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Worklife: Unpacking the ol' '110 percent' |
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Written by Sheila Norman-Culp, asap
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Tuesday, 10 April 2007 |
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Americans are all about effort. Parents, teachers, coaches, you name it, everyone wants you to give 110 percent — despite the mathematical impossibility of it all.
The working world is similarly obsessed. Monster.com advises jobseekers that successful retailers “are committing to outdistancing the competition and giving 110 percent.” Bizjournals.com warns that “if you are not giving 110 percent each day that you go to work, your organization will find someone who can.” Pro soccer players this spring even upped the ante, claiming they were giving 120 percent, nay, 200 percent, to their teams.
ENOUGH!
When even sportswriters are tired of a phrase, you know it’s a cliche. But there’s a bigger question here:
Is it possible to do worse by trying too hard?
You bet. Just ask the experts.
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GOOD REASONS TO TRY HARD
People try too hard at work for all sorts of reasons.
If you are new at your job, you are probably in overdrive trying to understand the work flow pattern. Or maybe there’s simply too much for any one person to do. Sometimes workers put forth enormous effort trying to force a square peg into a round hole and find themselves continually stymied. Other workplaces have wild production swings, times when it’s quiet and times when all hell breaks loose — think UPS and FedEx at Christmas, H&R Block at tax time.
These are all manpower issues — and it’s OK to “try too hard” for a while. You need to learn the ebb and flow of your new job, ditch unproductive work patterns, plan how to handle work surges. Those facing the square peg issue might have to rethink their entire business approach, because something is clearly not working.
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TRYING TOO HARD, MISSING THE ’ZONE’
Yet sometimes people press frantically because, deep down, they think they are not as good as their competitors. That’s when trying too hard backfires bigtime.
“Trying too hard to peak perform can actually slow you down because you make more errors. The best athletes have learned how to perform with a feeling of ease — in essence trying less,” says Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D, who helps PGA golfers and professional race car drivers develop a winning mental attitude.
Cohn argues that people with a strong fear of failure tighten up, turn into control freaks, and inevitably DO WORSE than if they just relaxed and reacted as the situation presented itself. This is not to say you shouldn’t prepare for different scenarios — it’s just that there are so many factors in any given situation that people have to realize there are a lot of things beyond their control.
“Champion athletes know how to find the right balance between trying and letting it happen. They trust what they have done in practice to prepare,” Cohn said in an e-mail interview.
Cohn says people should focus on their training so when a big day comes — whether it be at work, on the greens or on the race track — the training takes over instead of emotions.
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MAYBE WE JUST THINK WE ARE TRYING TOO HARD
Other experts who can’t stand the “110 percent” game suggest that the American work ethic is not really what it should be — maybe we are used to giving less than we need to.
“What entrepreneurs are really saying when they insist their effort is 110 percent is that they work harder than they expected to work,” notes Rob Spiegel at BusinessKnowHow.com.
Al Uszynski, a sales consultant who gives advice on sideroad.com, is totally annoyed at over-the-top effort claims.
“The reality is that most people operate far below their potential,” he huffs. “To me, when someone brags about giving 110 percent, what they are really telling me is that they are working at a pace closer to their full potential.”
Working on farms or businesses, our ancestors didn’t live by an eight-hour workday — they worked until the chores got done. With the American workplace becoming more global by the minute, maybe we need to look around, realize that we might have slacked off a bit, and step it up before our job goes overseas for good.
Save the computer Solitaire and the Internet shopping for when you get home.
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EFFORT AND RESULTS ARE NOT THE SAME
In the end, results and originality are what count at work, not effort. It’s not fair that your brother can do calculus in his sleep while you slave over problems for hours, or that you work twice as hard as your competition yet they win the sales award. But that’s life — people have unequal skills.
Maybe we need to focus less on effort and more on the right path to take.
A classic example of trying too hard came up this fall, when Chrysler announced an advertising competition for college students. Talk about high stakes — the winner got to design a Super Bowl ad and was offered an advertising agency job after graduation.
Five teams made it to the finals. A CBS reality series captured their angst as the college students pulled all-nighters to hone their presentations, tossed out early concepts for new ideas, fought over the right approach to take, designed elaborate pop-up ad models and poster boards. You could see dark circles growing under their eyes as the challenge went on.
The person who won — Katie Crabb, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — was the least stressed of the bunch. Her drawings were Grandma Moses simple and she didn’t change her idea one bit.
Critics liked the ad — half-naked men washing a car because “they could not keep their hands off” the Chevy.
“All these guys just stampeded the car,” Crabb said as the Super Bowl ad was being shot. “It was exactly what I pictured.”
Fact is, an original idea is worth 1,000 percent effort any day of the week.
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All this talk about giving 110 percent is making asap contributor Sheila Norman-Culp long for a nap. | Only registered users can write comments.
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