
Photo credit: (iStockphoto/Anchiy)
The late Professor Anthony Athos, an unforgettable member of the Harvard Business School faculty to all who knew him, used to have a favorite non-activity. He would take a break, leave the office, and take a seat on a bench on the HBS campus.
When colleagues passed by, observing something they wouldnโt be seen doing, and asked him, โWhat are you doing, Tony?โ He would reply, โNothing,โ and delight in observing the expressions on one โanxious achieverโ after another. It was Tonyโs way of poking fun at the HBS culture.
Athos, were he with us today, might well have appreciated Jenny Odellโs thesis that โdoing nothingโ offers us several useful โtools,โ including those of repair (personal reflection and recovery), โa sharpened ability to listenโโa critical resource in a world dominated by telling and tellers, and โan antidote to the rhetoric of growthโ that puts a premium on โnovelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.โ
“ITโS NOT THAT GEN ZERS WANT TO DO NOTHING OR EVEN LESS. ITโS JUST THAT THEY WANT TO ACHIEVE IN THEIR OWN WAY AND IN THEIR OWN SWEET TIME.”
Athos taught and researched in a world of what Morra Aarons-Mele describes in her recent book as โanxious achievers.โ To paraphrase Aarons-Mele, anxious achievers are those who deal with anxiety often associated with feelings of inadequacy by working harder to achieve more. Like other major academic institutions, the HBS campus is populated by faculty driven by an up-or-out appointment system ministering to a student body with similarly high hopes for achievement.
According to Aarons-Mele, anxious achievers have many qualities valued in the business world. As she puts it, they โare great at forward planning, โฆ attuned and empathetic, โฆ work hard and prepare, โฆ and ask for help and build infrastructure (support systems).โ They have accounted for a substantial portion of the output and productivity of the worldโs most developed economies.
Now the anxious achievers occupying many leadership positions are confronted with a Gen Z that has been introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic to working from home. Among other things, the luxury of not having to commute to an office has provided them an opportunity (and a motive) to think deeply about their future, their attitude toward the โtime vs. moneyโ tradeoff, and ways of achieving โtime affluence,โ as Ashley Whillans advises in her recent book.
We all would like both time and money. But this generation appears, at least for now, to place a higher value on time, personal development, and lifestyle than on maximizing income. In addition, many Gen Zers have an aversion to working in the traditional offices that anxious achievers in CEO positions believe is vital to future innovation and success.
Itโs not that Gen Zers want to do nothing or even less. Itโs just that they want to achieve in their own way and in their own sweet time. Whoโs to say which of these formulas is most productive over the long run? (With that question, was I just guilty of falling into Odellโs โrhetoric of growthโ?)
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, time is on the side of the Gen Zers. The long-term future of organizational leadership belongs to them.
It suggests the question: Is the anxious achiever is a post-pandemic relic? What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
References:
Morra Aarons-Mele, The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023)
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Melville House Publishing, 2019)
Ashley Whillans, Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time & Live A Happier Life (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020)
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