The Two Sides of the Evolution of Work-Life Balance

I read with great interest the opinion piece on CNN.com regarding Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's assertion that she works a 9 to 5 office schedule, setting up a firestorm of reaction ranging from:

• "You go, girl! Way to put your foot down on what's really important."
• "Wait, I work myself to death 6am to 10pm and they didn't make me COO and give me the associated perks that come along with that. Thanks for rubbing the salt in the wound."
• "Baloney, I don't believe for a second that you truly work from 9 to 5."

All of these reactions are understandable and have merit. Besides the COO part (which I gather makes a big difference in our stress levels and standards of living), I've tried to set that sort of structure on my own work life. I get in early and leave the office relatively early so I can have dinner with my family with young children and help put them to bed. Like Sandberg, I value face time with my children and I buy into the hypothesis (here detailed in Time magazine) that having family meals together lead to healthier, happier and kids that learn better at school. While I wish I was always enthusiastic (I'm trying to get better at this) listening to them talk about a girl who wouldn't let them use the same kitchenette at preschool or some sort of playground tag strategy, I know that this is something that is good for the family.

I can also appreciate the bitterness that others feel that Sandberg is the COO of the company given her respect of work-life balance. This, probably more than anything else, illustrates that while Corporate America still talks a good game about work-life balance, there's still this prevailing thought that hard work and long hours are the prerequisite badges for leadership and promotion, as opposed to a means of success of accomplishment. Or put another way, I would argue in Sandberg's defense, if she's managed to accomplish great results while working in the office 9 to 5, good for her. Mark Zuckerberg and the Board ought to care less about how she achieved good results (provided the means were legal and sustainable) as opposed to applauding and recognizing that she got the job done.

But there's this disconnect on the interpretation of work-life balance divided by two camps:

1. Work-life balance means that you can work less hours and keep your job, but your career growth and progression will be stunted
2. Work-life balance means that you can work smarter with possibly less time in the office, and the onus is upon you to ensure that results are still optimized

I would argue for perspective #2, but I suspect some are still stuck on #1, which isn't work-life balance but a description for a "part-time worker".

Which segues into my final point around the skepticism around Sandberg's claim. Look carefully at her quote:

"I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I've been doing that since I had kids," Sandberg said in a video posted on Makers.com. "I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it's not until the last year, two years that I'm brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn't lie, but I wasn't running around giving speeches on it."

She's not asserting that she only works 9 to 5, only that she limits her time at the office so she can spend face time with her children. Like me, she probably enjoys her dinner, puts the kids to bed, and does conference calls or pops the laptop open to do whatever work that needs to be done while simultaneously watching "Parenthood" or the Knicks game (well, maybe she's not doing that). But let's face it, in this day of mobile devices, work doesn't end when one leaves the office. The lines of life and work have been irrevocably blurred, and us modern day workers are figuring things out as we go along. Work life balance? I suppose the I will have known that I succeeded by asking my kids twenty years from now.