Real Work – Fake Work
“Fake Work” is any work performed within an enterprise that cannot be associated directly with a strategic goal. Brent Peterson and Gaylan Nielsen have conducted research over the past twenty years or so, indicating that almost half of the work done in American businesses today is “Fake Work”.
While there are many causes of “Fake Work”, and these are spelled out in Brent and Gaylan’s book, “Fake Work”, there is really only one reliable cure for it: drive it out of the workplace by displacing it with “real work”.
Do you have a direct line of sight from the work you do every day to a strategic goal of the company? If you do, congratulations. If you don’t, why not? Ask for one.
As for work… keep it real.
That is a trend” to try to avoid “fake work” by moving to “pay for performance”, and it “looks good on paper”. The question to be asked now is, “Does this performance for which I am being paid contribute to overall strategic goals?” because most “fake work” is well-intentioned and honest, just misguided.
Frankly, I am surprised by something in your original post, that research over the past twenty years or so, indicates that ONLY half of the work done in American businesses today is “Fake Work”. I was laid off from my corporate job in January. Right before I was laid off, I had several senior/seasoned employees constantly advising me how to “act busy”. Obviously the job market has changed (turned completely upside-down??)and people are being forced to figure out how to work smarter not harder. I’m seeing more and more positions that are paid for performance, whether it’s commissioned sales or performance based bonuses.
Amadi is an overachiever whose view of her abilities is determined by the number of important clients or projects that she works with. She likes to be assigned to task forces, and she is always running off to power lunches or schlepping her clients to Broadway shows to network and impress. She thinks she’s got her finger on the pulse of the company and that she’s positioned to succeed as she secures more and more important clients.
While Amadi spends enormous amounts of time cultivating her top three accounts, she practically ignores her mid- to low-level clients, whose total account value exceeds the combined value of the two of her top three accounts. Amadi knows she needs to pay more attention to them, but she is frequently interrupted by cell phone calls, e-mails, queries, and questions from staff assistants regarding the top three clients. She knows things are falling through the cracks, but she also knows that her company really values the high profile clients. Amadi feels that she could lose one or two low-profile clients without raising anyone’s eyebrows, but if her bosses receive one negative report about her from a major client, it could well cost her her job. And so, Amadi’s top clients suck up more than 80% of her time and effort, even though they don’t account for anywhere near 80 percent of her revenue.
[Reprinted with permission from "Fake Work"]
Amadi fails on two counts: first, that she has not analyzed what the relative worth and contribution is from each client within the full spectum of her clientele. and second that she fails to divert herself from the imposed “Fake Work” in order to do the “Real Work” that she ought to be doing. She is functioning in a reactive mode, responding to the demands of the squeakiest, admittedly big, wheels. She is at the mercy of the last phone call and never gets ahead of the game.
This is compounded by her managers “rewarding” this bad behavior by allowing her to believe that her job is in jeopardy if she pays appropriate attention to other than the largest clients.
Fake Work can be pervasive and insidious, and is practically always, well-intentioned. This is what makes it so difficult to confront, but it does not make it any less wasteful.
Deb was hired to be a senior training director at a large company. When she was hired, she was encouraged to make certain she focused on training “that would make a difference.” Having recently completed her master’s in instructional design, Deb knew how to develop training exercises that got participants involved, and her early efforts got great evaluations from the particpants.
During her first year, Deb and her team developed four state-of-the-art courses in sales, management, leadership and comminucation. Deb’s group taught each course ten times during her first year with the company, earning ratings of 4.9 out of 5 for both the courses and the teaching. Deb was working hard and her team members were killing themselves, but she was very pleased with their work.
When Deb reported her success to the CEO, he thanked her for all her hard work and congratulated her on such fine ratings from the particpants. Then he said to her frankly, “But even after all these courses, our turnover is worse, our sales per person haven’t improved, our work processes aren’t any more effective. Deb, the training you are doing is good only if it is making a difference to our organization and our strategic goals. If it doesn’t improve our bottom line, it doesn’t matter.”
After the talk, Deb hired a measurement firm to evaluate the impact of their work based on the organization’s strategic goals. And the CEO’s skepticism proved well-founded: despite all the hard work that Deb and her team had done, turnover had gone up, sales had gone down, and the organization was doing even worse than before when the training had started. The consultants explained to Deb that although she had clearly been working hard, her work didn’t matter – because her training program had failed to bring about the changes that would improve the bottom line.
Deb and the consultants looked at the courses and identified all of the elements that were not strategically connected – that is, not linked with the most important business issues. She refocused her efforts and retooled every course to drive business goals. She worked with the business leaders in each of the company’s divisions to ensure that critical issues were addressed. She rebuilt exercises to make them relevant and applicable. She quickly learned that while it is much harder to create “real-work” training, it is vastly more rewarding both to the company and to the individual.
Even when you are firing on all cylinders and working long hard hours, it is possible to be engaged in “fake” work, if you do not definitively align training with strategic goals.
Andy was head of the custodial team for a large regional bank. His assignment was to keep the bank’s branches and the surrounding grounds clean, appealing, and customer-friendly. Andy’s team worked hard – in fact, they complained of being overworked – but the custodians worked far too much on some tasks while neglecting others. For example, they waxed all the floors three times a week, but often didn’t trim the shrubs or restock the restrooms.
Eventually, Andy’s boss called him in and complained about the condition of the grounds and the lack of paper towels. Andy was furious. He told his boss that he was concerned about making his staff work even harder.
Andy and his boss met a week later, and his boss pointed out that waxing the floors three times a week was unnecessary. If Andy would cut the waxing back to once a week, his team would have plenty of time for the other work.
Andy was incensed by this discussion and his boss’s unwillingness to see how hard his employees worked. Therefore, he submitted his resignation on the spot. The problem was, Andy was unwilling to change his routine and rethink the way that he and his team did their work.
Like Andy, who refused to acknowledge that all that excessive foor-waxing was fake work that prevented real work, all of us need to rethink the value of the tasks that we do. Are we doing fake work that could be eliminated with small changes in our specific work assignments? To eliminate fake work, you must constantly question the structure of work, how you fit into it, and how you might go about changing it for the better.
[Reprinted with permission from "Fake Work"]
Sarah works for a bicycle manufacturing company. She has spent the past six months on a project developing brake pads for a certain model of bicycle, even though she and many of the people on her team know that model will be discontinued in a few months. Still, no one says anything to management because the workers fear they might lose their jobs if the company discontinues the brake project. So Sarah’s team comes to work every day and develops a brake pad that will never be used.
The team members know they are doing fake work. They are unhappy but afraid to do anything differently. They keep doing fake work and the project does nothing but cost the company money.
Sarah had contemplated talking to her boss about the situation, but she is fearful of losing her job and concerned that her boss will get upset with her. So she goes to work each day and creates a brake pad that will never exist.
This situation may sound unbelievably ridiculous, but it is surprisingly common. People are doing fake work and they know it, but no one seems to want to tell management about it, or to turn it into meaningful real work.
Why?
Reasons for Not Blowing the Whistle on Others about Fake Work:
Worry about losing your job
Worry that others could lose their jobs
Fear of the boss or other leaders
Fear of ruining a leader’s pet project
Does this sound like your workplace? Do you wish that you had some ideas and options for changing things?
How to Let Others Know About Fake Work
Be courageous and embrace change
Be direct and offer solutions
Tell the truth, without embellishment or blame
Meet your responsibility
Part of the problem with fake work is that it has become so entrenched in the workplace that it just seems normal and acceptable. By thinking differently about what fake work is, you can escape from your world of fake work and make the work you do more real and more meaningful for your company.
[Reprinted with permission from "Fake 'Work'"]
I had a great note, another virtual cup of coffee, from Calgary- a fellow named Duffy Pruyn. He has found great value in the principles in “Fake Work” and shared with me some of his ideas. I will be getting back with him off-line, but I wanted to pass on some of his key observations to you readers.
He wrote: “Fake Work has helped me expose activities of dubious value and identify critical ones, thus making realignment of work tasks easier for management to agree to. On the other hand, if they insist on maintaining the status quo, they have the choice of either authorizing more resources or neglecting key oversight activities. Making the case for choosing between poor oversight or non value added activities… …makes our strategy much more palatable.”
He has hit upon the very key concept of realignment, or in some cases, alignment for the very first time, in key processes. Practical usage from the Canadian oil industry. You can find Duffy on LinkedIn if you want to engage in further discussion, or you can post a comment here.
As for your work… keep it real!!
My thanks to the many people I have contacted that have provided me responses to their impressions after reading the book, “Fake Work”. I would ask for more of you to add your commentary here so that we can begin a further and richer dialog of the impact and the potential that this book provides.
I believe that, in today’s economy in particular, although it is true at ANY time, every company and every organization needs to drive out “fake work” by displacing it with “real work”, simply in order to provide the best service possible at the lowest cost. This is about “optimization”, though, not “minimization”, and forcing a strategic refocus can reap MAJOR benefits with little added expenditure.
As for work… keep it real!