Heroes of Effort and Energy

For the past couple of months, we've had a lot of heroes in my department - most of the team has been pulling off sustained heroics (>14 hour days) - I'm very impressed at the spirit and solidarity shown by the team in these trying times despite the lack of resources and abundance of pressure from customers and management.

I feel extremely blessed and flattered at the high performance expectations that have been put on us despite all the artificial constraints and resistance being imposed. We are being held in high regard, which itself is more valuable and meaningful a reward than any monetary, tangible, or materialistic compensation. In fact, I feel fortunate that we are not required to pay money to receive this feeling of self-worth.

So it is true after all - "Money CANNOT buy happiness!".

However, it gets me all riled up when I see articles like this, which argues that hard work, overloading, and long hours are WRONG - oh the nerve of them - advocating in fact, that redundancy is in fact a good thing (these people will not last a single day in my company):

http://www.focusedperformance.com/articles/effort.html

If projects are structured (or if people are mis-managed) to rely on long hours to complete their appointed tasks, then there is no protective capacity in the system. If the organization carries out a downsizing every time it identifies some unused capacity sitting around, the result is a very heavily loaded remaining work force. Unavailable capacity is required to take on new initiatives as they arise.

Here is another link related to this issue:

http://www.focusedperformance.com/articles/multi02.html

P.S. If somehow you feel confused, please look at the label for this post.