Todd G. Buchholz, former White House economic adviser and author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race
Competition is the root of our success. We arrived on earth naked, exposed, hungry and scheming to make it through a chilly night. Why would anyone think we would be programmed for anything but competition? We think we hate work, but we are wrong. Work extends life; it even makes us happy. But without stress, companies and employees die sooner.
Many executives choose comfort over the stress of competition. They grow too timid to draw on the competitive drives of employees. And so they steer their companies into what I call "commodity hell". Who pays the price? Employees and shareholders.
Commodity hell is when you're unable to tell clients that your product is better, faster, or more reliable. When a client asks how your product compares to others, all you can say is: "We got what they got." That means you have no pricing power or profit margin. The executive thinks he has eased the pressured rat race, creating a cushier place for workers. But anyone who leads a firm into commodity hell is driving employees into the dole queue.
GM was a great firm in the 1960s when its divisions competed with each other to win sales. But by the 1980s, it had slouched towards misery. Today, Apple prevails because engineers compete to persuade Steve Jobs which feature should go into the new iPad. I'm sure making a presentation to Jobs is stressful. But the hope of glory gives employees a rush of good feelings – a big bonus.
Cary L. Cooper CBE, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School
The word stress has found as firm a place in our vocabulary as DVDs, binge drinking and phone hacking. But there is a big difference between pressure and stress. Pressure is motivating, stimulating and enables people to achieve both work and personal aims. But when pressure exceeds an individual's ability to cope, when that person becomes ill, then you're in the stress zone.
The main causes of workplace stress are dysfunctional managers, a long-hours culture, poor management of change, inflexible work patterns and unmanageable workloads. The government's Foresight project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing found that lack of mental wellbeing at work costs the UK economy £25.9bn a year in terms
of sickness absence, presenteeism (being at work but contributing little added value) and labour turnover.
Stress can also damage team morale. A stressed team member can have a negative effect on how that unit functions and its ability to achieve targets. It can affect decision-making, too. We have seen examples in banking of individuals who have been under such enormous stress that their coping strategies have been wholly inappropriate. They have done deals because they thought that was the way to cope with the pressure placed on them, resulting in massive losses to banks.
If you have a chief executive or a chief financial officer with problems that they can't deal with effectively it can lead to dreadful consequences for the business.
