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The Architecture of Work: Five Principles
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The Architecture of Work
Updates, expanded version of existing training handout. Prepared as draft by Ivan Scheier, for review by colleagues in the New Volunteerism Project. Mid-May 1998 Draft
This process was developed about 25 years ago. Presented many times at workshops, it was generally well received. However, unlike other similarly popular methods, it was never published, expect for passing mentions in EXPLORING VOLUNTEER SPACE (pages 57-8 and 147). Possible reasons for this will be discussed at the end of this essay.
The essence of people approach is making work more meaningful, more fulfilling, and even where possible, more enjoyable (putting joy back in the job). This effort responds to one of the three basic questions keying my philosophy: "Why do people work and enjoy it?" or, more broadly: "What makes work more meaningful for people?"
There are two ways of doing this. The first is to discover work (without changing it) that naturally harmonizes with, expresses, gets close to 1) a person’s natural propensities, which I’ve classified as "glad gifts," "quests," "wise why’s," or values and 2) their needs for assistance. Main methods in this harmonizing approach are the Window of Work, the Job factor and all three circles of Need Overlap Analysis in Helping (NOAH).
By contrast to the harmonizing approach, is an engineering or architectural emphasis, making changes in the organization and structure of the work itself, so that an intrinsically less attractive task becomes more so. Key methods in such task enrichment are Division, Style Profiling, and the Architecture of Work.
Most "people approach" methods are a mix of harmonic and engineering emphases, with one or the other dominant to various degrees. Thus, one of my "glad gifts" (like to do and can do pretty well) is washing dishes. Therefore, asking me to wash dishes is only asking me to do what I’m naturally inclined to do anyhow – a motivational match of task to person. However, in addition to dishwashing naturally harmonizing with my glad gifts etc., the way the task is structured and organized also makes a motivational difference. For example, I prefer doing dishes alone rather than in a group (see "style profiling" elsewhere); "by hand" rather than via dishwashing machine (later, the instrument factor); and without responsibility for putting the dishes away after (see Division, and Work Assignment Grids). Assuming there is at least one other person in the world who genuinely likes washing dishes, the "harmonic" might be the same for both of us, but the engineering or architecture for her might be different, e.g. using a dishwasher and linking the washing part to putting the dishes away afterward. (all this deliberately avoids the issue of whether or not to air dry!)
The above are instances in which harmonics and engineering work in the same direction, so to speak, both enhancing motivation. In other cases, they may offset one another. Thus, cleaning out closets is by itself unlikely to assuage the natural desires of many people. But when the task is re-engineered to link in with a yard sale (and money) to follow, motivation may be dramatically improved. Indeed, the architectural approach is especially relevant to build motivation for tasks typically unattractive in themselves for most people; for example, picking up trash, any monotonously repetitive task, attending monotonously repetitive meetings, etc.
The Architecture of Work involves four main principles for increasing the attractiveness of work, more or less regardless of a person’s natural inclinations. These principles are Main Sequence, Feedback Loops, the Equipment Factor, and Multiple Tracking. In all of theses, please note, we are talking about making work more satisfying or meaningful for a person. This is not necessarily more efficient, though we’ll argue later that it often is. For now, however, please concentrate attention on what makes people enjoy their work.
Main Sequence
The idea is to link task elements over time so that evolution
towards achieved purpose may be experienced. As we shall see, the process is the
implacable enemy of assembly line thinking in which a person just gets to see a piece of
the work passing by, never seeing where it came from and where it is going.
Let us suppose we are asking a person to wrap gifts, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Main Sequence is one way to make the task more meaningful by going back in time to allow the person to help select at least some of the gifts and later deliver some of them. Thus instead of just
WRAP GIFTS
Over and over and over again, we would apply the principle of Main Sequence to re-engineer the task as:
But what about the person who prefers the monotony of endless gift wrapping (doesn’t interrupt daydreaming so much) or has the imagination to build variety into that one task? Good one the second part; sadness on the first part. That task enrichment principles don’t work for all people in all situations.
And what about efficiency? Isn’t it more efficient to have some "specialists" doing all the gift selecting, others the gift-wrapping, and a third set delivering the gifts? Not necessarily. The same total number of people, each doing all three things might take little or no longer than the assembly line kind of organization of the work. And they might be more motivated by more meaningful involvement in purpose-being-achieved, thus in the longer run be more effective workers. This may be why the Volvo car manufacturers adopted a Main Sequence principle some years ago. Instead of continuing to have their employees just view a small piece of the car passing by on the assembly line, they had them follow the car along the line. In this, I assume they were far from purely philanthropic in their concern for worker well being. So it may be that efficiency is not only the greatest enemy kindness ever saw; apparent efficiency may be the greatest enemy efficiency ever saw.
On the short vs. long term issue, what of the psychiatrist who, in the age of near total "efficiency expert" domination of health care, has five minutes with each patient in which to diagnose and write a prescription. She has little or no opportunity for follow-up with the patient, little direct personal experience of the patient’s previous history (she gets that from reports by others). The lack of Main Sequence here is not efficient in the long run; it is instead a recipe for tragedy, risking less than the best of care and human concern for the patient, and is driving some of the best professionals out of the field.
Then, maybe for some chefs, this noble calling is satisfying enough confined to the kitchen. But for others, the Main Sequence principle enriches the role with a stroll out through the restaurant to experience customers consuming the dishes he has prepared. Maybe earlier she also had a role in selecting the food to be used.
About the happiest storeowner I ever met, had a crystal rock shop in Arkansas. Most of the rocks he dug on his own land, then cut and polished himself. He had a story to tell about almost every stone, and his obvious enthusiasm certainly helped sales (efficiency?) Moreover, while he didn’t actually follow us home to see how we used the rocks, we were almost afraid to see what such an invitation would do. In general, the individual entrepreneur as producer, artisan or artist has a better chance of following through the process to market, hopefully ending in sale.
In any case it’s almost always worthwhile to see if disassembling the assembly line via Main Sequence, will add to satisfaction in work and maybe effectiveness or efficiency as well.
Multiple
Tracking
…is doing more than one thing at the same of
approximately the same time (a) for contract, to relieve monotony and/or (b) in
furtherance of task purpose and/or (c) some other purpose related to the well-being of
people being served. The three can overlap and be difficult to distinguish, especially the
last two.
In our diagrammed example, after Main Sequence has "stretched" wrapping gifts, to earlier selecting of gifts and a later delivering of them, applying the Multiple Tracking principle might now produce a work diagram that might look like this:
Answering the phone would be an example of multiple tracking for contrast (though the phone calls might relate to the gift wrapping, sometimes). Another example might be allowing a filing clerk some variety by also answering the phone, doing some typing and greeting of people, assuming he is competent in these other tasks. This should stop at and preferably before the point where variety becomes distracting, with due regard to wide differences in how much variety individuals need and can tolerate, and also their overall situation. The single working Mother with three children under five, doesn’t need any more multiple tracks!! In such cases the competent – and compassionate – work engineer tries to reduce the variety. Variety is the spice of life and work, but not too much, please…
Chatting with giftees when the gifts are delivered, is more an example of purposive Multiple Tracking. It might "slow you down" but at the same time is likely to add meaning to the gifting for both giver and receiver, especially if the latter are lonely shut-ins. In such a situation, one must only be careful that the chatting does not come to dominate the gift delivery, takes too much time away from it, or gets the delivery person "in over his head." The worker must have the skill and will to chat and observe compassionately and accurately but with the ability to disengage quite soon. The general caution here on Multiple Tracking, is not to let the other track become the main track…
Other examples of purposive Multiple Tracking include a program in which postal letter carriers, with prior permission of elderly postal patron, check for obvious danger signs while delivering mail (e.g. mail not picked up for a week, lights on during the day, etc.) A current program has letter carriers on a designated day, pick up donated cans of food at mail boxes, for local food banks. Finally, there was a neighborhood in Michigan in which it was hard to get enough people to deliver the neighborhood newsletter door-to-door in winter. Until, that is, they added this "multiple track:" while delivering the newsletter check for dangerous accumulation of snow on roofs and if you see this call this number immediately, especially for homes of disabled or elderly people.
Feedback
Loops
Here, engineering tries to build into the end of a task
sequence, a process whereby comment and reaction to the work feeds back into the potential
for improving the process next time around (clearly, more than sheer repetition). The
point is to avoid "working in the dark." Carrying through our main example, a
feedback loop would be diagrammed as follows:
The Feedback Loop in this example is from consumers/customers/clients and nothing is more important than that. As a workshop trainer covering a large geographic area, I was prone to miss all but immediate trainee feedback (which might be of lesser long-term significance). You do your thing and walk off into the sunset, never to return to the scene of the crime (if that’s what it was and you’re not even sure of that) for years or maybe forever. This eventually drove me crazy enough to offer to do workshops for expenses only if sponsors would let me come back 1-6 months later for feedback from the trainees. This request was granted quite a few times and the results drove me even crazier via the realization of how much my own wishful or fearful imagination about training impact, was substitution for the truth of it. (There are some incredible stories here)
Feedback Loops are important to have from your bosses as well as from your consumers/customers. I don’t think one can substitute for the other. In any case, lack of sufficient Feedback Loops is, in my observation, the commonest design flaw in work today. I don’t know why. Possibly, there is some fear that some of the feedback will be critical. That fear is often justified, but any organization or person who serves Feedback Loops for that reason is probably in enough trouble already so that very little can be salvaged from the work situation. As for the additional time a Feedback Loop takes, this needn’t be extensive, and anyhow can be more than repaid by the avoidance of unnecessary errors and inefficiencies in future work sequences, and their enrichment by positive suggestions. Also in reaping all the positive benefits of having more satisfied workers.
The Equipment Factor
Can you think of any significant work that can be done without a tool or tools, that is, without equipment to help implement? I can’t. One or more of the tools is (always?) a part of one’s own body, e.g. the hands, the eyes. In a real sense, the mind is also a tool to help accomplish most work. Many other tools are physically distinct from the body; for example, a pen for writing, a bread knife, a hammer, a stove for cooking, a typewriter or word processor, a pick-up truck, etc. In any case, tools are part of the structure of the work, subject to change and manipulation; for example, various kinds of pens can be used for handwriting and the difference often makes a difference in the nature of the handwriting produced.
Part of that difference is motivational. The Equipment Factor in the architecture of work holds that the instrument or tool used can significantly affect the worker’s satisfaction level in the task at had. This seems clear enough for the functional effectiveness of a tool. Trying to cut bread with a dull knife, drive nails with a loose-headed hammer, or deliver goods in a mechanically dubious truck can be inefficient, frustrating, in some cased downright dangerous and also damaging to a person’s pride in work. All of this is de-motivating, in contrast to instances where a well-functioning tool or instrument helps you do good work with less frustration and more satisfaction.
The well-designed tool is not necessarily the most expensive one,
although paying a bit more for a better tool often pays off in the long run in more worker
satisfaction and effectiveness. However, there also seems to be a phenomenon in which a
tool becomes so sophisticated it tends to overwhelm a task/function and motivation for it.
Here, consider e-mail and computer-assisted graphics which has gotten more than a few
people uptight about complicating and expanding tasks, to "keep up with the
technology," (a computer expert friend calls this the "creative elegance").
Several normally quite, intelligent friends who used to write me rarely but meaningfully
now "justify" their possession of e-mail by sending me over-frequent dollops of
humor apparently from the bottom of some rust barrel; they would never have done this in
the days of "snail mail," which accordingly, I yearn to return to. Instruments
which automate functions may be a related phenomenon, useful even necessary functionally,
but making the function less personal and – for some of us at least – less
satisfying. For others who just want to get what is to them meaningless and frustrating
work out of the way, automating instruments may be just fine. But motivation for work is
not achieved by obliteration of it.
Beyond the functional, and less consciously acknowledged, is the fun value of tools. Consider here the man cutting the lawn atop his miniature tractor. True, the tractor functions well enough to cut the grass, bus so would other mechanisms with less fun-and-fantasy value. Gift wrapping can be more fun using cute, cartoon-ish colorful seals. Rubber ducks in bathtubs are not functional. But they can help motivate your child to participate in the work – serious effort with a purpose – of getting clean. Finally, a vehicle is more than a way to get from here to there. An acquaintance of mine covered the entire outside of his van with solidly-affixed pieces of bark and pottery. The "barkmobile" so called, does not get better gas mileage (probably less) nor does it suffer fewer repairs. But it is more fun (motivating) to drive around in for errands, delivers, etc.
So, in the aspect of work engineering dealing with equipment, don’t forget the toy factor, to bring the motivation of play into work. And so, our final architectural design of what started out as merely wrapping gifts, looks now like this:
My birthday is January 7th, just after Christmas……
Ivan Scheier
EXPLORING VOLUNTEER SPACE, 1982 Chapter Eight, pp 57-58
The Architecture of Work: Five Principles
Workshop Handout
- Main Sequence. Link elements over time to show evolving purpose.
- Feedback Loops. The end of a work process feeds back into an improved repetition of the work cycle (more than sheer repetition)
- Completion. At about the same time as one thing is being done, seize the opportunity to do something else which gives a fuller sense of total purpose achieved.
- Variety. At about the same time as one thing is being done, seize the opportunity to do something else for contrast, variety, a change of pace.
- Instrumentation: The Equipment Factor. Sometimes the motivation is largely in the tool through which a task is accomplished.
Example, Starting with WRAPPING GIFTS
You can apply this process in two ways:
- "Creating" new or expanded jobs by building more motivation into a task if it is difficult to get people to do willingly, e.g., wrap gifts, filing, attending board meetings, and/or
- Applying the principles to volunteer jobs or roles already in existence, "drawing a map" of such work as in the example above. If, as diagrammed, an existing volunteer role seriously misses observance of most or all of five principles (especially the first three or four), you may be headed for motivation trouble with this volunteer job (or already there).
The Voluntas Institute
April 12-16, 1992
Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
The Center For Creative Community
Santa Fe, New MexicoThough developed originally with traditional volunteers in mind, there’s nothing in the Architecture of Work that can’t be applied equally well to other kinds of work, to whatever degree remunerated or obliged. The experience of preparing this essay clinched that conclusion for me.
"All workers" is a pretty massive target audience. Moreover, the method, presented at many workshops, was usually well-received, popular as far as immediate reaction was concerned. Why then, has it been so unpopular in terms of actual usage in the real world which continues to exist outside of workshops and conferences? (If, twenty-five years after the method’s introduction, there are still only a few pages published on it, the reason is probably lack of demand for same.)
For one thing, I believe now that my workshop presentation succumbed to the trainer’s seduction – putting it out there was a whole lot cleaner and more integrated than it actually is. I generally started with the entire "wrapping gifts" design, probably giving the impression there were lots of examples like that, easy to find. Yet, in 25 years, that’s about the only example I ever came up with that illustrated all the principles applied so nearly in concert. I should have figured out why sooner.
In fact, the principles hardly ever apply clearly in concert. Even one at a time, as in this essay and as I now recommend – the principles are as likely to raise knotty issues – e.g. efficiently "vs" kindness – as they are to generate formula solutions in straightforward steps. Most people aren’t looking for another Pandora’s box.
Moreover, my workshop audience over the years predominantly came from structured, sometimes highly structured work settings, like hospitals, schools, probation departments and the like, where job descriptions are seen as refinements rather than confinements. I see now that the Architecture of Work, like most of my methods, tends to flourish mostly in flexible workplaces, usually (but not always) smaller, more informative ones, and is especially apt for the self-directed individual.
Finally, the Architecture of Work does talk about ideal structures, nice for inspiring at conferences, but so dramatically absent back home, as to discourage reaching so far, for the ideal. At the same time, paradoxically, the principles might seem to some people "only common sense" which anyone with any sense does automatically anyhow. (Except that, of course, common sense is usually so uncommon)
My current belief, then, is that the Architecture of Work does have value but mainly as a way of thinking about work, ideally, rather than as a straightforward; cookbook kind of method to be routinely applied overall.
As a way of thinking about work, the process can be used for original design of work – probably the less frequent case – or in analysis of existing jobs, work or tasks.
The elements of the job/task could be identified via a process similar to the initial one in Job Factoring, then graphed in terms of each of the four principles, one by one. If instead of motivation – enhancing architectural order, the diagrammed job reeks of chaos, we may still be able to add a touch here or there towards the ideal. What else are we doing, anyhow, in virtually all things?
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Ivan Scheier
Stillpoint
607 Marr
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, 87901
Tel (505) 894-1340
Email: ivan@zianet.comFor comments and editing suggestions please contact Mary Lou McNatt mlmcnatt@indra.com
