When Andy Peck, a human resources specialist with Deloitte, was working in Australia, he observed that some senior executives surfed through their lunch breaks (see my interview with Peck on page 67). Since the economy in Oz was booming at the time, he surmised they weren't missing anything by hanging out at the beach. Perhaps, he mused, they became more inspired and productive by doing something they loved in the middle of the day. Maybe they worked to live instead of the other way around, and that gave them a sharper edge.

Notice how elite athletes cycle themselves through periods of instruction, workouts, practices, and competition, interspersed by rest and relaxation. They want to peak for the big events and understand they can't perform at high levels all the time. Yet business often harbours this illusion. In the quest for higher productivity, we tend to think we should always work a little harder and a little longer.

With the unceasing demand to meet and beat quarterly forecasts, business can become a robotic quest for a bunch of elusive metrics on the one hand or an outright invitation to fraud à la Worldcom, Enron, and Nortel. At the very least, it takes the richness and creativity out of the human experience.

How easily we forget that we are a part of nature, and nature is nothing if not rhythmic, cyclical, seasonal. The smartest business people know this very well. When the economy turns down, value investors and corporate raiders go shopping for bargains-and they get them. They don't bemoan the inevitable downturns in the business cycle but rather profit from their predictability.

The generations also follow cyclical patterns as they "boom, bust, and echo," to quote a famous demographer. As Peck points out, the boomers will start their mass exodus from the workforce in 2008, and many companies won't be prepared.

On a smaller scale, each company has its own lifecycle. Even most Fortune 500 stars have surprisingly short reigns as they are overtaken by disruptions of one sort or another, most of which they didn't see coming because they were too busy trying to work harder instead of smarter. (Not enough days at the beach.) On a personal level, each employee has his or her own career cycle. In analyzing the results of our Best Companies survey on page 51, Miranda Burns of Omnifacts Bristol Research found that people's attitudes about their employers vary in predictable ways. At first they tend to be very keen, then the honeymoon ends, and they start to see what is missing from their jobs, such as more money and better training. In the next phase, they may be critical about individual components of their work experience but have a deep sense of commitment. Smart managers will not be surprised by these trends and have plans to enhance the employee experience over its lifecycle.

Yet each employee's experience is unique. Or is it? The individual "open-ended" questions we asked in the Best Companies survey are a window on the collective soul of employees, managers, and non-managers alike. This is where the issues appear in their most personal guise, yet most tend to boil down to a small number of important issues.

One is communication. Employees want to know where the company is headed-what the big goals are and how well they're being met. If they don't know, it becomes doubly awkward, because they don't feel it is their place to ask. What a de-motivator!

As Peck observes, senior managers may be doing a good job, but they're not transferring their vision and skills to middle management; this disconnect resonates down through the layers of the company. If senior managers are able to rectify this weakness, their efforts are amplified throughout the organization.

A related issue is what theorists call "alignment." This means having the right employees in the right positions-people who understand and buy into the corporate mission and their role in it. This factor may be difficult to quantify, yet good managers work hard to keep it at a high level.

Finally, there is the employee-at any level-who chronically underperforms and who will never be properly aligned, and therefore who threatens the greater whole. This is the weakest link in the corporate chain, and it must be removed.
In the article "Pulling the plug on low performers," management consultant and former hospital administrator Quint Studer of the Studer Group advises: "For other employees who had to deal with the person, it's like they had a foot pressing down on their chest. When you fire him or her, the foot is pulled away. Chances are, your other employees will be thrilled, and you'll find that you can attract a better person. And from there, great things will start to happen. So, yes, you have to make that blind leap of faith-but it's a leap that almost always takes you closer to becoming a high-performance organization."

It is an awkward moment, but part of the natural cycle of things.