The same way that all social norms get changed applies here; publicly challenge them and then withstand the viciousness of the backlash without losing your conviction. Then other people will get the courage to agree and it will spread. Not being cowed by the initial furious attacks on you but also not getting dragged into a vengeful battle are the means of social transformation.

> how do leaders convince people that change can be good?

Showing the idea to a broad audience on tv is actually one way to do this.

(although there are ways this can backfire)

This show is not seeking to do this. Note this part of the article which barely gets a mention:

"In the novel, the decision to work overtime leads to her downfall: She becomes addicted to work, ends up in the hospital and loses a new beau, who has a decidedly more relaxed attitude toward his own job. But on the TV show, which began airing in April, Ms. Higashiyama is destined for a happier fate, said the producers"

They're subverting the novel and using it as a tool to support the obsession with putting in more hours, not avoid it, apparently.

It is too early to say that, no? Perhaps the happier fate is the result of recognizing the mistake of caving into overtime and correcting it before things get as bad as they did in the book.

What a shake that the producer twisted the author's idea like this.

*shame

I am convinced Obama was elected partially because the TV show "24" made having a black president seem viable and normal.

Check out the podcast "Primetime" by Vox. It looks at the relationship between tv and government. There's an episode on 24.

I am not sure about that one. Maybe it was the movie Deep Impact?

But I will tell you an actual and more direct example. The recently elected president of Ukraine LITERALLY is a comedian who was the star of a show where he plays the President of Ukraine! He had very little in the way of policies, but a lot of sharp humor, criticism of Poroshenko and the fact that many people routinely could see him on TV being the “President”!

Nichelle Nichols' character of Uhura supposedly inspired a lot of black girls, including one to try to (and succeed) at becoming an astronaut.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Jemison

Nichelle Nichols was actually disappointed in the way her character was portrayed (she did nothing but sit at her station and answer hailing frequencies) and was going to quit the role, but she was convinced to stay by none other than Martin Luther King Jr[0].

It was one of the first, if not the first, portrayal of a black woman on television in a non-stereotypical, non-subservient role, even if it was just secretarial duty on a spaceship.

[0]https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Re...

> How do you implement change?

Someone big and local has to step in, let the the workers leave on time yet kick everyone’s butt on the market. Then everyone will start copying the practices.

No, we just need to stop letting the ultra rich demonize unions. Unions fixed this problem the first the and are the obvious solution again. There's a reason our quasi sweat shops in America fight them so hard.

Relying on cargo culting is probably not sustainable long term. Education and collective action are better tools IMO.

Not every sort of imitation and leading by inspiration is cargo curling.

What's described here is how most art movements and industrial revolutions where born.

You have to both work long, and be an amazing worker. Then you'll have a better chance. It's useless to do only one, but if you do anything, just stay late. At least you'll be seen as dedicated to the company.

Is there any way you could just make it physiologically untenable for anyone to stay in your office past 5PM?

Right around 6PM at my apartment, the downstairs tenants light up with the most awful, stanky skunk-weed. You literally cannot keep the windows open; and yet, in the middle of summer and no central AC, you can't afford to be there with them closed, either. So, in effect, my neighbour forces me to ensure I'm not home at that hour.

Anyone you could bribe to do the same near your office? :P

That is like spraying perfume in a stinky room, it might work short term though. Good solution is to clean the stinky room :P

Jokes aside, I don't believe any amount of laws/hacks can completely fix the issue, they sure can help. The attitude has to change. There is more to life than work, money, titles, corner office etc.

The saddest part in all of this is a large part of the workforce has nothing to show for all those long hours they put into work. It might be a tiny bit comforting, if they at least got something in return for their hard work. They've been brainwashed into thinking "at least I have a job" :(

Some offices in Thailand will nuke the aircon to save money at certain times

Some towns in Japan and Taiwan started playing music over city loudspeakers at 6pm that basically means "it's go-home time now."

? They do that in my Japanese town of Kumagaya but that is for the kids to go home because it is getting dark. It changes to 4 or 5pm depending on the time of year. Are you sure that music is to remind adults that it is time to go home?

I dunno, they did it in hachioji when I lived there several years back. I remember it being at 6 and I remember my coworkers telling me that was the reason for it but I could be mistaken.

It is for kids.

One of the customers I've worked for in Japan has alerts over the loudspeakers when it's time to go home. The company I work for had people working insane hours (14+ daily) and acted like it was normal. The people were obviously not doing much work staying later, but they wanted to appear to be dedicated. I'd much rather my people work hard when we need it and have time to unwind when we don't. I see it as a failing of management of every day requires an emergency level of effort.

I don't imagine we will actually see this change in the way expected. Rather than companies making it so employees can leave on time and still feel secure in their job, I imagine companies will eventually find themselves destroyed by competition that are smart enough to forego having an office at all. Offices are a massive expense, and while they were crucial and profitable in the era of difficult communications, they're now nothing but a source for value destruction, amplified even greater by the tremendously negative impact on cognitive productivity interruptions have. The exact things that made offices valuable in the past, physical proximity of coworkers, are their greatest weakness now.

Maybe just turn the lights and power to the router and switched off with a timer at 5pm?

I have worked in Liberia (in fact, I just returned from a four month stay today) and since the public power company is so untrustworthy, NGOs and offices usually run their own power off diesel generators. It's common the generators are shut down at 5:30 or 6. Works out pretty well.

with the heat we have around here this summer, just shutting down the AC would make people wanna go home lol

If I shut the AC off in Houston things would break. The paint would blister.

So you mean like, eat burritos at 4:30?

>Never mind my 10x increase in sales. Well, also I was an arrogant prick.

I never understood why "just results aren't enough" for working in some cultures.

Because often it's not that hard for the employee to take credit for someone else's results or just fake them. It also creates a poor set of incentives. It causes problems like when programmers are given a bonus for fixing bugs, resulting in them adding bugs to their code and then fixing them.

Because results are tricky are measure. "Butts-in-seats" is much easier for lazy and clueless managers to keep track of, so that's what they do.

Yes. It's hard to measure results, because you usually want to know the counterfactuals, like: "what would the result have been if someone else had been given the assignment".

If sales grow 10x under your watch, was that because of your hard work and talent, or because the economy went through an upswing and a few lucrative customers stumbled in the door on their own accord?

If your colleagues responsible for the neighbouring regions aren't doing as well, would you have done any better in their place?

Very hard to know. But they can easily see if you're working overtime.

What about average or slightly-below-average performers who are putting in the coveted 12-hour workdays?

A raise and a big bonus!

Paul Graham has an excellent essay [0] that might give some ideas on how the change could come about.

Its on American company /career culture changing from staying with one big company your whole career to multiple and smaller ones.

[0] www.paulgraham.com/re.html

How does relaying on Overtime reduce costs? That's just an invitation for workers to indulge in Spanish practices.

They don't get paid for their extra labour.

Alright - the term "overtime" here was confusing me. In America, overtime means getting paid 1.5x your normal hourly rate. I have a lineman friend who eventually gets paid 2x his normal rate over some number of hours.

I don't know of a better term to use, but "overtime" is certainly a tricky one to use here.

A better term to use is 'unpaid overtime'.

In Japan it is generally called Service Overtime when it is for free, as it is a very friendly service you provide the company.