Archive for the ‘Fake Work Book’ Category

Steven Krempl comes from a unique cultural blend – Hungarian and Malaysian.  His father started the first symphony orchestra in Singapore after escaping Hungary during World War II.  Without saying too much about his last two companies, he has many tales to tell.  He was in senior leadership at two Fortune 1000 companies in the last 10 years, and he has seen far too much fake work.

This is what Steven says about the Book:

“Fake Work provides a different view of how to get people impacting their organizational goals and results. Using many simple but painfully true and recognizable stories, the book unravels the numerous issues organizations face around having ‘extremely busy and hardworking’ employees who may not, in many cases, be impacting the bottom line.  The good news is Peterson and Nielson layout deceptively simple but effective steps to resolve this. If you are prepared to get to the root of ensuring everyone is contributing to results – then this is the way to go!”

After his last stint as an executive in a Seattle corporation, Stephen started his own company and is the President of Krempl Communications International.  Krempl seems like a good name for a company, and international makes sense if you come from Singapore, lived in Kentucky and Seattle, and work all over the world.

We hope this blog creates some interest in our book, Fake Work, but we are more interested in the concept of fake work and how it negatively affects lives and organizations. Fake Work:

• Creates an insidious and dangerous wedge that separates us from doing work that is productive and effective—the work itself.
• Keeps us from being appreciated, respected, and promotable—even when it isn’t our fault.
• Hurts our sense of worth, affects our happiness, and interrupts the joy in our personal lives.
• Promotes distrust and false competition, which disrupts teams.

Please Get Involved and Participate
We hope you will contribute to this blog. We will be posting “Your Fake Work Stories” that can be both about Fake Work or overcoming Fake Work in any work environment you are involved in. Look at the categories for our postings and you will see that, over time, we will provide interesting stories, stories from the news, funny stories, lists and tests that will help promote the ideas of fake work and real work. But, mostly, we hope you will grow more aware of fake work and be able to address the problems that are affecting you, your job, and the organizations that you work for and are involved with.

Make Fake Work a part of your Vocabulary
Finally, we hope “Fake Work” becomes a catchword for pinpointing and avoiding work that is wasteful and ridiculous. As one client told us, “We end meetings, emails, and discussions of all kinds by asking ‘so what of this will cause or contribute to fake work’.” Ultimately, that is the attitude that will build a new a more constructive dialogue and culture for real work.

Real Work is a Rare and Precious Commodity that Bridges the “Execution Gap”
Real Work is the antidote to Fake Work. Real Work is work that serves the strategic intensions of an organization. The real gap, that we call the “execution gap,” is the chasm between strategic intent and the actual work—which is ultimately the execution of those strategies in the workplace. Without closing the gap, fake work dominates the workplace by veering off at the point of work. The problem: far too many teams have no awareness of the cause of the gap or the solution.

Most People Want to do Real Work.
We have a very important mantra: almost all people want to do work that has value and is valued. We have worked with thousands of wonderful people who are working extremely hard and who are highly dedicated. But, way too many of those people find hard work and extraordinary effort being negated by the failure of them, their co-workers, project leaders, and managers because they don’t know or don’t understand how their work is linked to the focus of their organization.

Real Work Requires Commitment
To do real work and to ensure that it counts requires awareness, attention, commitment, and courage—perhaps, most of all courage—to struggle through the minefields of fake work in the organizational culture. Fake work starts with strategic planning and shows up in managers, teams, and individuals that don’t understand the importance of getting people aligned to strategies. The path to fake work isn’t always a big mistake, it is a subtle change in the wrong direction—then your journey leads you farther and farther away from work of value.