The Worlds of Fake Work Characters and The Tom Sawyer Principal of Fake Work

In the coming weeks we will introduce you to a hierarchy of Fake Work characters—Fake Work players up and down the ladder of organizations who participate in, cause or enable Fake Work.  You should be able to recognize some or all of these characters in your organization. Do you have a “Fake Work Godfather” or a “Fake Work Peacock” in your organization?  Or, worse, are you one of these characters?  In their book, Fake Work, Gaylan W. Nielson and Brent D. Peterson discuss the many different personalities and behaviors that cause Fake Work. Let’s begin with a famous literary character who raises an important question about Fake Work.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Tom Sawyer Principle of Fake Work
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash.
. . He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while — plenty of company — and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement.
–Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”

In the United States, Tom Sawyer is a notorious figure from literary history who is infamous for his ability to get out of doing real work and, at the same time, make a profit off the backs of his friends. Tom’s at the center of a pervasive myth that suggests that real work is for suckers and that most people, if they could, would do whatever it takes to get out of doing real work.
Tom claims to have discovered a philosophical principle—that “Work” is whatever you are obligated to do and that “Play” is whatever you’re not.  And, at first glance, lots of people would probably agree with this.   Under Tom’s logic, work seems to be a form of constraint; whereas, play seems to be a form of freedom.  Obviously, therefore, play must be better because we get to do whatever we want.

“Don’t Tom Sawyer it” refers to a Fake Work truth that describes a common workplace mode of thinking called “The Tom Sawyer Principle of Work” that, essentially, devalues real work by falsely characterizing it as harder and more difficult than Fake Work.  This false principle inadvertently leads many organizations to create Fake Work hierarchies with casts of Fake Work characters who are responsible for generating and disseminating mountains of Fake Work across the organization.

Fake Work characters come in many roles, in every organization, at every level, and they have serious affects and cause costly and disheartening fake work throughout the organization.

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