Work-life balance? In the media?

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Media sector | Tags: Alex Connock, media, diary, Ten Alps, retirement, football, TV, sport, entrepreneurs,, work-life balance, Ryan Giggs, Peter Reid, Kevin Keegan, famil, exercise, Peter Fincham, Entrepreneur’s Diary

Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: ALDERLEY EDGE, CHESHIRE – Ryan Giggs is next to us in the trendy Gusto Italian restaurant, plus entourage. I bet he doesn’t worry about work-life balance, or count if the work he does for Man United falls within the European 36.5 weekly hours working directive.

For that matter, JS Bach composed cantatas and heard them sung the same day by his in-house choir, and I doubt it bothered him to work on Sunday.

The point? Having a job you actually enjoy is better than worrying about work-life balance.

Counting the hours in our jobs and keeping them to a minimum like some boring French eurocrat is not a measure of success – but dismal failure. Better to find a rewarding career in the first place – a métier you don’t feel the need to escape from.

Bravado from businessmen about using their Blackberry 24/7 on holiday, or from equally dull people who boast about switching theirs off come what may, is in both cases irrelevant. What matters is whether the work is fulfilling in the first place. And, actually, I think mine is. It provides fascinating challenges in endless supply, and on the whole it’s fun.

Of course, let’s be realistic. Any CEO is like a football manager you’re never there forever, you’re only as good as your last trophy and you won’t choose how and when you leave.

But ask even an out-of-work Peter Reid or Kevin Keegan if they love the game, and they’ll be amazed you even posed the question. That’s how I feel about the media business.

There is some life outside, too. We moved (my wife is an ITV executive) from the self-referential, media-fired crucible of Primrose Hill in London to the bigger spaces of Cheshire, where people don’t follow media politics much. They could reel off the Man United second team in an instant, but they would be none the wiser who Peter Fincham is.

Living semi-rural, working from Manchester as well as London, getting to know the media business in Belfast , Newcastle, LA and now Singapore , crossing the Rubicon of dark countryside between work and home – these things are all of huge stimulus.

As is sport. I decided a couple of years ago that I would spend an hour on sport a day, and no amount of peer pressure would stand in the way. First it was obsessive fell running and orienteering – to the point that I did my knee in. So now it’s swimming. I put in my diary where the nearest pool is.

And retiring early, the quintessentially misguided dream of many an entrepreneur? I’ve seen friends in TV make enough money to do it, but those that actually have retired seem a little bored.

So when I do eventually get the big payout (or the big push), I’ll be positive about it, and straight back in the media game the next morning, 8am. In the media there will always be the next big idea, and when you’re pitching that, the last thing you need is balance.

You can catch up on Alex’s previous posts from our Entrepreneur’s Diary series, in which we follow a male and a female CEO to discover what life is like behind the scenes of their business.