Brake or break? New year needs a change of pace
Even if you’re not a fan of Formula 1 racing, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of watching the skilful Lewis Hamilton, now heading the list of the greatest F1 drivers of all time.
Yet any racing driver will tell you that it is not difficult to simply drive fast. The real skill is in the timing of using the brake – knowing when to slow down and when to accelerate.
In business, we have certainly mastered the accelerator pedal. Indeed, we’ve had a proverbial foot planted firmly on it for the past few decades. It’s not that we’re less skilful with the brake – I believe we’ve forgotten it even exists.
Having worked in global businesses for more than 25 years, I recall days packed with conference calls, meetings and travel. Working through lunch or responding to email at the weekends was seen as evidence of commitment and loyalty – actions to be admired or copied.
For my own part, by forgetting to apply the brake, I found myself having a breakdown and spent almost a week in a Glasgow psychiatric hospital just over five years ago. That episode was the catalyst for writing a book that seeks to shift the debate from a singular focus on the mental health of individuals to looking at the mental health of the system in which we are operating. Breakdown, burnout and disengagement are normal human responses to a corporate system whose pace and expectation has escalated, as a result of digital technologies, so that it is now unsustainable.
For a while, the Covid- 19 pandemic seemed to offer one ray of comfort in its bleak onslaught on our economies and societies. No longer would we be judged by the number of hours spent conspicuously at our desks under the watchful eye of our
bosses and peers. Instead, our contribution would be calculated solely on the outputs and results we achieved.
During the first lockdown, I recall the feeling of having the luxury of time. Unfortunately, for many, these time savings did not translate into more downtime or more breaks. They were used to add even more hours to the working day.
The online business network Linkedin noted last May that the working day had increased by 15 per cent. It’s a fast track to more burnout.
The second lockdown offered a second chance. As a “knowledge worker”, I can work remotely and have managed to carve out a different cadence to my daily routine. I now include yoga, meditation and a long walk into my day and give myself a deadline for shutting down the computer.
I believe we need to fundamentally rethink what we do as business professionals and why we do it. It’s why I set up a business “decelerator” on the Isle of Bute where I grew up. If businesses are going to be a force for good in the world, we need to create the headspace for people to help them do so. A collective new year resolution could be for us to be quicker at slowing down. After all, a wee dab on the brake pedal might give us a chance to break the system rather than ourselves.
• Gib Bulloch is author of The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a corporate insurgent and founder of the Craigberoch Business Decelerator on the Isle of Bute, which will host the # Reset2021 online summit today.