Disadvantages of lean management

In my last article I wrote about lean management and that this strategy is a great innovation for many reasons, and one of them is time saving. Well of course this is great, I do less and do get more time to do other things. But on the other hand I feel like I am always under pressure.  In the sense of I have more time for other things, so during the day I do a lot more, in the end I am busy the hole day. And I get this uncomfortable feeling- this will never end- which can lead to burn out (read more about this in Jules post).

From this perspective, I began to search for the disadvantages of lean management. For my essay in Work Business & Society I am reading “The Machine that changed the world” is a report that is written by Daniel T. Jones. I found really interesting disadvantages from the Japanese perspective.

Work- Life Balance

In my last two blog posts “Burnout Syndrome: A Disease of Modern Societies?” and “Have you reached your limit yet?“, I wrote about the burnout syndrome and how it is related to student’s work load at university.

Today, I want to discuss a concept which is very much related to the topic of burnout because in many guidebooks it seems to be the perfect way to cure people from a burnout syndrome or to even prevent it: Work-Life Balance!

When I first heard these work in my human resources class last semester, I thought this is something really great and helpful in our modern world of working where more and more women go to work and also want to have a family. But then I questioned myself if this concept of Work-Life Balance is really the perfect compensation between job, family and hobby?

Have you reached your limit yet?

In my last week’s blog post  “Burnout Syndrome: A Disease of Modern Societies?” I introduced the topic of the burnout syndrome in general. This time, I want to focus more on what meaning burnout syndrome has for us as college students if there even is one.

I thought about this topic because especially this semester I often got the feeling that I just can’t handle my workload anymore, which was mostly due to the Business Applications class where we were supposed to fulfill several tasks each week. When I talked to my friends they almost felt the same way I did and I was really surprised how they are even able to do all that every week because some of them also work during the week or even on the weekends and on top of that they have their own apartment which means that they also have to handle all household responsibilities and cook for themselves.

Since I still live at home, I don’t have to go working and can pass most of the household work to my mom and still, I thought it was too much. So I asked my friends how they get all the work done and the answers were quite like in the graphic aside. They made restrictions on other parts of their life either that didn’t sleep as much as they would have loved to do or they didn’t do their college work properly and didn’t expect to get a good grade for it or they decided to stay at home during the weekend and didn’t meet friends to get everything done.

Burnout Syndrome: A Disease of Modern Societies?

A short story of how I got to the topic

Last weekend we celebrated my mom’s birthday and many friends and family members attended this little party. Only one person, we had invited before was missing: Thorsten.

His wife Susan told us that he is in hospital because he suffers from a burnout due to his job. We were all shocked when we heard that news and especially Susan was quite upset but she had already noticed that something was wrong with her husband after their summer vacation last year. Thorsten wasn’t relaxed at all and became more and more irritable. He is the CEO of a publicly traded technology company and has been working really hard on the weekends as well as doing over-time work. After a few weeks after their vacation he was worn out, tired and exhausted. There were also dizziness and a feeling of pressure in his head, which soon degenerated to a constant pain. As his condition worsened in April, Susan searched for a burnout clinic. But Thorsten wouldn’t admit that he was sick and refused to go there and continued working until two weeks ago when he woke up in the middle of the night bathed in sweat with his pulse racing comparable to a panic attack. This was a kind of a wake-up call for Thorsten, Susan said.