Here's how you can balance work-life during a company culture shift.

Work/life balance is a myth. It's life balance. What needs to be balanced in life are the logical and the emotional minds. Take a moment and pause. Consider how you're *feeling*. Why are you feeling that way? What are you *thinking*. What could you change to feel better? Internal perspective? External realities? Most people would use the word "stress" - but the stress is on something. Is your time being stressed? Priorities? Values? Peel the onion a little to understand the root causes. There's no better time to reevaluate yourself than during a culture change - it's a great opportunity to either shape the culture to a better fit or find one that is. You can not control what happens to you, you can only control how you respond.

Prior to and during a significant change, assess the impact to you as an individual. Will it mean more or new collaboration: more meetings, changes to meetings, new team tools? Will it mean more deadlines and reviews of individuals work that you need to do in a short period of time? Knowing your work and yourself will help to know which impacts of the change to you will need to be planned for or need to be balanced with other things. Eg. Maybe you need to take protect time for breaks or reviews. Identifying these individual impacts can enable you to balance it with what you need to make the change and sustain energy.

Yep. It’s like “multi-tasking”. Another myth. And let’s talk about a “work-life balance” when you work remotely. We need to be honest with ourselves.

Lets call it work life integration instead. First i must say the cultural shifts can be as a result of internal factors i.e. mergers and acquisitions,globalization,technology and also political and other external environment factors. - Key pointers for me would be: - Understand the changes - Understand the impact - Plan on how to tackle - Leaders/management to support teams to navigate the shifts hence listen and engage staff to develop coping or adapting mechanisms For individuals to manage; It calls for strict self-discipline, prioritization and seeking help where need be.

Para equilibrar a vida profissional e pessoal durante uma mudança de cultura da empresa, comece por avaliar o impacto que essa transformação terá em ambas as áreas: Identifique as Demandas: Analise as novas demandas e responsabilidades que a mudança cultural trará, tanto no trabalho quanto na vida pessoal. Reconheça os Desafios: Identifique os principais desafios que podem surgir, como aumento de carga horária, novas dinâmicas de equipe ou mudanças nos processos de trabalho. Estabeleça Prioridades: Determine quais aspectos da sua vida profissional e pessoal são mais importantes e merecem maior atenção durante esse período de transição.

Use the tools around you to enable your success! Use your phone settings to set ‘focus time’ for your non-work hours, ensuring all notifications and ability to open certain apps is restricted outside your working hours.

Defina Horários de Trabalho: Estabeleça horários específicos para começar e terminar o trabalho, e respeite esses horários tanto quanto possível. Evite levar trabalho para casa ou trabalhar fora do expediente regular. Crie um Espaço de Trabalho Dedicado: Se você trabalha remotamente, crie um espaço de trabalho separado em casa. Isso ajuda a delinear a fronteira entre trabalho e vida pessoal. Priorize Tarefas: Use ferramentas de gestão de tempo para priorizar tarefas e focar nas atividades mais importantes. Isso permite que você termine o trabalho dentro do horário previsto.

After identifying what you need to set boundaries, set yourself up with people and tools. Have conversations with colleagues and teams on what you and others need. A positive change is still a change. Trying to do it all or push through can lead to burnout, even to the most high-performing and adaptable individuals. Having a conversation with the team enables you to have what you need for support and encourages a safe conversation where the team can share what they need. Also, leverage tools (notebooks, trackers, phone reminders, communication tools, check-in meetings, etc) to 'set it' to make it easier to do what you need to do AND to have the breaks or support check-in's that are needed to stay the course and support each other.

I would love to hear from dear contributors how their personal experiences or those of others affected productivity when they were trying to find the balance or integration.

Practical help one can get: - Leadership support - Focus group deliberations / group sharing to demystify the shift and share experiences - Planned training to impart skills that will provide practical management / application - Mentor and coach - Constantly track the impact and coping mechanisms

'What's important now' can be a powerful question to keep focused on the right things during a significant change. Ambitious, enthusiastic individuals take on a lot which can lead to part of the list not happening...but you don't choose it, it just happens. Setting a smaller list and clear goals of what is true success for each week, this month and this quarter of the change can enable the right things happening. Staging the change and goals can increase the chance of it all happening versus trying to do it all now. We've all had goals that us and/or our team keep going after. There can be lots of reasons why it take repeat attempts and important reason can be that there are higher priorities or full capacity. Staging priorities helps.

Flexibility comes in many forms and can be a positive skill to develop in a team. Setting guidelines/ principles/ success looks like/ etc for guiding flexible decisions is key. Flexibility is not 'anything goes'. Flexibility within a team setting is best done when there is a common understanding of what's important in the decision. This can apply to both in the work and about workdays, like start times, being available, end times, blocking time in calendar for individual work versus team work, etc. Great teams can have conversations about the work and how they come to work so they understand each other better as individuals to come together as a team.

People first! Both to help you navigate the change personally and then work through how you support others with that change. A stakeholder map sounds like an administrative extra but it will help you to identify who you need to engage with to drive a successful program - think risk, SME’s, end users, committees for feedback to iterate as you go, tech support, legal, P&C, business partnering roles, general change advocates, mentors…and the people / that person who help you to maintain a sense of perspective along the way.

Being flexible with what 'support' means can get more done with more enjoyment. Support can mean being pointed to a resource, answering questions, being guided on a task, another doing part of a task, providing the bigger picture of where this task fits in and more. Asking for support and offering support then choosing the right type of support helps today and tomorrow. It can help get the task done to quality and on time. It can help the individual to finish their workday on time and with a better understanding. When it is the right size of support, it can provide the right level of support and challenge that grows capabilities for the future. Seeking support and identifying the right type of support should be a central in a growing team.

It's important to listen first. Use surveys or workshops to gather insights and feedback. Use those to communicate the cultural change so the team can understand that the change is coming from their feedback and not just management, so it's more likely that you will get more buy-in and engagement. Focus on the benefits and outcomes expected to be achieved with that change.