From the suit bible _Harvard Business Review_.
You'll have to click through an (as these things
go, no too bad) agreement to read the article, but it is interesting.
Udhay
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0710B&ml_issueid=BR0710&ml_subscriber=true&pageNumber=1&_requestid=54814
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
The science of stamina has advanced to the point
where individuals, teams, and whole organizations
can, with some straightforward interventions,
significantly increase their capacity to get things done.
by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy
Steve Wanner is a highly respected 37-year-old
partner at Ernst & Young, married with four young
children. When we met him a year ago, he was
working 12- to 14-hour days, felt perpetually
exhausted, and found it difficult to fully engage
with his family in the evenings, which left him
feeling guilty and dissatisfied. He slept poorly,
made no time to exercise, and seldom ate healthy
meals, instead grabbing a bite to eat on the run or while working at his desk.
Wanners experience is not uncommon. Most of us
respond to rising demands in the workplace by
putting in longer hours, which inevitably take a
toll on us physically, mentally, and emotionally.
That leads to declining levels of engagement,
increasing levels of distraction, high turnover
rates, and soaring medical costs among employees.
We at the Energy Project have worked with
thousands of leaders and managers in the course
of doing consulting and coaching at large
organizations during the past five years. With
remarkable consistency, these executives tell us
theyre pushing themselves harder than ever to
keep up and increasingly feel they are at a breaking point.
The core problem with working longer hours is
that time is a finite resource. Energy is a
different story. Defined in physics as the
capacity to work, energy comes from four main
wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions,
mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be
systematically expanded and regularly renewed by
establishing specific ritualsbehaviors that are
intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled,
with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible.
To effectively reenergize their workforces,
organizations need to shift their emphasis from
getting more out of people to investing more in
them, so they are motivatedand ableto bring
more of themselves to work every day. To recharge
themselves, individuals need to recognize the
costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take
responsibility for changing them, regardless of
the circumstances theyre facing.
The rituals and behaviors Wanner established to
better manage his energy transformed his life. He
set an earlier bedtime and gave up drinking,
which had disrupted his sleep. As a consequence,
when he woke up he felt more rested and more
motivated to exercise, which he now does almost
every morning. In less than two months he lost 15
pounds. After working out he now sits down with
his family for breakfast. Wanner still puts in
long hours on the job, but he renews himself
regularly along the way. He leaves his desk for
lunch and usually takes a morning and an
afternoon walk outside. When he arrives at home
in the evening, hes more relaxed and better able
to connect with his wife and children.
Establishing simple rituals like these can lead
to striking results across organizations. At
Wachovia Bank, we took a group of employees
through a pilot energy management program and
then measured their performance against that of a
control group. The participants outperformed the
controls on a series of financial metrics, such
as the value of loans they generated. They also
reported substantial improvements in their
customer relationships, their engagement with
work, and their personal satisfaction. In this
article, well describe the Wachovia study in a
little more detail. Then well explain what
executives and managers can do to increase and
regularly renew work capacitythe approach used
by the Energy Project, which builds on, deepens,
and extends several core concepts developed
byTonys former partner Jim Loehr in his seminal work with athletes.
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((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))