Today we welcome Lisa Tannenbaum to our blog to discuss how she remodeled her job to fit her notions of motherhood — and managed to get promoted with her job-sharing partner. Inspiring!–Hollee

Many new mothers I know struggle with the logistics of how they can manage their new family and maintain a career at the same time.  Some of those women have quit their jobs to be full-time moms and others have hired full-time nannies to help take care of their home life so they could pursue their careers.  I have found the best of both worlds through job sharing.

I am currently in a job-share arrangement as a Human Resource Manager at Deloitte.  I work Mondays and Wednesdays and my job-sharing partner, Sandy Francis, works Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We both work on Fridays.  Sandy and I began our job-share in 2004. At that time, this was a newer job structure that involved a partnership of flexibility, some compromise and, perhaps most importantly, enormous trust of one another.

Sandy and Lisa

Both Sandy and I have young children; we wanted to maintain our careers with Deloitte, a company to which we are very loyal and from which we have felt that loyalty returned.  Deloitte is consistently recognized as a fantastic work environment for women, initiating many creative and innovative work/life balance programs, many of which have become the industry standard.  To my knowledge, Sandy and I were the first job-share arrangement at Deloitte in this type of role (Deloitte is a private company that has over 40,000 employees spread across about 100 offices in the US).  Since we began this endeavor, we have become an internal role model for how people can be successful, and even continue to progress, in their careers with such an arrangement.

We hear that people call us the “two-headed monster” and we assume that they mean this in the nicest possible way.  The leaders we support realize that, at least in our case, two heads are definitely better than one.  We bring twice the experience, twice the opinions (which are typically a good thing!) and twice the accessibility — as our clients are able to count on someone always being available.  The beauty of a job-share arrangement, as opposed to a traditional part-time job, is that on my day off I am able to be entirely away from work and, yet, my partner is on the job keeping us current in our responsibilities.

So what are the logistics?

It is fairly simple.  We have access to one another’s email and we update each other at the end of the day through lengthy voicemail messages — often, VERY lengthy voice mail messages.  In addition, we text each other to get answers for more urgent or important issues throughout the day.  It also helps that our clients know they can come to either of us, although many times, they interchange our names, which simply reassures us that this arrangement is truly seamless for those that we support.  And, we are usually both brought into the loop on all situations.

Job-sharing is not exclusively a bed of roses, of course.  We have certainly had our challenges with this partnership.   After a few unsuccessful attempts of throwing our names in the hat for promotions, we wondered if we could advance in our careers as partners.

There were certainly skeptics in the organization … questions about whether our arrangement worked efficiently on all levels.  At one point, we actually believed that this job-share may have been a roadblock in our ability to advance.  Rather than abandoning the concept, we coordinated our resumes together, posted for jobs together, and, even interviewed together.  It took a very strong and proven performance history, respected advocates, and finally, as with any workplace innovation, a leap of faith from leaders at Deloitte, but, alas, the answer was ultimately that we could move up the hierarchy – together!

We were promoted in our job-share arrangement to a managerial position.  Six months into this new role, things are going very well as we continue to prove ourselves capable of efficiency, imagination, leadership and teamwork on a daily basis.  Trailblazing this arrangement together to a new group of leaders, learning the unique skill set of job-share management, and creating a path for the next generation of career-oriented mothers in the organization is wildly exciting and fulfilling — both as an employee of Deloitte AND as a mom.

We received some great responses last week to our question about alternatives to “work/life balance,” a phrase I don’t love, even though Hollee and I sometimes use it when we need instant recognition of our topic. (I’ve disliked the phrase for awhile but, when it comes to short titles and labels, I’ve also never been a big fan of confusing readers with unfamiliar monikers just to make a point).  The fact is, labeling anything these days is tough business because people don’t fit easily into categories. And, when it comes to “balance” (or whatever), no one phrase seems to describe every situation or viewpoint. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find the right words — and talk about what we mean by them.

Becky and Hollee in ... harmony

You all had some fantastic insight and offered great suggestions. And, even better, there was some great discussion about work/family … whatever-word-you-choose and what it really means.

Thank you to everyone who commented. We’ve included an excerpted recap below. — Becky

From Walter:
I would replace it with harmony. Work and life are part of our everyday endeavors, therefore we have to aspire to find the harmony to flow with it.

From Cheryl@SomewhatCrunchy :
It’s not about being perfect and everything flowing seamlessly.  It’s about doing our best in every moment, whether work-work or family-work is before us.  How about Life Awareness?

From QuatroMama:
How about Present vs. “Just a Minute”?

From Jon Prial:
The greatest value in the discussion of the right phrase is that it builds awareness of the issue, and we need as much awareness as possible. 
People automatically think of balance as 50/50 when the “right” ratio is an individual decision (often with a partner!) that affects a job and career, family life and personal needs. And it could be different day by day or year by year (jobs, children’s needs, etc.).
So let’s keep talking about the issues as well as the phrase. But – on the phrase side, my company uses the term Work/Life Integration.


From Lance Godard:
Why not just “life balance”? That’s what it really boils down to, isn’t it? As you say, the conflict isn’t so much between “work” and “life” as it is between work and non-work. Aren’t we all just looking for a little more balance (a little less juggling, if you will) in our lives?

From Kristin Maschka:
I hate the term work life balance. It just serves to reinforce the assumption that work and life are two separate things that should never overlap, and that there’s some elusive point we can reach when it all works. I like Cali Yost’s work-life fit. In my own book I also suggest work-life integration, or Catalyst’s career-life fit, or work-life flow.


I guess my only problem with “juggle” is that it makes it sound so difficult and it makes it sound like it’s something that we have to do on our own, rather than something that should be just part of the way the world works. People should have way more options for achieving a work-life …. and $$$ fit that works for them and for their families.

From Jennifer:
How about “creating your own momma pie” — some days sliced more towards work, some days more towards home, some days it gets thrown in your face (but if you are like me, it still tastes delicious and makes you gain weight).

From Cooper:
The elements of our lives are like pieces of a puzzle we fit together. I like to think of the challenge being to achieve a healthy, “integrated life.” I’m with you, I don’t like or buy into the phrase “work/life” balance. Hopefully it is another dinosaur concept that will go away with this big paradigm shift we are all feeling and seeing — and which you are capturing so beautifully in your book.

From Debra:
There is never a balance. Sometimes you are overwhelmed and sometimes you are treading water and sometimes things work out superbly. Watching someone grow up is all encompassing and takes a long time.

From Melissa:
I just call it living life by choice. Some days I choose work (and that’s ok). Some days I choose home (and that’s ok), etc. There is no such thing as balance.

From Julia:
I’m a full-time working mom too trying to JUGGLE it all!!  My blog is called “Work, Wife, Mom… Life!”

From Emily:
Well, work is just one aspect of life, isn’t it? They aren’t mutually exclusive. I think what a lot of us struggle with is fulfilling all those pieces of themselves at a level they’re comfortable with. We’re moms, wives, friends, sisters, daughters, and employees, or any combination of those. We can’t be 100% of all things all the time. Sometimes the focus is more heavily on one aspect, sometimes on another. It’s more like a wheel than a scale. The Work-Home-Family wheel? Hard to give it a name…

From Bonnie S:
I also wanted to mention a term Flylady(.net) uses: PODA = Parade of Daily Adventures. A possible metaphor: facets of a gem.

The act could be celebration, management, maintenance or a battle, depending on how you see it! You manage your time, maintain (and grow or prune) relationships, and fight the battle against entropy in the household!

Those “necessary” things are what you need to balance or juggle along with the fun stuff, the celebration of life, family, love, friendships and good fortune, so that there can be more to celebrate in the future. I think balance implies you have have more control than juggling, but actually, juggling is a lot harder.