Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.
Mary Kay Ash – Entrepreneur
Almost 40% of people according to surveys say their work and jobs make little difference to the organization, customer or marketplace. OK! So why do these jobs exist in VUCA time? Great question.
The Japanese have a great metaphor for finding problems and uncovering risks. Toyota says that problems are like rocks in a swamp. As you drain the swamp, problems as rocks are exposed and fixed. This is an interesting metaphor for COVID time work. Working @ home exposes system, project, process, and technology rocks and risks – what processes work well, what processes can be improved, and what processes should be disrupted.
Story: So, let’s look at process work that may or will be disrupted. The Peter Principle in the 1950’s stated that people in a traditional hierarchal organization rise to their ‘level of incompetence’ doing wasteful work. David Graeber in Bull Sh*t Jobs offers a more nuanced interpretation when analyzing wasteful work:
“a bullsh*t job is one that even the person doing it secretly believes need not or should not exist. That if the job, or even the whole industry, were to vanish, either it would make no difference to anyone, or the world might even be a slightly better place.”
Is there a list of bull sh*t jobs? No. However, you could come up with a possible list: public relations, compliance workers, supervisors, food taster, and work titles such as data wrangler for data analyst, corporate evangelist, or digital overlord for website designer.
Work Lesson Earned: COVID exposes bullsh*t work. The Hutchins’s principle states: “Bullsh*t jobs are created to appease a worker’s high expectations and ensure the appearance of value-added, sustainable work.”.
Another way to think about bullsh*t jobs is in terms of what you do each day. What do you do at work? Why is your work done in the first place? Do you make something or create value? Are you a taker or a maker at work? Are you on the profit or expense side of the equation. Why did you write that report today? Why did your boss want that memo? What’s the meaning and value of your work in VUCA time?
Anyway, you get the idea. Because if you can’t answer these questions, you may be doing bullsh*t work. And if you are, will there be a Future Of Work job for you post-COVID? Tough questions. No easy answers.