Work Vs. Progress

It’s easy to tell when someone is working, but how can you tell when they’re making progress? Simple work, like mowing a lawn or washing a car has transparent progress: as each small unit of work is completed it’s visible to everyone. But with complex work, building software, running a business, writing a novel, it is harder to identify true progress. Some of the work will require thinking and exploration which may go on for hours or days before there are visible results. Other work may involve so many different sub-tasks or conversations with others that there's no way to know how efficiently the work is being done, or if the effort expended is contributing to progressing the project. Complex work, or work with large numbers of people, always makes it harder to separate work from progress.

While this fact is the lifeblood of slackers everywhere and explains why they often find cozy homes in large organizations, it’s a frustration for managers. They feel accountable for the collective progress of the team and without easy ways to measure it they’re never sure how things are going or what leadership work needs to be done.

Why progress is subjective

The first big challenge with progress is admitting that it’s subjective. There is no universal ideal of progress that you can use to judge whether things are improving or not (despite what the self-righteous believe). One project might be to dig a hole in the ground, while another might be to fill one in. The removal of dirt can be progress or a setback depending on what the purpose of the work is supposed to be.

On poorly managed teams conflicting and irrelevant work is allowed to go on because leaders don’t notice, care or take the time to guide people’s efforts in more useful directions. Capable people may work away in their private tasks, believing they’re making progress (and earning bonuses), when in reality they’re doing work that will be thrown away or even hurt the project. When someone puts their head down to work, how fast they’re going doesn’t matter if they’re heading in the wrong direction (or towards a cliff). How a talent is directed can be more important than the size of the talent itself.

Giving people the tools to recognize when they're wasting their time is one of the biggest obligations leaders have. A leader has to define a collective sense of progress that incorporates everyone’s contributions into a meaningful whole and strike a balance between something tangible enough for individual contributors to relate to, but broad enough to define a strategy for the team, organization or company. Standing on a desk and saying “Let’s do good things!” may momentarily energize people, but it’s just a sentiment and you can’t organize work around sentiments. It must be converted into tangible directives that people can follow. What does good mean? What kinds of things?

What leaders can do to define progress

There’s two parts to defining progress. The first is in planning the work and outlining a set of goals the work is supposed to achieve. If I told you to put out the trash, and pointed you to 3 full trash cans and a street with a signpost that said “put trash cans here”, it’d be clear to you what progress looked like. Even with complex work, the goal of a leader is the same: you want everyone to know how the world should be like when they’re done. Then they can compare what they're doing today with the goal and make adjustments. This vision of completion can change, but everyone’s vision should change together (and it's the leaders job to make that happen). If there is no vision, the first goal leaders set can be for everyone to contribute ideas for the vision.

Much has been written about this process, often called goal setting, vision, project or release planning. Some techniques focus on flexibility and short term cycles (e.g. Agile and XP development for software), others on big long term plans (e.g. constructing stadiums or skyscrapers). There’s too much to go into in this essay: they’re all interesting models and if you want to know more let me know.

The second, but most often forgotten, part is the daily guidance of a team towards progress. It’s the leader’s job to continually reflect back to individuals how their work fits into the goals. In every meeting, discussion and e-mail the leader must reinforce, remind, cajole, and motivate people’s work towards whatever the collective goals are, flagging work that is questionable and activities that are unnecessary. The leader has the best perspective on the entire project and he must share that view as often as possible. He is in the best position to see when people are going the wrong way, or worse, disrupting other’s progress