Avoiding Fake Work in Your Work Place

Fake work is the work workers do that is not focused on their organizations’ strategy and goals.  It looks like work — it may even feel like real work — but it doesn’t accomplish strategic goals. Organizations pay for an extraordinary amount of fake work. Can an organization afford to sponsor fake work?

Suppose you were building a road up a mountainside to your new cabin. And you made a slightly wrong calculation, made a simple turn. The road cuts through the trees, along a rocky ridge and then, just dropped off a cliff. Fake work feels like that. The building of the road seemed purposeful. The effort was incredible. The blood, sweat, and tears were real and the commitment was profound. But it really doesn’t matter! You still have a road to nowhere.

A large percentage of our clients confess to dedicating weekends and long nights on a project, proposal, or presentation that ended nowhere: canceled, ignored, dismissed. According to our research, work in organizations is often not real and just seems to drop off a cliff. 

Research Shows a Disconnect
Between Workers and Work

Most people go to work each day and struggle through a set of work experiences. When asked, they claim they are working harder than ever before. When asked, they are very uncertain that their work matters to the organization. When asked, they increasingly indicate a less than positive commitment to their current organization. Some of the data from our research shows remarkable disconnects between workers and work.

• 73% of workers say their organizations’ strategies and goals are not translated into specific work task they can execute.
   
• 70% of workers do not know what to do to support their organizations’ strategies and goals.
   
• 81% of workers do not feel a strong level of commitment to their organizations’ strategies and goals.
   
• 87% of workers are not satisfied with the results of their work at the end of most weeks.

Focus on Doing Real Work

This is a call to every worker and to every organization to rethink who they are, how they fit in the work they do, and to push to avoid fake work and to make their work relevant and real.  All workers must first seek to avoid fake work and then to do real, strategic work.

Avoid Fake Work — The real shock of doing fake work is that lots of us know about meaningless tasks and useless meetings, but the real horrors lurk behind long projects, ill-defined jobs, and seemingly great work that derives no value or results that matter. Many workers report that this rampant meaningless work undermines their self worth and motivation and saps their joy and energy. The big problem is:  many organizations don’t recognize fake work and many people don’t know that their hard work is fake.

Focus on Real Work — Real work is blissful work, valued work, and meaningful work. It is about what workers do every day. It is about work choices, about what sustains workers, their families, and ultimately organizations. Work has value when it is strategically focused. We intend to help workers understand how they are often the architects of fake work. We propose simple solutions to work that are strategically linked.

Reasons for Avoiding Fake Work

The importance of avoiding fake work is driven by the following issues:

1. The costs of fake work are immense. Those costs touch every worker’s day and the results they will get. Those costs cascade down through the organization. 
    
2. In fake work environments, turnover is high and costly. Organizations love to rationalize that it is expected. Some is. Lots of it is a cost of fake work.
    
3. Every trend says that the demands of work are going up. 
    
4. As organizations flatten out, the need for workers to be more self-reliant is immense.
    
5. Everyone is working harder, longer hours, and they are doing it to compete and survive in the new global economy. People are being asked to and expected to do more.
    
6. No one can afford to be doing fake work when there is barely enough time to do real work. 
    
7. The constant change of business drenches organizations in uncertainty and misdirection. This confusion provides a murky environment for fake work to grow.
   
8. Constant change is here to stay and it means that almost everyone is off track too much of the time. Long hours often display the pattern of misdirected focus and poor productivity.
    
9. Leadership has hit every place on the target except the bull’s eye. There is a faulty belief that organizations can lead themselves out of every problem (oh,

   and they can if they understand the essence of leadership — the work
    itself).
 

10. Strategy is important but is static and leads to fake work if it is not properly placed in the hands of the workforce.
     
11. Senior Leaders are lost in the exhaustive efforts they put into mission, vision, and strategy. They should focus more on getting their people to execute the strategy.
     
12. Execution, alignment, Six Sigma books are talking about processes — but ignoring work and the worker. They are mostly directed at leaders. 

The Work Itself:  Release the Power of an Organization’s Strategic Goals One Worker and One Work Team at a Time

The Work Itself™ Process encourages every worker to execute organizational strategy by eliminating fake work and focusing on real work. Real work is the work workers do when they are really executing, when they are doing things that contribute to their organizations’ strategies and goals.  When all workers align their daily work with their organizations’ strategies and goals real work and execution occur. 

The Work Itself™ Process is a step-by-step team conversation that aligns the real work of each individual team member with the organization’s strategic goals.  This process encourages each individual worker in a work team to develop and fulfill the work teams’ and the organizations’ strategic goals.

Brent D. Peterson and Gaylan Nielson designed this innovative process as a result of their work in strategic planning.  Most organizations have strategies for success but most often they do not have a clue about how to get everyone in the organization to buy into the strategic plan and make the strategy work.  Peterson and Nielson believe that work teams are the place where strategy is successfully implemented. If each work team aligns individual, team, and company strategy then everyone benefits.

Why The Work Itself Process Works

The value of using The Work Itself™ Process arises from the fact that no single individual or group within today’s demanding work place can possess the wisdom or vision needed to chart strategic action and carry it out successfully. To ensure that plans are sound, accepted, supported, and executed with quality, all people in an organization must contribute to the process. The Work Itself™ Process encourages individual employees in a work team to develop and fulfill the organization’s strategic plan in a quality manner,

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

Organizations, of all kinds, think they provide an endless amount of information that helps their employees with a clear picture of their goals.  However, the most common mistakes that organizations make are that they:

1.      Provide overly complex language that is constantly shifting with each new leader and each new author of critical documents.
 

2.      Send mixed messages about true organizational targets.
 

3.      Think that their messages are easily translated into work.
 

4.      Think that alignment happens with language and documents sent from the top.
 

5.  Communicate too much or too little, but usually with unclear intent.

The Work Itself starts with a direct effort to drive clarity into strategic focus. It forces leaders to: 

1.      Send messages that are simple and clear.  Organizational objectives, scorecards, strategies, etc must be well defined and carefully articulated.  If not, they will be misinterpreted and misaligned.
 

2.      Write clearly
 

3.      Carefully communicate better and to establish communication plans.
 

4.      Publicize the right targets.

The Work Itself Ensures that Alignment is Owned by Individuals

Alignment is an issue that must start with leadership, but must be owned by individuals at the work level. Alignment cannot be thrust onto people. People must align themselves through the lens of the team.

Alignment is a complex issue. For many years, people have talked about alignment and its importance to an organization. Then, like everything else, they put the responsibility on leaders. Here are some conditions critical to aligning an organization:
 

1.      Leaders must sponsor alignment, but they can’t make it happen.
 

2.      Leaders are collaborators in alignment, but they can’t drive alignment.
 

3.      Alignment is a people issue about how really value and work with each other.
 

4.      Alignment is a behavior issue where workers clarify behavior based on doing the right work with enthusiasm.
 

5.  Alignment is about continuous and valuable communication focused on the work each individual does within the context of the team.

The Work Itself Drives Execution of Organizational Strategies

Execution always takes place at the work level.  Either people are doing work that is directed toward organizational strategies, or they are doing fake work.  The Work Itself helps workers and their teams execute by:

     1.  Clarifying, translating, defining organizational strategies.

     2.  Ensuring that all workers define their critical tasks.

     3.  Getting workers to identify critical work tasks and separate them from other
          mundane tasks (that still have to be done).

     4.  Prioritizing and refining their critical work tasks.

     5.  Aligning critical work tasks with other players to ensure a cohesive focus
          and a team-based approach for completing strategic goals.

     6.  Building work plans to hold each other accountable.

     7.  Monitoring work plans and reviewing them to ensure they are real over time.

     8.  Holding each other accountable for work plans.

An Overview of The Work Itself Work Process

The key to a successful work session is to remember that participation in a work session is not a retreat from the daily realities of work.  Instead, it’s an opportunity to dig deeper into the realities of work and to come out of the work session with a realistic work plan for making your greatest contribution to the organizations strategic goals. Following is a short description of each of the steps of The Work Itself Process.

Step 1: Capturing What I Do at Work

Objective: Identify, categorize, and analyze how you spend your time at work.

Approach: This step gives team members a chance to discover how they spend their time. After completing this step, team members have a specific, concrete understanding of the activities they typically perform in a week, and this information provides a foundation for understanding the organizations strategic goals and how they relate to the work they currently do.

Step 2: Relating Our Tasks to Strategy

Objective: Understand your organization’s strategic goals and begin to connect your daily work tasks to the strategic goals.

Approach: Organizational vision and mission are usually executed through long- and short-term strategies. This step helps team members establish a clear relationship between organizational strategy and their work tasks. This process is an opportunity for team members to see the difference between what they are doing and what they should be doing to support the organization’s strategic goals. 

Step 3: Identifying Critical Work Tasks

Objective: Identify the critical work tasks that will allow you to make the greatest contribution to accomplishing your organization’s strategic goals.

Approach: With organization’s strategic goals in mind, each team member determines which critical work tasks must be completed in the coming three months. Basically, the team members are asked to respond to the following questions: "What work must I accomplish during three months to keep my boss, fellow employees, customers, and other organizational members happy? What must I do to make sure that I feel personal growth and satisfaction? What is the strategic relevance of each of these tasks?"

Step 4: Establishing Priorities and Aligning Tasks

Objective: Validate your critical work tasks and their relationship to your organization’s strategic goals with input from your team.

Approach: This is an important activity, where the individual solicits input from teammates to verify that the selected tasks are indeed the most important in terms of team priorities and organizational strategy. 

Step 5: Assessing Individual Effectiveness

Objective: Discover your strengths, your needs for help, the resources available to you, and potential obstacles. The team gives help to each individual team member to help them successfully complete their six critical work tasks.

Approach: During this step, team members take a detailed look at how well-equipped they are to accomplish their prioritized critical work tasks. The process requires both self-analysis—where each team member identifies strengths, needs, resources, and obstacles—as well as feedback from the team to each individual. The activities completed here are the core of The Work Itself. Based on the interactions that occur during this step, team members will develop attitudes and ideas that will drive the creation and execution of detailed work plans.

Step 6: Reporting Our Results

Objective: Summarize your work and acknowledge the accomplishments of the team.

Approach: This activity gives the team an opportunity to recognize their accomplishments and ensure they are prepared to create detailed work plans. By summarizing the work they have done, the team ensures they have covered all important aspects of The Work Itself process and lays the groundwork for the development and implementation of their work plans.

Step 7: Developing Your Individual Work Plan

Objective: Commit to a realistic work plan that allows you to accomplish your critical work tasks and contribute to your organization’s strategic goals.

Approach: Here, the team members translate the insights and discoveries of the first six steps of the process into specific actions. Each participant creates a work plan that specifies short- and long-term steps for accomplishing his or her most important critical work tasks.

Step 8: Solidifying Our Commitments

Objective: Commit to implementing your work plan and participating in the follow-up steps.

Approach: During the final step of this work session, the team acknowledges that the work session is only the first step in aligning their work to the organization’s strategic goals. They review their commitments and agreements and celebrate the completion of this work session.

Step 9: Following Up at Six Weeks

Objective: Report your progress and identify any required modifications to your work plan.

Approach: Six weeks after the initial work session, the team should reconvene for a follow-up session. During the follow-up steps, the participants assess the execution of their work plans. By making any necessary course corrections and recommitting to their work, they increase the likelihood that they will complete their critical work tasks.

Step 10: Following Up at Three Months

Objective: Report your progress and identify any required modifications to your plan.

Approach: Three months after the initial work session, the team should reconvene for a follow-up session. During the follow-up steps, the participants assess the execution of their action plans. By making any necessary course corrections, recommitting to their work, and reviewing their personal feedback, they increase the likelihood that they will complete their critical work tasks.

The Work Itself™is a perfect companion to The Duncan Company's ChangeSmarts™ approach to performance improvement and our Culture Alignment Profile for assessing an organization's effectiveness.