Peterson, Brent D. Nielson, Gaylan W. Fake Work: Why People Are Working Harder Than Ever but Accomplishing Less, and How to Fix the Problem. Simon Spotlight Entertainment. New York. 2009.

Only work you do that serves the mission of the organization for whom you do the work is real work. Fake work is any work that fails to drive the organization toward goals that help deliver the mission.

Peterson helps readers understand, recognize and diagnose work as fake in part one of the book. Then, Peterson presents nine paths you can use to focus your effort and life energy on "real" work.

Each action chapter covers the steps and ends with a roadmap for action. A handy reference for evaluating work you identify and work your leaders may assign.

Book includes some interesting tools

• specific examples of fake work and getting to real work
• test for identifying fake work signs
• table of problem personality traits (39) and how to overcome each trait
• specific steps for becoming a better team member
• short process on how to keep a team aligned and on real work
• list of mismanagement issues to watch for and eliminate
• treat your manager how you wish you were treated

Peterson's signs you might be making "fake" work

• You don't really know the strategies of your company and what things are most important for the whole company to accomplish
• You're unable to clearly connect the company strategies to what you're doing
• You are simply ignorant about the importance of your work
• Your hard work is not getting results that matter
• You hold meetings without clear purpose and invite a bunch of people to share in the waste of time
• You send e-mails daily to a huge distribution list of coworkers without considering whether they need the information
• You hold offsite meetings that provide distraction, not value
• You initiate projects that suck up time and are killed for lack of interest
• You don't follow through on plans to implement changes , or you undermine such plans
• You work on a report that you know nobody will read
• You assign a report and then ignore it when it's completed
• You require paperwork because, well, everybody has to do paperwork
• You write proposals that are seen as an important aspect of the selling process, but they don't lead to an increase in sales
• You set up a training program that is a lot of fun, is very interesting, and gets great reviews, but the program has no support from management because it doesn't really make a difference to the business

Fake Work Causes

• Failing to understand your job (your real job)
• Failing to recognize the finish line
• Failing to focus and set priority
• Failing to understand the people around you
• Failing to communicate about the right things
• Failing to understand the importance of your team and its members
• Failing to clarify and drive strategy from top to bottom
• Failing to see the execution gap (alignment then execution)
• Failing to manage (at every level of the organization)
• Failing to see that culture creates an environment of fake work

Busyness overwhelms emphasis.

Pathways out of fake work

• Discover your world of fake work
• Escape from your world of fake work
• Shift to real work
• Understand the people who do the work (you can't do real work alone)
• Communicate: tell, listen to and understand the stories (freely flowing information)
• Teams drive real work
• Close the execution gap to drive real work
• Shift your management behaviours to facilitate real work

Stuff I picked up on

Weekly engineering progress report to eliminate fake work

Three sections only

• Problems found on project
• Recommendations for action
• Conclusions regarding project

Fake work looks like real work

• can involve overtime
• fake work includes real work duplicated in different teams
• fake work includes work you repeat only in different contexts
• can involve accolades from leadership while simultaneously getting considered for termination
• avoid introducing non-essential artifacts into your work to make knowledge work more tangible

The spirit of real work

• continuously evaluate your job, tasks, and routine from different points of view to see what truly matters
• exercise control and discipline to focus your energy to focus on what truly matters and disregard potential waste
• focus on your organization's goals and what you can do to help reach them (an open mind helps devise solutions, and talking is not doing)

Working with people

• Make changes to overcome weakenesses in yourself first (courage, commitment to change)
• Follow up, follow through
  • listen to others without interrupting
  • ask questions and listen to responses
  • be open to criticism and input
• Invest in people
  • believe in people and allow them to surprise you
  • allow others to succeed (set up an environment for it)
  • involve the people around you
  • hold each other accountable
• Measure your success (define success criteria for each goal)

Help your team avoid redundant work

• Have regular meetings to review each other's work assignments
• Discuss work assignments (everyone shares what they do in that normal week)
• Invest time in questions and answers to understand each other's work
• Review overlaps and tasks not being done (eliminate overlaps, cover gaps)

Help your team keep aligned

Alignment requires continuous and valuable communication regarding how each individual's work fits within the context of the team.

• Clarify, translate and define company strategies
• Ask all workers to define their critical tasks, and separate critical tasks from mundane necessary tasks
• Set priorities for and refine critical tasks
• Align critical tasks with other members to establish a cohesive focus and a team-based approach for completing strategic goals
• Build work plans or work backlogs) to hold each other accountable
• Monitor work plans and review progress frequently to keep work real as time passes
• Hold each other accountable for sticking to work commitments

Organizations spend nowhere near enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions already in place

(Jim Collins)

Execution is the proof that strategy is understood and carried out at the point of work -- where effort meets performance and results.

...

Alignment is a people task between individuals on a work team. ... Teams will align themselves if their manager adequately explains strategies and helps prioritize critical tasks.

(Peterson)

Mismanagement issues

• Looking at work from 30,000 ft will not get real work done
• Management and micromanagement are not the same thing
• If you do it, your team will let you
• Failing to understand strategy will disarm your teams
• Not clarifying and translating strategies into work hurts alignment and execution
• Trying to align your teams will end up as fake work
• Bureaucratic behaviour seldom serves the team or the organization
• Delegating fake work causes confusion and conflict
• Rewarding fake work creates a chasm between managers and teams that is hard to close up
• Managing performance through traditional review systems enables fake work (systems of surprise)
• Failing to remove barriers and advocate for employees will hurt performance

Leadership recommendations

• Model organization values -- and understand them
• Communicate and help others communicate with each other
• Coach, mentor, and guide people to do the work required to be successful
• Participate and stay involved
• Delegate valuable real work and trust people to do it
• Look for the good things that are happening and mention them -- specifically and respectfully
• Advocate for your people and your teams
• Seek out and hire people with the competencies that will serve the critical work that needs doing