Translating Good Intentions
  into Great Performance

The Work Itself™ is a simple yet amazing process to help individuals align their critical work tasks with the strategic objectives of their teams and organizations. 

Decades of research indicates that many workers — including the most well-intentioned — often do not see a clear link between their daily activity and strategic objectives. That's why so many people invest a lot of their energy in what we call "fake work."

The following are only a few examples of a large amount of data we have on the problem with alignment and execution:

• 73% of workers say their organization’s goals are not translated into specific work tasks they can execute.

• 70% of workers do not plan how to support goals and tasks in their workgroups. 

• 56% of workers do not clearly understand their organization’s most important goals. 

• 81% of workers do not feel a strong commitment to their organization's strategies and goals.

These findings are a reminder of how hard it is to translate organizational priorities into daily work that really matters.  Since 1972 The Duncan Company has worked with organizations to implement strategies, build lasting processes, and create work cultures that sustain high performance and continuous improvement.

Achieving Alignment
  Throughout Your Organization

Our associates Dr. Brent D. Peterson and Gaylan W. Nielson have designed an innovative approach to organizational alignment called The Work Itself™. We think you’ll find it compelling and relevant to the situation in your organization.

Most change efforts fail because they do not drive down to the level where most work really happens — the level of critical work tasks and key actions. Aligning teams around priorities and goals is an essential step in bringing innovation and best-of-class practices to your organization.

The Work Itself™ enables teams to focus on alignment by helping them implement best practices and prioritize their critical work tasks — all without significant disruption.

The Work Itself™ is distinguished by the following characteristics:

• The approach is scalable and provides value whether you choose to work with one team or with your entire organization.
   

• The approach is adaptable and helps teams and individuals address a wide variety of challenges while always keeping the focus on the work that drives strategies and priorities forward.
   

• The approach is simple enough to delegate to people at all levels of your organization and ensures that they have the opportunity to change the way they work and the way they contribute to strategic objectives.
   

• The approach is easily tailored to focus on the unique mix of issues most pertinent to achieving high performance in your organization.
   

• The approach is comprehensive and provides follow-up protocols to ensure the process takes root throughout your organization.

The Value of Alignment

The focal point of The Work Itself™ alignment methodology is a facilitated work session that helps work teams align their individual and team activities with key organizational strategies.

Most importantly, The Work Itself was designed to drive business strategies to get measurable results.  Leaders agree to key strategies, then translate those strategies into language that applies to all people in the organization. The result is that everyone in the organization drives real return on investment when they are connected to the strategies focused on results.

The following table provides a simplified description of each step in The Work Itself™ work session and the objective of each step.

Overview of The Work Itself Work Session
Step	Objective	Explanation
1.	What I Do at Work	Identify, categorize, and analyze how you spend your time at work.
2.	Relating My Tasks to Strategy	Understand your organization's strategies and begin to connect your daily tasks to those strategies.
3.	Identifying Critical Work Tasks	Identify the critical work tasks that will make the greatest contribution to accomplishing your  organization's strategies.
4.	Confirming My Priorities with My Team	Validate your critical work tasks and their relationship to your organization's strategies with input from your team.
5.	Assessing My Six Critical Work Tasks with My Team	Perform a personal and team analysis of the traits and abilities of each individual and how these traits contribute to executing critical tasks.
6.	Reporting the Results	Summarize your work and acknowledge your accomplishments.
7.	Developing an Individual Action Plan	Commit to a realistic action plan that allows you to accomplish your critical work tasks and contribute to your your organization's strategies.
8.	Concluding the Work Session	Commit to implementing your action plan and participating in the follow-up steps.
9.	Three-month Follow-up	Report your progress and identify any required modifications to your plan.
10.	Six-month Follow-up	Report your progress and identify any required modifications to your plan.

While these steps appear simple — and indeed they are simple — they provide people at every level of your organization with a framework that impacts their work. These steps are also extremely powerful. Organizations that implement The Work Itself™ discover that every team that works through this process uncovers important obstacles to executing their work in an effective and high-quality way.

The Work Itself™
is a perfect companion 
to The Duncan Company's Change-Friendly™ approach to performance improvement.

For related information, click on "Avoiding Fake Work in Your Work Place."

Also see The Real Work Workshop and The Work Itself Work Session.