Only one in eleven stroke survivors change their diet, despite it being the primary cause for their condition. Some would argue that stress and burnout in consulting (or in most any field) raises a similar question: why do we let ourselves fall victim to the same lows twice, three times or more, yet rarely consciously work to prevent it?
Based on my experience working at a big four firm, I am not surprised that our advisory practice is a cocktail of driven, dedicated and 'Type-A' people. It seems to me that while these traits may earn a person some extra spending money and maybe even an occasional recognition award, they also have the power to discretely lead a person down the road to burnout. Disguised as frequent after-work drinks and subtle jokes of a 'hopelessness' project or work schedule, the lasting effect of late nights and prolonged stress can surely be just as harmful to one's health as a stroke.
Whether you want to prevent burnout or hard wire healthier eating habits, it all comes down to one not-so-simple solution: change. A few weeks ago I was fortunate to have the opportunity to set aside my 65+ chargeable hour work week for a...well...40 chargeable hour and a three-day non-chargeable course in change management methodology. If you agree that you are no good to anybody if you are dead, well, I promise there is no harm in reading on.
With any change - whether it be in our personal lives or in our professional careers - there are five elements that must be in place according to Jeffrey M. Hiatt's ADKAR model. I recognize this illustrates just one consultant's coloured commentary on the topic, but I will explain my strategy for sustaining a personal change that will prevent future burnout at my job. I invite you to think about how you, too, can use this model to navigate a change you would like to make in your own life.
'A' stands for Awareness, that is, of the need to change.
Burnout is tricky. It has crept up on me more than once, but in reality it's the symptom of a bigger problem. I am in constant pursuit of perfection, often agonizing over minor details in presentations, deliverables and work plans. I refuse to let even the lowest priority items be done off the corner of my desk or god forbid fall off altogether. The long hours were rationalized as being "just an expected part of working in consulting" or "necessary to satisfy the client." Long story short, there was a day when for the first time, I genuinely felt that I couldn't "get it all done." And I didn't. The next day, sure, there were some bumpy conversations and hiccups in our technical demo, but at the end of the six hour training session, our client said point blank to our team: "This is what a successful project feels like. Finally. After 30 years in government, I never thought I would see the day!" It was a wake-up call. Burnout may have sent me to bed early, coerced me to explore competitor job postings and watched me roll over the next morning with a few extra grey hairs, but the long hours wouldn't have made a difference. So yes, I admit it. It took a surprising comment from my client and not the countless warnings from my friends, late night pep talks from my boyfriend and concerned calls from my parents to effectively establish an awareness of my need to change. In summary, it is important you understand the nature of the change,, the risk of not changing, what the internal and external drivers are behind the change and of course, the "what's in it for me."
'D' stands for the Desire to support and participate in the change.
I am grateful to have coworkers who I consider to be some of my closest friends. Friends who understand the firm's politics and who understand the pressure associated with the job. In my messy state of mind, I would lean on these friends the most, and admittedly often too much. Over-tiredness and chronic stress also poured over onto my relationship with my boyfriend. Sometimes it took the form of sharp comments. Other times it was a quiet lack of attention as I perched at the kitchen table in front of my laptop during dinner. My diet degraded to [vegan] fast food ordered in to the office and a disappointing routine of trying on nearly every dress in my closet before I could find something comfortable enough to last me a dreaded 16 hour day. While all these on their own sound like they should be enough to generate a desire to change, choosing to work late has traditionally been based on a handful of intrinsic desires. Deep down I thought it showed my commitment to quality work or that it would be worth a personal sacrifice here or there to reach perfection. The truth is, I have been disillusioning myself. Working late repeatedly shows others that I am struggling to maintain a healthy lifestyle; it sets a bad example for junior consultants and it signals a red flag on the project. Just as with my client's comment or in Hank Green's video titled 'The Secret to My Productivity,' I now factually know why the pursuit of perfection is fundamentally misguided. For all these reasons, I have established a strong desire to change my work habits in order to prevent burnout.
'K' stands for the Knowledge of how to change.
There are four factors that contribute to our knowledge of how to change, including: a person's current knowledge base, capability of the person to learn, access to or existence of required knowledge and lastly, the resources available to provide education and training. Right away, I can tell this element of personal change will demand my greatest attention and effort. While I do know of a couple methods for preventing myself from persistently working unnecessarily late, fanning a fire over my stress level and burning out, intuitively I feel I am missing something that will come with further research and experience. Realistically, it's a simple solution. If I challenge myself (and my boss) to not allow work to lurk around my evenings and weekends, I will have more time to do other things that are important to me. Yoga (on overwhelming, unfocused days). Boxing (on "my patience are being tested' days). Time with friends and family (on belly-laugh, big-smiles kind of days). Or bloggin', book-reading, smiling, lemonade drinking days on my flower engulfed balcony mini-oasis (on days when it isn't 40 C below). There are so many ways, I know, that I can prevent the big BO (lolz).
'A' stands for the Ability to implement required skills and behaviours.
According to the handy-dandy model, a number of factors impact our ability to make change happen: psychological blocks, physical abilities, intellectual capability, the time available to develop the needed skills (haha, how apt) and the general availability of resources to support the development of new abilities. In order to do all the above things and still kick-butt at my job, I need to carve out the time - only the most finite of the above resources. When we die, we do not want the last words on our lips to be the most common regret of the dying: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a true life to myself, not the life others expected of me." Also borrowed from my favourite book, 'The Happiness Equation' by Neil Pasricha he breaks it down - into buckets. We each have 168 hours of time to live each week. Of that, 56 naturally go to sleeping (if we are lucky), 56 typically go to work (if we factor in our commute time, after work noodling and work-related commitments) and 56 go to... well all the other juicy adventures we we want out of life. My ability to prevent burnout depends on how effectively I can ration what this third bucket of time has to offer.
'R' stands for Reinforcement needed to sustain the change.
Have you ever had a kitten? A brazen two-year old? Someone who looked up to you for something (anything?)??? I can guarantee you can at least check the box on the latter. Reinforcement is the final element of ADKAR and of course can't happen without ability first in place and on deck. Otherwise, what actions are there to reinforce the change in the first place? If the reinforcement is meaningful - if I can see and feel the positive impact it has on my relationships, body and career - then reinforcement is at work, and most ironically, while I am not. If working less tangibly leads to a lost promotion or loss of respect from my co-workers to "get the job done" at the cost of my health and happiness then something has gone wrong. Reinforcement is the absence of negative consequences. It is the association of the reinforcement with legitimate progress or an accomplishment. If I am going to lean on my work friends, my boyfriend or my family, it will be for their help in keeping me accountable. To question me. To shut my laptop screen. To tell me I look refreshed and that they see a difference in my presence - a sharpness of thought, a wider smile and maybe even a longer fuse.
No more burning the midnight oil. This is a change in priority. This is so I can continue to chase after the exciting, fast-paced and fulfilling career that is possible in consulting.
I'm glad that you recognized this early on in your career - I recognized it a little late and while I don't regret working the extra hours or burning the candle at both ends, I do think that some of the mindset and culture has hurt me when moving to a company that does not have that culture (at least explicitly). I think ultimately if you are doing what you really love doing, you won't mind putting in the extra hours but I do feel that sometimes there's other aspects of work that get in the way of the work that we love to do and we then grow resentful of work (I know I have). Barbara Corcoran, one of the Sharks on Shark Tank, has a practice where every few months, she writes down a love and a hate list - she writes down all the things that she loves doing, and then she writes down all the things that she hates doing, and then she tries to figure out how to do more of the things that she loves, and then tries to figure out how to do less / delegate / eliminate things that she hates to do. I think this is a good practice that can really help you love your job again.
You make a good point - each of the Big4 have a different culture when it comes to expectations (overt or not) of working late to get the job done. Your experience is a good reminder of that! I am sorry to hear that you feel that way about your current firm, yet I am most interested to hear what you have on your love and hate list. I think you and Barbara just gave me a better idea for my next post that what I had in mind ("What I learned from my first system implementation project with a Big4... that doesn't specialize in system implementations haha). Thanks for the awesome comment!