Do you spend your day "putting out fires" or "fighting alligators?  Increasingly we are expected to do more with less. Someone is downsized but the work remains. The work has to get done. Is it any wonder that in this environment our days are filled with the busywork of staying afloat? Most of us probably work in environments where we are constantly reacting. For those who lead, this is especially problematic. How can you determine a vision, a direction, when your time is spent reacting -- not begin proactive.

I've been there. As a young management engineering officer in the U.S. Air Force, I found my days fully occupied with solving problems, making decisions, communicating, and so forth. One evening I was reading Peter Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, one of my favorite management books. I realized I was not doing my job. I was not thinking about where I wanted to lead my part of the organization. I was not visioning. My supervisors never noticed. They were too busy putting out their own fires. 

The next day when I came to work, I asked my secretary to hold all calls unless from they came from very high in my chain of command. I informed my immediate supervisors that I would be very busy that day and if at all possible, not to disturb me. Fortunately they left me alone. I went into my office and closed the door. I spent the entire day in my office letting the busywork pile up while I drank coffee, Dr. Peppers, and thought about our mission and what my part of the organization was really about. That day I developed a vision, an idea of where I wanted us to go and how we might get there. At the next meeting with my teams, I shared my thoughts, got their thoughts and feedback. We worked together and agreed to a vision, revised our plans, and implemented. Over the next year we focused more on effective, meaningful training. With better skill sets came more success at our primary mission. Together we build an internal Air Force consulting capability that produced real dollar savings for the American taxpayer. Together we made an impact. And with that came promotions and recognition for my teams. 

I had not been handling my real priorities, leading and visioning. It was hard to find time at first and only got harder as I climbed the ladder. When it was impossible to take a day during my work week, I made it a Saturday. I would then get my direct reports' ideas and inputs. Having done this, I presented our plan to my boss. I recall once when I was working for a new manager, he was amazed, “How on earth did you find time to do this?” If you understand your priorities, you make time -- at work and in life. 

This week a former graduate student visited my MBA class by telephone. The subject was leadership and organization development. Seemingly out of nowhere she asked, "Have you told them about the 17th day?" I said I had not, to which she replied, "Then you must. It has made an enormous difference for me." 

For years I have referred to blocking a day for thinking and visioning as  "the 17th day."  I'm not sure why, but probably because it would be nice to do every 17 working days or so. In actuality it is more like every four to six months. But over the years feedback from alumni has been that "the 17th day" was one of the most useful ideas they learned and it made a difference in their professional lives. I know it did in mine. 

Image, "Man in Chair Thinking" Public domain. https://openclipart.org/detail/25947/man-in-chair-thinking
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Decoding the Workplace: 50 Keys to Understanding People in Organizations, coming May 31. 
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Relationships outside the workplace can affect our experiences in the workplace. A difficult time in a relationship with a significant other can make the work day longer and harder. Likewise, a great experience with a significant other can make everything just seem better. Researchers have studied these short-term crossover effects between work and home. Until now, no studies have looked in depth and across years at how the choice of spouse, specifically the personality of your spouse, might affect your success on the job. 

Brittany Solomon and Joshua Jackson (both at Washington University in St. Louis) reported the results of such a study in the  December 2014 issue of Psychological Science. They used an Australian sample of nearly 4000 participants with data collected over a 5-year period. All were heterosexual couples. About 22% were single income households; the rest, dual-income. The surveys measured the Big Five personality traits, job satisfaction, income, and whether the participant had received a promotion in the past year. Solomon and Jackson considered numerous other survey variables and how they might affect the results their conclusions.

So what did they find?

• People whose partners were higher in Conscientiousness had
  

            --higher job satisfaction
            --higher income
            --higher probability of a promotion

• These effects were even stronger in single-income households 
  
• Both men and women benefited from conscientious partners
  
• People who outsourced more household tasks and errands to their partners were less satisfied at work but made more money
  
• People who were satisfied in their relationships with their partners were also happier at work but this had no effect on income or promotions
  

Bottom-line: “Highly conscientious partners help improve their spouses’ occupational success . . .  due to partners creating conditions that allow their spouses to work more effectively” (p. 2195)

My Take-aways:

1.  A very interesting study, useful for reflection. My guess would be there are cultural and individual differences. But all things being equal, these findings seem to make sense. Partners who are supportive of each other in meaningful ways probably do have a higher likelihood of success on the job. 

2. This is yet another study demonstrating the importance of conscientiousness. As discussed in a previous blog, conscientious people tend to be healthier and more successful at work and marriage. 

2.  As leaders we may or may not know a person’s domestic situation, whether a partner is supportive or not. And my guess is that for those not in committed relationships, we probably are not going to be administering the Big Five Personality Inventory for mate selection anytime soon.

Solomon, B. C., & Jackson, J. J. (2014). The long reach of one's spouse: spouse's personality influences occupational success. Psychological Science, 25 (12), 2189-2198. 

Image, "Bride and Groom" by Brocken Inaglory. From: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bride_and_groom_cropped.jpg
Used with permission Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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Follow me on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/johnballardphd
On Twitter: @johnballardphd
Decoding the Workplace: 50 Keys to Understanding People in Organizations, coming in May, 
http://www.abc-clio.com/Praeger/product.aspx?pc=A4781C
Available for pre-order at leading on-line bookstores such as Amazon.com