Workaday Realities

After college, I was thrilled to land a job as a newspaper reporter, even though the pay was paltry. In the years after the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story, being a reporter seemed like the sexiest, most exciting job for a recent college graduate.

While it certainly had its bracing moments, on balance it was a pretty tedious and boring job day-in and day-out. As a suburban beat reporter, I found myself sitting in interminable evening meetings of town finance committees, sewer commissions, school boards and the like, filing my stories, ever alert for a breaking Big Story. Aside from a couple of local crime stories, none came my way – which is kind of the way it is in that business.

While they certainly worked hard throughout the process of uncovering the Watergate mess, Woodward and Bernstein essentially got lucky to have their Big Story fall into their laps on a slow news night.

Sure, I got the chance to quench my desire to do lots of creative writing in fulfilling the obligation to write feature articles about local personalities and events. Yet I soon reached the conclusion that about 90 percent of my workday was spent on mundane tasks and, at best, about 10 percent involved truly interesting work – stuff that challenged me and helped me justify getting out of bed in the morning.

Over the years, I’ve reached a parallel conclusion about most work. Unless you’re among the small minority of people who are doing what you truly love, it’s likely that that 90/10 split holds true. Ninety percent of your workday consists of tending to tedious tasks and dealing with hassles that you’d rather not have to. The remaining 10 percent of your day involves doing what you want to do, being challenged, using the skills for which you have trained.

Okay, maybe you’ll quibble about the 90/10 split. Maybe you’ll say it’s 75/25 or 60/40. But I don’t think you’d disagree that much of the work that people do is banal, tedious and often a series of hassles getting in the way of letting them do what they excel at. I don’t want to be overly negative here because I know that there are plenty of people who enjoy their work, including the dull parts.

But my point is that this is a truism of work life that managers and leaders must always bear in mind. While it’s tempting to assume that everyone shares their enthusiasm for the organization and its vision, the truth is likely less than that.

The reality is that most people toiling on factory floors or in cubicles are showing up for the paycheck and benefits, trying to perform their jobs well and to their bosses’ satisfaction, hoping that they get the promotions and raises they feel they’ve earned or, in a time of economic crisis, hoping they don’t get laid off.

Communicating in such an environment then, it is critical to cut through the cynicism and ennui that inevitably exist in many corners of the organization, bred by the reality of people doing things they’d rather not be doing.

In an on-line discussion on the topic of communicating with employees, one fellow opined that leaders and managers must always strive to be “plain spoken” and honest in their communications, avoiding artificiality and obfuscation. I second that, but add the following corollary.

Yes, be honest and plainspoken. But equally important is making sure your communications are relevant to the target audience. Make it pertinent to peoples' location (in a multi-site company), their specific area of responsibility/function, their job title, etc. It is not helpful to communicate a carbon copy message to all audiences without accommodating the differences inherent in their position, responsibilities and location.

Relevance often is as easy as answering the #1 question on employees' minds, particularly during stressful times: "What does this mean to me?" The answer to that question obviously varies on the basis of the assorted factors of the specific job assignment.

Accommodating those differences in our communications can bring meaning to people, helping them connect the dots and find the connection between what they do and the larger purpose of the organization.

To that end, communications should be driven by centralized content (i.e., the big message) and localized relevance (i.e., linking the larger message to the everyday local realities that people deal with). You won’t erase the mundane banalities of people’s workaday realities, but you may open their eyes to the larger context so that they can better see "the big picture" and gain a better appreciation of purpose, even in the midst of the daily workplace tedium and hassles.