closed the office and spent the day as a team enjoying a Yankee game in the new stadium. Employees are encouraged to bring their dogs to work from time to time and employee’s kids and family stop by to say hello and grab lunch with mom or dad. The daughter of one of our partners is currently coming in on Fridays to help out around the office while on summer vacation from high school. All in all, we have a very family oriented and balanced work life here at Madison Pension.

For those interested in the Harvard Business article, please click on the following link: http://bit.ly/N6YZe

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