Being and Staying Competitive: A Real Choice or an Obligation?

Have you ever asked yourself why you work so much? Why do you go to your office every morning head down and come back late in the evening without having had time to spend a moment with your children? Why don't you count your working hours and remain available 24/7, weekends and holidays?
Is it for the money? Is it ambition? Is it a question of competition? Do you think these incessant challenges you face are natural? Do you really think that an overload of work and excessive investment are the inevitable lot of the privilege of your position?

If so, please stop and take a break!

According to a study, working more than 8 hours a day increases the risk of heart attack and stroke by 40 to 80%, and working more than 11 hours increases the risk of depression. So do you really think it's worth putting your life in danger for a few thousand more dirhams or to show society that you have succeeded in life? No, you know very well that not...

So what are the reasons for this almost "suicidal" behavior that today affects almost the entire population of executives and managers on the planet, both male and female?

The pressure from companies to always want more

As the economic market has become increasingly competitive, companies' desire to remain competitive has led to a significant workload for executives and managers and an ever-increasing exceeding of objectives.

Today, we only talk about strategic vision, action plans, objectives, figures, results...And this, at all levels of the hierarchy. Terms like management, leadership, personal development have become trendy. We train, we develop our skills, in short, we become more and more efficient to achieve the results that the company imposes on us.

And we ourselves are so convinced that we must work more to be ever more efficient that we now find it normal and that we live with it without asking ourselves questions...

Yet how many of you suffer and endure this situation without saying anything, as if it were an inevitability linked to your "high" responsibilities...Rather than asking ourselves whether this pace of life is normal, we will rather try to do something to remain even more competitive or "in the race". We even go so far as to want to learn to manage our stress without reducing our pace???

Organizational changes and the division of tasks

In order to reduce costs and expenses, many executives and managers now find themselves performing tasks that were once the responsibility of their subordinates or assistants. Now you have to write your mail, make your appointments and only ask the bare minimum of your assistant, otherwise you will be reprimanded.

So, in addition to his responsibilities and the management of his teams, the manager will have to spend time on his personal work to manage these administrative tasks, which he will accomplish by finding it normal because it will demonstrate in him a versatility required today by employers!

This division of tasks has also led to a segmentation of the work of executives and managers: they are therefore increasingly dependent on the work of others but remain individually assessed. They are under pressure to deliver files or results, urgently, throughout the year and must therefore absorb a significant increase in workload which they will once again find normal because it is linked to their responsibilities and performance...

Interindividual competitiveness

With work requirements having evolved so much, the watchword for executives and managers today is to be and remain ever more competitive. And this competitiveness is no longer just that of their company vis-à-vis the market, but has become, within the company, a real interindividual competitiveness.

The compression of hierarchical levels and the resulting competition means that we measure ourselves against each other. Within their own teams, some executives and managers ultimately find themselves in a situation of competition between "competitors".

So, we will talk about "customerization of relationships between colleagues". Whether or not it is voluntary on the part of management, if some colleagues become internal "clients" or "providers", others will by definition become "competitors". Performance reviews will not fail to hammer home the point about the quality of the competitor's work and further activate this competition between employees...

These new working conditions have become the norm for the majority of managers and executives who do not question the constant workload or the daily pressure that can weigh on their shoulders but who, on the contrary, question their own skills when their work overflows into their private lives and they have difficulty managing their stress???

The HR strategy of companies tends to reinforce them in this perspective through their training and skills management plans...For executives and managers, it is therefore above all a question of being and remaining competitive against all odds.

But you, how far will you go?

Paola Tumbarello
Directrice ExeKutive.biz