Archive for the ‘FakeWorktionary’ Category

Fake Work is a Thief.
Yes, fake work is just what you’re thinking and a lot more. People tell us all the time: “That’s what I do. I spend my life doing work that seems fake.” Then, people share a litany of fake work problems like meetings that feel like life sentences, e-mail chains that run for days and never solve anything, and written documents that took weeks to write that nobody reads. Fake work is the thief of time, of value, of conviction, of the investment of our efforts.

Those are common examples of fake work, but they aren’t fake just because they seem like a waste of time; they are fake if they are disconnected from the most important goals of an organization—any organization from companies to government agencies to community groups.

Fake work is any work that is not aligned with and targeting the strategies of an organization.
Strategies are how organizations attack their mission and vision and their highest goals. So, if strategies are accurate and deemed important, they require a concerted effort to ensure that everyone in the organization is aligned to execute those strategies.

Fake work, at its worst, is when we are working long, hard hours with the very best of intensions and discover that our work has no value. Finding that several late nights and two lost weekends ended up in work that nobody cared about or that served no real purpose is like having your sculpture knocked over and broken into fragments.

The not-so-obvious part of fake work will be explored over the next few months and you will find it in our book called Fake Work, which will be published in October.