
Folsom Dam, on the American River near Sacramento, California. The dam and the Folsom Reservoir are the primary protectors of the city of Sacramento against floods resulting from rainfall and snowfall that cover higher elevations nearby.
Being flooded with work is a metaphor more apt than might first appear. Flooding inland, like overwork, can have multiple causes. Whether any particular rainfall or snowfall event or series of events leads to flooding depends on numerous factors, among them: available soil water storage capacity, the ability of the topography to shed water, the ability of the topography to contain flows within established river channels, the region's vulnerability to flows from higher elevations in the watershed, snow melt rates, and the region's ability to store standing water in contained areas. All of these mechanisms have analogs in overload management in the workplace. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Having too much work is a common condition in the modern workplace. Having way, way, way too much work — so much that 70-hour weeks still are not enough to keep from falling behind — is less common, but still too common. Combine way-way-way-too-much-work with ongoing supervisor expectations that the work will get done, and done well, and you have the ingredients for stress, sleep disturbance, declining work quality, toxic conflict, and disruption of home life. It's a toxic stew that can cause permanent harm.
We must be honest with ourselves. This degree of overwork is abuse. It threatens our health, and it must end.
What follows, this week and the two following, is a sketch of a program for ending this kind of abuse.
Let's begin by examining where the work comes from.
- The work is included in or implied by my job description
- Work of this kind truly is yours. The question is: "Does the organization need another one of you?" Or maybe, "Should my job be divided?"
- Affirmative answers to these questions usually occur only when the situation is obvious to all concerned, whether or not anyone acknowledges it openly.
- My boss explicitly directed me to do the work
- Typically, you were already overloaded when your boss gave you yet one more responsibility. And you accepted it because you felt you had little choice.
- Some supervisors are unaware of the true scale of the excessive workloads of their subordinates. Some are fully aware, but choose to do nothing about it. Some are willfully unaware. Understanding your own supervisor's state of awareness is a first step to devising a strategy for ending the overwork.
- I picked up this work because "it has to get done"
- Sometimes, important responsibilities or tasks remain unassigned or even unrecognized. When they remain open, they sometimes block progress on work that has been assigned. The people who are blocked can then find it difficult to resist the temptation to take on responsibility for this "fallow work."
- If you've succumbed to this temptation, then you have, in effect, assigned yourself some work voluntarily. Complaining about it later then becomes problematic.
- I picked up this work to prevent someone else from getting it
- Political Some supervisors are unaware
of the true scale of the
excessive workloads of their
subordinates. Others are
willfully unaware.rivals sometimes contend with each other for responsibilities not because they seek those responsibilities, but because they seek to deny their rivals control of those responsibilities. - Outcomes in these situations are rarely beneficial to anyone involved, or to the organization. Yet supervisors often let this happen, because they feel they're getting productivity for free. Or they're more comfortable permitting people to overload themselves voluntarily than they are comfortable with overloading people directly.
These various mechanisms by which overloading comes about call for different approaches to prevention and resolution. That's the topic for next time. Next issue in this series
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Workplace Politics Is Not a Game
- We often think about "playing the game" — either with relish or repugnance. Whatever
your level of skill or interest, you'll do better if you see workplace politics as it is. It is not a game.
What Insubordinate Nonsubordinates Want: III
- When you're responsible for an organizational function, and someone not reporting to you doesn't comply
with policies you rightfully established, trouble looms. What role do supervisors play?
Group Problem-Solving Tangles
- When teams solve problems together, discussions of proposed solutions usually focus on combinations
of what the solution will do, how much it will cost, how long it will take, and much more. Disentangling
these threads can make discussions much more effective.
The Deck Chairs of the Titanic: Obvious Waste
- Among the most futile and irrelevant actions ever taken in crisis is rearranging the deck chairs of
the Titanic, which, of course, never actually happened. But in the workplace, we engage in
activities just as futile and irrelevant, often outside our awareness. Recognition is the first step
to prevention.
Appearance Antipatterns: II
- When we make decisions based on appearance we risk making errors. We create hostile work environments,
disappoint our customers, and create inefficient processes. Maintaining congruence between the appearance
and the substance of things can help.
See also Workplace Politics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming July 23: Microdelegation
- Microdelegation is a style of delegation in which the delegator unintentionally communicates the task to the subordinate in such detail and so repetitively that the subordinate is offended. As a result of this delegation style, many subordinates feel distrusted or suspected of fraud or goldbricking. Available here and by RSS on July 23.
And on July 30: What the Dunning-Kruger Effect Actually Is
- Although the Dunning-Kruger Effect is widely recognized, people describe it — and understand it — in many different ways. Some of these expressions are misleading. Proceed with caution. Available here and by RSS on July 30.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group