Strategies for living: moving from the balance paradigm

This paper presents a new paradigm for conceptualizing the relationship between individual, family, and work. The language and focus of the balance approach is limiting and keeps individuals from creating integrated lives. Based on previous research and the authors’ experiences in facilitating organizational transformation, a new view of the issue of work‐life balance is described. This approach focuses on the engagement of each individual in an organization as a whole person. Within the organization, efforts to help individuals consciously create a life’s purpose and meld this purpose with their organizational contribution avoid sub‐optimization and create the opportunity for synergistic performance.