topic of work-life balance and I wanted
to start with a provocative
but as you see on the screen I think
there might be a better way or a better
question to ask then can I achieve
work-life balance
now I had a surprising experience
recently working as a management
consultant
I was sent on a training course and as
part of the preparations for the
training course I had to invite a whole
group of my colleagues to provide 360
degree feedback on what I’m good at
and what are my areas for development
and there was a great mix of both but
one of the things that others my
colleagues highlighted is an area of
strength was they thought I had a good
work-life balance and this was a
surprise to me because that was not my
experience so I have lots of different
hats that I wear at work I serve clients
I help them develop software better at
scale in large complex environments I
help develop the topic for my firm I
also help develop and mentor colleagues
I’m a married man I’ve been fortunate to
be married to Rhoda for 28 years and
we’ve known each other for 34 years I
think it is we have four wonderful
children you can see up here on the
screen Ella and Isabelle are both off at
University themselves Alice is about to
go off to college next year
and tobey’s 11 and they’re wonderful
they’re also a real handful you know
having four kids is a serious
responsibility I’m also a person of
faith and I’m very actively involved in
the church group that picture on the
bottom right you see there as me and a
couple of other characters singing a
very very silly song to the great
embarrassment of my children at a teen
summer camp that I take a week off work
every year to help support and then I’m
also a chairman of the board of a
medium-sized charity and I sit on the
board of a consortium of IT firms and
people who want to get the most value
out of IT and so there’s lots and lots
going on in my life and I often feel
like things aren’t
completely in control even on the way
here I was so eager to get off the plane
that dev mentioned that I neglected to
check that I had all of my possessions
with me and I got through passport
control and thought my bag is feeling a
little bit light and lo and behold I
realized that my laptop on which I take
carefully taken my notes to prepare for
this talk was where I’d left it
underneath the seat in front of me now
thankfully my laptop was retrieved and
I’m looking forward to retrieving my
precious when I get back to the airport
in in an hour or twos time but it often
feels to me like I’m spinning these
different plates of work and family and
church and you know other activities
that I’m passionate about and I’m
running around and it always feels like
there’s at least one plate that is
wobbling and is in danger of falling to
the ground with a big crash and so I
wondered why is it then that my
colleagues seem to feel that I have a
better sense of work-life balance than
perhaps they experienced themselves and
I don’t know that I have objectively the
answer and I’m certainly not claiming
that my life is all together but I would
like to share with you three things that
have helped me to answer a slightly
different question
so the first conviction I have is that I
decided to pursue fulfilment rather than
balance you know working in management
consulting I started out as a consultant
on our generalist career track in the
firm that I work for and there’s an up
or out expectation in other words every
two or three years you either progress
to the next level in the career track or
you’re given the encouragement to find a
new career outside of the firm and after
having been a consultant and a project
leader you know a year or two into that
I was wrestling with would I make it to
the next level to become a principal and
I realized that I was getting a lot of
for some of the areas for development
that were not where they need to be and
not much appreciation and reward and
recognition for some of the deep most
specialist technology skills that I
brought with me to the firm and I spoke
to my boss about it I spoke to my career
advisor and they said look why don’t you
take some time away from work to really
reflect on what’s the right thing for
you what like the next steps might be
and so I took two months off work and at
the end of it I came back and my career
manager chuckle Ralph
I said look and er I think you’d be
better suited if you move sideways to
what we called an expert career track
and this is an area where you’ll get
more recognition for the deep technical
skills that you’ve brought to the firm
and a little bit less grief for some of
the spike enos of your skills profile
that you’ve experienced so far and
what’s more you’ll get 20% of your time
away from billable client work in order
to be able to speak at conferences and
write white papers and do other things
and I thought wow that’s actually when I
look back at the two previous companies
I’ve worked for those are the kinds of
things that I’m really passionate about
I really enjoy doing and so that’s what
I decided to do and that’s worked out
really really well for me as a project
leader principal Associate Director and
now director in the firm the other thing
I learned out of this experience was I
came back from the two months away and I
thought surely the world will have come
to a stop without my direct engagement
in the workforce and to my dismay
everything had continued completely as
it was before in fact quite a lot of my
colleagues didn’t even realize that I’ve
been away for two months they thought I
always been staffed on a project in
Uzbekistan or somewhere far away and
that was a real eye-opener for me you
know initially I was a little bit
disappointed if I’m honest that I wasn’t
more you know irreplaceable to my
colleagues into my clients but then I
realized actually if it’s possible to
disappear for two
months at a time with it between
projects in consulting at least that’s
something I could perhaps do more often
in order to pursue some of the other
things that I’m at least as passionate
about as going to work every day and so
a couple of years later I took my whole
family away to India and in addition to
doing the usual touristy things like
going to the Taj Mahal I also did some
work with an amazing charity called Hope
worldwide that was doing great things
with orphans with leprosy patients with
underprivileged kids and their education
with immunization with maternal health
and my wife myself and our kids were all
able to find a way that we could do
something meaningful even in our short
trip and it was such a wonderful
experience for us that we’ve since been
back to Nepal and we’ve helped with
earthquake relief there we’ve also got
involved with the same charity in their
work they do here in London with
homelessness and with drug rehab drug
use a real rehabilitation and recovery
and I’ve realised hey that’s you know
it’s only a small part of what I spend
my time doing but it’s something that
that instills passion in me and that
makes me more and more excited you know
last year I again took a month off work
and went
mountain climbing with my daughter
Isabel you know she’s off at university
and I realized hey we don’t have as many
opportunities to spend time together as
we used to when she lived at home I want
to make sure I create special
opportunities to connect together with
her and with my other kids at this
precious stage in their lives and you
know each of these helped remind me of
what I’m passionate about what I find
most fulfilled and so my life is
definitely not balanced by any sane
person’s description but I’d like to
think that it’s fulfilled the second
lesson that I discovered was realizing
that I had to say no more often you know
you’ve probably realized by now that I’m
not someone who finds it easy to say no
to things I love to say yes let’s go for
this adventure yes let’s try this new
project I’ll develop this new topic and
I had a conversation about
ten years ago that flipped my thinking
on this subject
it’s a fellow called friend of mine
called John Oakes who is a science
lecturer at University in San Diego and
he’s very passionate about the idea that
faith and science actually complement
each other rather than being opposites
that are in conflict with each other and
he takes several weeks I think it is
every year to travel around the world
and speak at different conferences and
churches and different debates to share
his convictions on this subject and I’ve
been to one of his talks and I was
sitting down having lunch with him
afterwards and I said John I found what
you do so inspiring it’s a topic that’s
close to my heart I’d like to do some of
what you do and my kids at that stage
were sort of between the ages of about
one and twelve and he said to me Andrew
you know you’re about the next 10 years
of your life are going to be the busiest
time of your entire life now may not be
the best time to suddenly embark on a
major new time commitment and I was
initially just disappointed you know I
had this idea I was excited about I
really wanted to pursue it and he just
poured cold water over it but the more I
thought about it the more I realized
that he actually made sense and I needed
to focus on just doing a great job of
being a husband being a dad you know
being a management consultant you know
being a great you know participant in
the church community that I’m part of
you know those are the four things I
said I’m really passionate about and if
I do a great job with those I’m gonna
feel excited about that if I go chasing
after rainbows chasing chasing after the
next shiny thing then I might not you
know I might regret the compromises I’m
making with the things I’m most
passionate about and so realizing that I
had to say know a little bit more often
maybe a lot more often then I previously
had was an eye-opening moment for me and
it certainly helped me over the last 10
years to to do better at the things that
and finally keep calm and drink coffee
you know my life wouldn’t at all be
possible you know the fulfilled
passionate busy slightly crazy life that
I live
wouldn’t it all be passionate be
possible without the incredible
partnership and support I have with my
wife Rhoda and one of the key strengths
I think we have in knowing each other
for 34 years and been married for 28 is
that we have a lot of the same values
the same priorities the same commitment
and through our journey of life together
having children and her being a teacher
and then child minder and now counselor
that’s been a great rocking of strength
to us and yet very often when the plates
were starting to wobble and maybe one or
two of them fell we’d find we had
conflict because she was expecting me to
anticipate these challenges a little bit
earlier and she’s generally a lot more
perceptive than me about when things are
starting to go off the rails and she
says to me that she’d like me to listen
to her a little bit more often in order
to identify these issues at least I
think that’s what she said and and yet I
find that often in the hustle and bustle
of life even though we spent time
talking together we wouldn’t make the
time and space to step back and reflect
and we discovered one Saturday morning
as we went out to a favorite coffee
place there was something magical about
going out for coffee
not necessarily the coffee beans
themselves although I do like my grande
skinny wet latte but but just a very act
of getting out of the house getting away
from the hustle and bustle of kids and
laundry and emails and notifications and
all of the pressures that seem to be
around made a quiet space where we could
step back from the here and now and
think okay how is our marriage you know
how we doing how we communicating how
are our expectations and plans going you
know how is Ella or Isabelle or Alice or
Toby you know what do they need from a
to have the conversations where she said
to me okay Toby’s now six or seven you
know he needs more time for his dad you
know we need to make a structural change
or we’ve been at each other’s throats a
little bit for the last two or three
weeks and we talked about is this just a
short-term thing or is this a structural
thing you know sometimes it’s just a
busy project or two projects at the same
time or as a small transitional thing
where our schedules changed and we say
okay this is just for a short period of
time and as long as we know it’s just
two weeks or just four weeks we can say
okay we’ll hold each other’s arms up
we’ll support each other and it’s going
to be fine other times we realize
actually this is a structural change in
our lives you know our kid has moved on
to a next stage of college or my role
has changed at work or she’s gone back
to college to study counseling and
things are going to be different around
here we need to make a structural change
and we found us getting outside of our
daily routine going out for a cup of
coffee and has made room for those
conversations and has enabled us to
listen to each other and certainly for
me to be a better listener to my wife
than I previously had been and that’s
made an enormous difference and I
wouldn’t say that we’ve achieved balance
because it always feels like you know
the plates are wobbling a little bit but
it allows us to spot the wobbles a
little bit earlier and to intervene and
at least to choose which plates we mind
less falling to the ground and to choose
to invest in and to support and to keep
spinning you know the four or five
plates that we feel most passionate
about and that we find most fulfilling
so in wrapping up the day talking about
the future of us you know making a your
life sustainable is certainly important
but I would encourage you to think less
about a mythical ideal of work-life
balance or student life balance and
instead to pursue a passion to identify
what your 3 or 4 deepest passions are
and to
really invest and double down in those
to go after them to say no to other
things that might distract you from them
and to take a little bit of time out of
your day with the people closest to you
to step back from the hustle and bustle
and to redirect yourself to keep
spinning those most important most
passionate plates in order to find a
great future for yourself and for us all
thank you very much [Applause]