Three types of work and the Wood Chopping Analogy

You might think this is simplifying things too much but I believe you can categorize work into three groups. Value adding work, Process Improvement Work and Internal Work.

Value Adding Work is activity that adds value to the end outcome. In business the end outcome is the product or service you deliver to a customer. Value is always judged by the customer.

Process Improvement Work is activity you undertake that improves the effectiveness of the Value Adding work. The improvement in effectiveness might be that the value adding work can be completed more quickly, at a higher quality or more aligned to what the customer wants.

Internal Work is work that doesn't add value to the end outcome nor improves the process to add value to the end outcome. Internal Work includes things that are necessary but in themselves add no value to the end outcome.

The Wood Chopping Analogy

Chopping wood is value adding work. Sharpening the axe is process improvement work. Counting how much wood you have chopped is internal work. What we need to remember is that you can chop wood, sharpen the axe or count how much wood you've chopped but not at the same time. Therefore the more internal work we do the less time we have for value adding or process improvement work. When we do process improvement work the benefits won't appear until we recommence chopping wood.

With this in mind what occurs when your company approaches the end of its financial year, half year or quarter? Most often the internal work increases! Senior Management want to see forecasts updated weekly, daily or activity reports and extra internal meetings are called all taking up precious time. Any attempt at process improvement work is curtailed and the workers are asked to swing the blunt axe harder.

Think about the work you are asked to do and see if you can put it in these three buckets. Look at the size of the internal work bucket. Are all the activities in this bucket necessary? If a certain report wasn't done would the value adding work or process improvement work suffer? What if you simply stopped some of those internal work activities, what would happen? Probably revenue and profit would increase! Internal work should be minimized as much as possible.

The levels in your organization should be doing different amounts of these three types of work. As you go up the levels the amount of Process Improvement Work increases. Senior Managements role is to help those at the coal face be as effective as possible. Process Improvement in this sense is senior management creating the right strategy, tactics, tools, products, processes for their people to utilise. Unfortunately this often doesn't happen. Senior Management instead get involved in the daily adding value work by insisting on making most if not all the decisions by putting in controls and bureaucracy. This leads to an increase in internal work and little process improvement work takes place.

Many senior managers cannot even see this dynamic occurring. To them it is all about swinging the blunt axe faster and spending more time counting the wood. Often we promote those that are good at doing this instead of those that invent a chainsaw or improve the process so that the wood is always chopped on time. Much of this is covered in Elliot Jaques work on Stratum Theory and the level of complexity thinking required as you rise through an organization.

As you go through your daily routine ask yourself if you are chopping wood, sharpening the axe or counting how much wood you have chopped.