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If You're Always Working, You're Never Working Well
An anonymous reader writes: Hard work is almost an axiom in the U.S. — office culture continually rewards people who are at their desks early and stay late, regardless of actual performance. Over the past decade, it's encroached even further into workers' private lives with the advent of smartphones. An article at the Harvard Business Review takes issue with the idea that more work is always better: "When we accept this new and permanent ambient workload — checking business news in bed or responding to coworkers' emails during breakfast — we may believe that we are dedicated, tireless workers. But, actually, we're mostly just getting the small, easy things done. Being busy does not equate to being effective. ... And let's not forget about ambient play, which often distracts us from accomplishing our most important tasks. Facebook and Twitter report that their sites are most active during office hours. After all, the employee who's required to respond to her boss on Sunday morning will think nothing of responding to friends on Wednesday afternoon. And research shows (PDF) that these digital derailments are costly: it's not only the minutes lost responding to a tweet but also the time and energy required to 'reenter' the original task." How do we shift business culture to reward effective work more than the appearance of work?
One of the bigger cultural differences I've found working in both the U.S. and Scandinavia is that American meetings are long, unpredictably scheduled, and really disorganized. A 10am meeting might really get down to business by 10:15 if you're lucky, maybe 10:30, and probably won't end on time at 11:00am. Nobody will have distributed any material to consult ahead of time, or even a proper meeting agenda for that matter, and as a result people don't come particularly prepared, and a ton of time is wasted. Since there is no real agenda, who needs to be at the meeting also hasn't been very carefully decided, so a bunch of people are just in case, and they spend half the time on Facebook or email while irrelevant parts of the meeting happen. The assumption seems to just be that just half-assing the whole thing is the best way to go...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How did you get here from Bizarro US?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
>The assumption seems to just be that just half-assing the whole thing is the best way to go...
But that is the American way! It is the spirit of America!
... what will happen to those incapable of efficient work? :)
At least this way they can do unpaid overtime and convince their boss - who's also incapable of efficient work - that they're useful...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
I find in most business cultures I've had contact with that actually spending time to think about a problem is actively discouraged. Problems get bounced from one person to the next, and the actual work performed by any one person on something is so limited that often no-one understands the full problem. The always connected culture described in the article is part of the problem, but more fundamentally it is that there is such the constant stream of email with so little thought put into it
The need has come to educate yourselves: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/e...
One of the bigger cultural differences I've found working in both the U.S. and Scandinavia is that American meetings are long, unpredictably scheduled, and really disorganized.
They're also intentionally made that way. Therefore, nobody is really accountable and nobody really has to do anything about whatever problem is discussed, and they can all blame it on the "didn't quite get what was supposed to be done" thing.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
People learn what works. Secretly producing all of your required output in 5 hours then adding some extra on top of it - then going fishing for four days is a recipe for dismissal. Productivity measurement equates to attendance and attitude and workers have adapted by creating a steady stream of noise. You show up at the meetings, respond to email and participate in discussions. You smile. You go all-in any time of day for some trivial shit that you could have let go except demonstrate activity. You are a value to the team. It does not matter that you haven't actually accomplished anything meaningful.
Hey... I have found out my colleagues are American and I make Scandinavian complaints ;)
As it happens, Americans are too nice about their own time. If a meeting is more than 5 minutes overdue Scandinavians (and Germans) will brusquely get up and leave. Americans sit around and chew the fat waiting for somebody else to make the move.
All TFA talks about is the hours of working, but there are more aspect of work than mere number of hours
If one really enjoys the work one will not treat the work as _work_, but rather something that is FUN - - EXCITING - - REJUVENATING
I have been in the tech field for decades and I keep seeing people who take the task they are assigned with as challenges that they want to overcome getting the job done faster, with more zeal, and produce much better code than those who take whatever they are being tasked with as "burden"
It's not the hour that you put in, it's the fun-quotient that will ultimately determine whether you will excel in the job you are in, or otherwise
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
See for yourself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Would you hire Bob?
One quite pathetic situation/problem in large organisations is that people can be seen to be more effective the more "face time" you have with them. Thus some long meetings exist for the sole purpose of spending time with the people with the power to promote. Apparently it then snowballs into the "company culture".
Since I'm now in a small enough place that everyone has no choice other than spending time with everyone else I can avoid that stupidity but I still see it on occasion when the company I work for takes jobs from some large multi-nationals - I get to see a little window into full-on Dilbert territory. Things like meetings where eight people from the other company turn up but only two speak, who get left floundering with no backup when out of their depth despite all the others there.
How do we shift business culture to reward effective work more than the appearance of work?
In the academic world, stop the "publish or perish" mentality.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
You forgot to mention that no one takes meeting minutes or notes. Thus any decisions made are lost two steps out the door. Which in turn requires future follow up meetings to re-decide/debate the same issues. I've seen heated discussions over issues that were already resolved in a prior meeting.
That's because here in Sweden at least, we learned from childhood to work in groups, including presentations etc, though that has changed a lot now that we've adopted more international methods. Aka, downgraded our education...
For example, when I was a kid, we had student councils in school, from age 10, where each class has 1 or 2 representatives, who then report to the rest of the class at the weekly class meetings etc. It was also a good way to teach students about democracy.
As for the difference between US and nordic culture in regards to meetings, time keeping etc, I do notice that a lot in my freelancing. US clients are more likely to call at completely idiotic times(like calling at 19:00 their local time, meaning it's middle of the night/really early morning for me), and as you say, less coordinated with materials at meetings etc.
I think one contributing factor is the commonly conceived idea of management: Managers tell people what to do and when to do it. They rate their own success at managing and workplace status more by how well others comply with their demands than from their teams' or departments' productivity (that's an abstract number on a report somewhere). Lots of workers are unhappy about the way their managers treat them and want to leave at the earliest possible opportunity, unless of course, they like their colleagues (Should we reward colleagues more for workers' productivity?) When managers can drop the "command and control is good" mindset, then they're ready to do something more constructive, egalitarian, and ultimately productive... you know, like show some support and leadership.
Some people use this to advantage to deliberately re-fight the same debate that they lost last time.
That's one reason minutes, with clearly marked decisions and actions are so important.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
up or out rules need to go as they lead to that as well.
My grandfather, a grizzled mountain man who left school at age 12 and migrated north to work in an industrial sector, bringing up a large family on his single salary, seemed to everyone to be the very picture of the strong work ethic. Then he confessed in his old age that for much of his career he had just been sitting around reading the newspaper, getting down to work only when he had to look busy to management. Ditto for his coworkers. You have a rosy view of the past; slacking goes back to long before internet access at work.
and I deal with the phone when I'm available to do so. In rare cases when I know a call is time sensitive I'll switch it on. Mail on 30 min check.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The issue is that since the 80's, management requires no more advanced skills than many technical tasks. Yet it's still perked more causing distortions that affect productivity. Perhaps calling most of today's managers something like work-group administrator might level things out a bit.
My father and my first boss taught to me complete my work first and then slack off because there was no more work to complete. Most people try to stretch things out during the day to look busy and get into a jam when something urgent crash lands on their desk. It's not my fault if my boss can't provide me with enough work to keep me busy all day.
My time limit is 15 minutes. If no one shows up or I'm not informed that people will be late, I'll leave. I startled many recruiters and hiring managers by walking out on them if an interview doesn't start promptly. Since my Rolodex contain the names of 600+ recruiters, my time is too valuable to waste.
Dealing with the work paperwork is billable time. I use this as leverage to discourage complex, Gant chart based approaches to micromanagement.
The whole nation of the former 'German Democratic Republic' (east Germany, wtf, don't even know how they are called in english, shame on me) was based on this principle.
When you worked you had to fulfill a plan. A pre planned amount of workpieces had to be crafted e.g.
If you could manage to craft so many, you where payed a normal wage, if you crafted more you where 'over plan' and got extra bonuses.
Every year (or every 5) the heads of state responsible for the economy planned a new 5 years ahead plan, including the most mundane parts like simple screws: oh, and we will need 3million metal screws with diameter 3mm.
And every year inspectors would visit factories and 'measure' how quick the average factory worker could do his 'piece of work'.
All the workers looked really busy, but did not produce much. After a week of watching the inspector would write into his book what could be expected from this factory.
That was used to guide the planning committees in case new factories where needed.
Surprisingly the factory was 'over plan' nearly every year ... so the workers could farm in their bonuses.
Very strange feed back cycles, isn't it? The whole economy is planned on faked numbers of lazy workers, who work 'normally' when they work and farm in bonuses because they produce more than the planners actually had planned. ... or well, there is no 'market'! Hey we could use the screws you made! But there is no plan to have a truck ready to bring the screws to the factory ...
But nevertheless other parts of the economy (like car manufactories) can't produce more because the 'over plan' materials can not be transported
Astonishing how well the east german economy worked for nearly 50 years if you consider this, hm ... lying to yourself system?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This is a great summary/article. And lets be honest here, most 'office' based people only have so much they really need to do on their current projects. You can sit at your desk for hours making work, writing emails, or sit though endless meetings where nothing is decided and the action plan in the minutes always unashamedly reads "x to report back next week with a final decision", when that decision was the purpose of the meeting. Contrast this with the more "Scandinavian" model where people come in, figure out what needs to be decided and work together to sort it out as directly as possible, and quite often end up getting home by quarter to five to see their kids come in. And I don't mean they're trying to minimise their work contribution - its just that unless you're kidding yourself about how important you are, there really isn't that much to do! Of course the exception here is the creative individuals who choose to work much more than they need for their own satisfaction. But often the bosses won't know they are anyway so I don't think the article applies to them. In the UK I think we have it about half way between the US and Scandinavian models, although neither are anywhere near as bad as Hong Kong, where meetings can last ALL DAY (up to 8pm), and you walk out realising that nothing was decided and a new event has appeared on your calender - same time next week!
My new job is like that. A 90-minute training session goes on for three hours. Most of the trainers are working from home as all the new contractors are working on site. They're comfortable with kids and dogs running underfoot at home. Like most tech companies where everyone has worked for a long time (eight or more years), there's no documentation and key work knowledge are locked away in people's head.
How do we shift business culture to reward effective work more than the appearance of work?
Promote managers who have a clue?
Yes and no. There is the "Dilbert Principle" which the ineffective engineer is promoted so they don't screw things up in engineering (at least what I've heard, it seems to me managers come in all types of skills and effectiveness). Supposably the successful technical person at least knows subject matter even if they are poor managers as compared to the PHB of Dilbert fame.
mfwright@batnet.com
its your fault, not the endless meetings to discuss what your not working on while in the meeting
We gave management an inch and they took a mile and won't give it back. Every time someone has their weekend interrupted or is told they are expected to monitor work emails at night, they make a mental note to take that time back by goofing off at work. When they aren't paid what they're worth, they slack a bit more until a rough balance is struck.
A few work harder but notice that it doesn't increase their pay or get them promoted so they slack off.
Tracking GDP/capita vs pay (accounting for inflation), really employers are on average only paying enough to get one productive day out of every 6 workdays. The ball is in their court. if they want better, they should identify the willing employees and pay them the other 5/6ths of their proper income.
That is true enough for an incompetent boob. A proper manager knows quality and productivity when he/she sees it, even if it can only be roughly quantified.
Testify Brother (or Sister) Not handling Action Points properly is another problem for a lot of people
Some people use this to advantage to deliberately re-fight the same debate that they lost last time.
Pro-tip: The best way to win, is to hold another meeting to rehash the issues, and don't invite the people that disagreed with you last time.
I always use my full ass at these type of meetings, none of that half-ass stuff for me.
He didn't say that, but either way you'd have to scale any accomplishments by population at least if you really want to compare.
... oh yeah, that's the problem, we're all working so hard in the US. Except those who aren't working at all, which is a huge cohort.
From working from Europe in a global organization a few years ago, it was interesting to see how American colleagues always seem to be projecting the importance of their work and their persona, with an always-on mindset. And it was interesting how emails got answered in the late evening US time zones, with replies that were clearly in the style of "I want you to know that I read your email and am working in the evening", but with no real effort behind the response. And with silly emails like "going away with family on vacation for two days, so I will be reading email less frequently" - dude, why are you checking your emails on a vacation.
Furthermore, US colleagues often seemed obsessed about strengthen their own work position, paranoid about any initiative which may reduce their importance, and generally working relations and politics to make themselves as hard-to-fire as possible. Some people clearly playing their own agenda not really caring about what is right for the company. And creating as little transparency as possible about information they own, making it hard to objectively assess their performance, or replace them with someone else. The kind of person who will do what they are asked, and little else.
In Scandinavia, my experience is we tend to focus on getting sh%# done, and nobody really cares when you do it. In most work environments people are not expected to be always-on, and we embrace the idea that it is good for people to be able to take some weeks vacation once in a while. Plus with public welfare systems - yes, the dreaded "socialism" - you don't have to be overly paranoid about the consequences of losing your job.
One of the most effective tools I have had in terms of time management, is that whenever someone has asked me something with a questionable or unreasonable timeline, I have questioned the time frame and discussed what are actual requirements - and usually there is no problem shifting the timeline to something reasonable. Just because someone asks, that does not mean you have to say yes. There is nothing worse than under-delivering. It is better both for yourself, and for whomever is asking, to push back and find something that works - and then deliver a quality end product. Or some times reducing the scope - someone asks for a big presentation, which you know they may end up changing everything - and you agree on instead making a rough draft and storyline. So you just saved yourself a ton of work, and all it took was 2 minutes of intelligent discussion.
As for changing the culture, I'd say just take a position regarding how and when you plan to work, and let your colleague and peers know. Or at least discuss what is the expectation in terms of work commitments. So they will not be expecting an always-on mindset. In the end, if you keep delivering your stuff, I would think that is what matters.
There's a push among some to cut back the work week. That solves all the worlds problems right? Full employment, more leisure time, more people commuting, less expendable income...oh wait.
Working like that only leads to health problems(both bodily and mentally), and only helps to foster a retarded culture.
It also leads to more errors and lower quality. And the quality of your work matters more.
I work with clients in /several/ countries besides the USA (e.g. Japan, The Netherlands, UK). Call? They can email me. And if it's urgent, they should've emailed me earlier. Of course there are exceptions, but those are extremely rare, because I make clear that the preferred way to reach me is email, and that I don't want to use Skype (or similar). And it really works. I can't be standby 24/7 because that would affect my work, and so far there hasn't been any need for this.
With one project they hired a new guy. He asked me (on Skype) "how do I edit a file on Linux" (really!). So I replied "vi, otherwise just transfer the file and edit it locally". He picked vi but .... he insisted that I was going to teach him how to use vi via Skype. No thanks, even if I could declare my hours. In general, my experience with Skype has been that the other side sets a time, and when I am on Skype, on time, they always have to finish some business first. If I can hold on for a while (20+ minutes). One of the reasons I don't do Skype anymore. The other one is that some customers tried to use it to get a real time quote. I need time to think about such things (most things, in general), so no. Besides brain storming via email also gives a nice transcript (which I am more than happy to turn into a formal document).
Perl Programmer for hire
Exactly. Moreover, clients who insist on 24/7 availability etc. are also the ones that drop you as soon as they've found someone who claims to be available 24/8 and/or asks a few cents less. Rent-a-coder et al are good places to find such clients (can you write a facebook clone, the budget is 200 USD...).
Perl Programmer for hire
Dang. I've previously posted a reply before reading this comment and have no mod points.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If the "whole economy is planned on faked numbers of lazy workers", why was there no slack in the transportation system to move more product than planned so that the transportation workers could farm in *their* bonuses?
For example, when I was a kid, we had student councils in school, from age 10, where each class has 1 or 2 representatives, who then report to the rest of the class at the weekly class meetings etc. It was also a good way to teach students about democracy.
I recall this from my elementary school (in America) -- it was structured precisely the same way. We had lots of group work and campus clubs, student senate in middle school and high school, things like mock trial, model UN, and speech and debate where you would learn Robert's Rules of Order, things like boyscouts and Boys and Girls of America to teach leadership skills, etc. And any kind of camp for sports or band would focus on teambuilding. Americans are actually very well-trained on how to work together, and they can do it amazingly well despite huge cultural and personal divides.
But that is part of what lets these pernicious managerial practices persist. Americans can often work around them, so there's not a huge pressure to punish or reform managers who get it wrong. It's also the case that while we're cultivating this cooperative culture, Americans are also cultivating a competitive, get ahead of the other guy, win at any cost culture. People who go into business administrative positions are often the fruit of the latter rather than the former.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Not "partly as a result". The things you mention are cultural issues, and problems, but not related to electronic enablement of 24x7 work.
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Astonishing how well the east german economy worked for nearly 50 years if you consider this, hm ... lying to yourself system?
I don't know, I drove through portions of former East Germany not too many years after unification, and from what I saw, it worked *exactly* as well as you'd expect. The difference between west and east was stark and startling. In the west, there were occasional items in need of maintenance and modernization, just as you'll find anywhere, but by and large everything was well-built, well-maintained... and cheerful. The last bit is hard to explain, but it was more than just the use of bright colors on stores and signs, it was just an overall feeling of energy and exuberance. In contrast, nearly everything in the east was poorly-built, in need of maintenance, and drab. The roads were narrow, rough and full of holes. The bridges were rickety-looking and clearly needed maintenance. Many, many of the buildings had sagging rooflines, especially the farmhouses and barns. Much was unpainted, rusting steel, or unpainted, drying and spitting wood and what was painted was clearly painted only to make it last longer because it was all gray and black.
It strikes me that that's *exactly* what I'd expect a culture that habitually pretends to work to fool the planners to produce. No energy, no motivation, no reason to innovate.
From what I understand, it has been a huge burden on western Germany to drag their eastern fellows into the 21st century. The other thing I noticed when driving through east Germany, both that first time and even more a few years later, was that it seemed like they were rebuilding the entire country at once. And I know my west German friends grumbled often about the taxes for reconstruction, though they seemed generally to think that it was a price worth paying.
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I guess there was slack as well, but a car factory does not only need the 'over plan' screws, but also metal sheets rubber, windows, etc.
Point is more: you hardly could order anything extra, thete was no agenency or free market where you could place that order. And a truck that has slack after it drove some stuff from Berlin to Dresden is in Dresden now and can not do the same tour immediately again.
On the other hand they had a striving black market, I guess the truck drivers had enough 'private contracts' :)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Communism is powerful, powerful stuff. So powerful it managed to spread laziness, poverty, and hideously poor engineering in a country populated entirely by Germans.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That is why it's called "management" and not "solving", "empowering" or "understanding".
I've heard an argument similar to this one to abolish the minimum wage. Pay people based on what they produce, not how many hours they work. Which is precisely how some businesses have gotten around mandates like minimum wage and Obamacare, every "employee" is an independent contractor and they get paid on units produced or other similar metric.
This does not work well for all industries. Some kinds of work just does not translate well to anything other than an hourly wage. Just about everything can translate to better work resulting in better pay.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Communism is powerful, powerful stuff. So powerful it managed to spread laziness, poverty, and hideously poor engineering in a country populated entirely by Germans.
+1 Insightful.
Given the German peoples' repeatedly demonstrated ability to be an economic powerhouse even against severe odds, that's a really telling point.
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Did I say Rolodex? Sorry, I meant LinkedIn.
I'm not advocating anything like counting exact output or such. Many things aren't conducive to that or even to an hourly wage.
I am advocating merit raises for people who clearly have merit and at least decent pay for decent work.
As for the current minimum wage, if the employer is paying that, they're lucky if the employee actually stays awake for the whole shift and doesn't give all the customers swine flu.
That's because here in Sweden at least, we learned from childhood to work in groups, including presentations etc, though that has changed a lot now that we've adopted more international methods. Aka, downgraded our education...
For example, when I was a kid, we had student councils in school, from age 10, where each class has 1 or 2 representatives, who then report to the rest of the class at the weekly class meetings etc. It was also a good way to teach students about democracy.
As for the difference between US and nordic culture in regards to meetings, time keeping etc, I do notice that a lot in my freelancing. US clients are more likely to call at completely idiotic times(like calling at 19:00 their local time, meaning it's middle of the night/really early morning for me), and as you say, less coordinated with materials at meetings etc.
The US has 30 times the population of Sweden, so please don't assume that all Americans are the same in terms of education or courtesy.
One day per week? My company gives us two days.
I think the best manager realize the best way to manage is by empowering their workers to get their job done and removing any obstacles in the way.