What a difference a word makes

I listened to the radio on my way to a meeting this morning and heard Karen Blackett, CEO of Mediacom, talking about part time working. The one thing she said which really struck a chord with me involved changing one word. Let’s go back a step first though (a big step to start): 

Anubis weighing a heart.

National Geographic, Ancient Egyptians - Book of the Dead

As long ago as 3000 years BC, sophisticated weights and measures were standardised. Amongst the intriguing early equipment excavated from ancient sites there are many sets of scales and weights. The ancient Egyptians believed that Anubis measured your heart against a feather in the afterlife, to see if you were worthy of entry into heaven.  

Scales work by achieving balance; things are measured against each other and an even weight for each achieved through adjustment. Balance, visually and by implication, suggests (to me) exclusivity. If you have a pound of gold on one side, and a pound of steel on the other, though they weigh the same, they are different. You would not balance the scale by putting some gold on with the steel, or vice versa.

But back to Karen and her talk about the workplace. The current popular phrase for how people cope with their work and home life is ‘work life balance’. This implies that you cannot combine the two – that you have work, or you have home, and never the twain shall meet.  That may have been true in past times, in an industrialised era when the knocker-upper woke you for your shift at the factory, and the whistle blew for knocking off time. A period of ‘hard knocks’, to say the least. But is it true now?

A knocker upper

Today we still have industrialised occupations, but we also have a much wider world of work which includes remote working, home working, even virtual working. We can attend conferences without leaving our desk, or even without leaving our homes. As we become more digitised, as communications have rushed us into the 21st century (not exactly kicking and screaming but more tweeting and streaming), so our working lives have also changed.

Karen used the term ‘work life blend’ – and the substitution of that one word (balance for blend) makes a world of difference. Home life and work life are a combination – and frequently flow into each other instead of being mutually exclusive.  Work doesn’t just begin when you get to the office; individuals are ‘clocking on’ before they even leave home (Mozy, 2012). 

Though this one word may seem quite a simple change, it has an impact on perception. Conflicting demands of work and home can cause excessive stress (Health & Safety Executive, 2014). And research suggests further stress - ‘a conflict between high-performance practices and work-life balance policies’ (White, 2003).  It is understandable, therefore, that many individuals seek to reduce the stress that an ever-demanding working life puts on them.  

If you change the word ‘balance’, which implies juggling, struggling, with ‘blend’, which implies combination and mutuality, you are instantly addressing the challenge with a positive starting attitude. Sometimes the change can be small – just one word – but the difference it could make may be huge.

References

Health & Safety Executive. (2014). What about stress at home? Retrieved from Health & Safety Exeuctive: http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/furtheradvice/stressathome.htm 

Mozy. (2012). The New 9 to 5. Retrieved November 2014, from http://mozy.co.uk/about/news/reports/9-5

White, M. H. (2003). High-performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance'. British Journal of Industrial Relations.

Further reading

Health and Safety Executive – Work Related Stress

Guardian – How to achieve a good work life balance

CIPD - Working life – balance, blend or bedlam?

Wikipedia - Knocker uppers 

Knocker upper photo courtesy of http://www.laboiteverte.fr/photos-mysteres-n74/

 

What I learned from The Wiggles

My children are now in their 20s, so sitting down with two toddlers and sharing the ‘The Wiggles’ experience with them was a novelty for me. Gone for me are the days of Tots TV, Rosie and Jim or even the Teletubbies.

The Wiggles, for the uninitiated, are a four piece music combo from Australia who entertain children with a wide range of songs and dances from around the world. The colours are bright, the sets (green-screen performance, animated backdrops) are bright, fun, and everything you’d expect for a children’s programme. In the twenty minutes or so I experienced them, they sang in English, in Greek, and even featured Leo Sayer for one song.

There was no narrative, no rationale as to why a pirate was singing, or a cowboy (unless the song had a particular theme), and they used children’s rhymes and traditional folk tunes and songs too. They played bouzouki, accordion, mandolin, guitar… basically a pretty folky set, but with all the enthusiasm and vigour that was more in keeping with a punk rock band. They danced line dances, classical dances, and even some ballet.

The Wiggles have been around for years, it seems, and have a series of programmes that feature them young, older, heavier, thinner, one of them changes completely, but is consistently bright and non-stop musical. There is some educational content too, but it is not as overt as Sesame Street, for example.

The two youngsters I was with (23 months and 4) were enraptured. The 4 year old was a little too self-aware and conscious of me (not well known to her) to do the dancing, but the little one stamped his feet and wobbled around the room if not in time to the music, certainly inspired by it.

These guys found a formula – and it worked. Their simple, colourful delivery of music and dance captivates youngsters. They include their family in the programmes – having their children, friends, mothers even (who knows) join in the dancing and singing. They invited celebrities who seem (I’ve only seen the Leo Sayer one) to revel in the opportunity to behave like a child and simply have fun with the music.

The programme is inclusive not in the PC-dictatorial way that they have to represent every minority, but in the way that they engage their unseen audience. They want you to dance, they don’t tell you, they just do it and hope you’ll do it too. They sing in different languages, they make music from around the world, and they express what appears to be simple joy in music and dance.

They have never had a hit single (as far as I am aware), they may dress up in luridly bright costumes and leap about madly, yet as musicians they’ve earned my respect. They found a market niche and exploited it. And,  this band of entertainers are in fact now multi-millionaires. As a musician myself, I have huge respect for the Wiggles; not because they have made millions (though that must be nice), but because they have managed to make a living entertaining, teaching, and spreading the joy of music and dance to the younger generations of many nations.

Who would not want a career where you can behave with such abandon, doing something you love. 

Photo credit: The Wiggles.