The Way to Enough

These workplace initiatives come at a critical time for Hydro. Because of weak commodity and oil prices, profits dropped by 4% between 1994 and 1998, even as revenues increased by 40%. In most American companies, such performance would be enough to end any grand experiments in work redesign, diversity, and balance. But at Hydro, those projects persist and even thrive -- because, to Hydro, these initiatives are not indulgences. They are critical strategic elements for survival.

Yes, Hydro must go head-to-head with competitors in the United States -- and in Germany, in Singapore, and in Mexico. As it fights these global battles, Hydro is up against relentless freneticism. We Americans pay lip service to sanity, but when the going gets tough, we readily abandon balance and work even harder.

Norwegians believe that such mania is not sustainable. In the end, they say, balance will win out.

Farming Knowledge Workers

"When you're a knowledge worker, when do you work?" asks Ragnhild Sohlberg. Then she answers her own question: "As long as you have your brain with you, you are working."

Sohlberg, 63, is an able guide -- to Norway, to Hydro, to an altered attitude about work. As Hydro's vice president of external relations and special projects, she is one level removed from Hydro's CEO, and so she has a free hand to push her views on work and balance throughout the company. She is one of the first women to have reached the level of director at a major Norwegian company. She is worldly and reflective; her perspective has been shaped by her U.S. education, by motherhood and grandmotherhood, and by impressive careers in both academia and business.

Sohlberg married at 18, had two daughters, and spent a decade "quite happily" as a housewife. Divorced at 30, with her two daughters (ages 6 and 9) in tow, she headed for the United States. She studied economics at the University of Wisconsin and then focused on NATO manpower issues at Rand, the famous think tank in Santa Monica, California, where she pursued a PhD.

She went on to teach at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School before moving to the private sector. First came a stint at energy conglomerate Brown Boveri. Then, 13 years ago, she returned to Norway and took a job at Hydro. Today she still teaches university classes, and she also chairs the board of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.

Her daughters are now married and have children of their own. "I see a tremendous difference for them," she says, "in the changes in the lives of families that have dual careers, plus tremendous pressures at work. There's a real time squeeze. I'm very concerned about baby boomers' early burnout. We cannot afford the personal cost, and we cannot afford the cost to business, to industry, and to society."

By training and inclination, Sohlberg views the world in terms of balance and in terms of the optimum allocation of scarce, valuable resources -- whether those resources are farmland, parents, or employees. Sohlberg's view is simple: Experienced farmers don't plant, harvest, plow, and reseed their fields season after season; they let the soil rest. Yet modern companies think nothing of working their most talented engineers, programmers, and managers ceaselessly.

"Look at all these consulting companies, where people work 60, 70, 80 hours a week," she says. "What happens to them? They burn out, and, a couple of years later, they leave. And all their experience goes with them. It's lost. That practice is not good business."

To compete sustainably, companies must tend to their knowledge workers as a farmer tends to his land. Which is, as it turns out, the lesson of Atle Tærum's farm.

Working on Atle's farm

Atle Tærum, 42, lives at the intersection of the old Norway and the new Norway. He is a knowledge worker -- the chief agronomist at Hydro, an expert in the use and subtleties of fertilizer. He heads a group that provides field support to farmers outside of Europe.

Tærum is also a farmer. He and his wife, Ragnhild Lie, own a farm -- 46 hectares (about 110 acres) -- that his grandfather began tilling in 1890. Tærum grew up in the farmhouse on this land, as did his father. His three children now play in the same rooms that he played in when he was a child.

In Norway, small farms are considered so vital to the landscape, to the economy, and to the culture that farm owners are strongly discouraged from selling land for development. And, traditionally, the oldest son takes over his father's farm. That's just what Atle and Lie did in 1992, when they moved from Oslo to Skotselv.

The appeal of farm life is obvious. The house is solid, the outbuildings are abundant, the landscape is soothing and invigorating, and the work is deeply satisfying. The farm provides a rhythm to the days and the seasons, and a connection to family and to Norway itself. But the farm cannot support this generation of Tærums. Because of pressure on commodity prices, it barely breaks even. So Tærum works at Hydro, and Lie does CAD-based drafting for an architectural and furniture-design firm.