People do 3 types of work within companies.
Produce:
Creating artifacts to serve the company’s external stakeholders.
Organize:
Creating the necessary structures & processes for Produce work.
Self-promote:
Creating a proxy for their own competence & impact.
A short tutorial👇🏾
Produce:
Creating artifacts to serve the company’s external stakeholders.
Organize:
Creating the necessary structures & processes for Produce work.
Self-promote:
Creating a proxy for their own competence & impact.
A short tutorial👇🏾
Examples
Produce work: products, eng infra, sales deals, services, support, status updates,...
Organize work: internal processes, resource planning, status updates, re-orgs, hiring,...
Self-promote work: perf reviews, status updates, 1:1s with manager,...
Important tweet👇🏾
Produce work: products, eng infra, sales deals, services, support, status updates,...
Organize work: internal processes, resource planning, status updates, re-orgs, hiring,...
Self-promote work: perf reviews, status updates, 1:1s with manager,...
Important tweet👇🏾
The 3 key sources of conflict within a company:
- Self-promote work disguised as Produce work or Organize work (Politics)
- Disagreement on relative priorities of Produce work (Strategy problem)
- Too much Organize work too little Produce work or vice versa (Execution problem)
- Self-promote work disguised as Produce work or Organize work (Politics)
- Disagreement on relative priorities of Produce work (Strategy problem)
- Too much Organize work too little Produce work or vice versa (Execution problem)
Role of company leadership:
A company’s leaders need to be able to precisely & consistently diagnose the source of major conflicts. They need to be particularly intolerant of Self-promote work that's suboptimal for the company, even if it's optimal for a given individual or team
A company’s leaders need to be able to precisely & consistently diagnose the source of major conflicts. They need to be particularly intolerant of Self-promote work that's suboptimal for the company, even if it's optimal for a given individual or team
Role of managers:
Managers need to create clarity for each employee on the optimal allocation of time across the 3 types of work, for their specific role on the team.
When managers fail to do this, each employee picks their own subjective defaults, causing mutual frustration.
Managers need to create clarity for each employee on the optimal allocation of time across the 3 types of work, for their specific role on the team.
When managers fail to do this, each employee picks their own subjective defaults, causing mutual frustration.
Footnote:
The original idea here of the types of work was inspired by this line in the book Principles by Ray Dalio
“in most companies people are doing two jobs: their actual job and the job of managing others’ impressions of how they’re doing their job.”
Was a💡moment for me.
The original idea here of the types of work was inspired by this line in the book Principles by Ray Dalio
“in most companies people are doing two jobs: their actual job and the job of managing others’ impressions of how they’re doing their job.”
Was a💡moment for me.
As a startup founder/CEO/executive, it's important to look for the crossover point described in this thread:
https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1332889514079965186
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