The Shape of Work
In my last episode, I wrote about the Office and how the shape of our built environment affects our work. But we are not mere material, friend. We’re energetic as well. And intellectual. And the shape of the energetic and intellectual environment also affects how we work.
The underlying philosophy remains the same — people come together to work. They bring their energies, their intellect and their skills to bear on solving a problem — or, if you do SCRUM, a never-ending and sysephean ordeal of problems that never seem to end — but that’s another story.
As the person responsible for their output, it’s best for you if you can let other things do the work for you i.e. construct an environment where these energies are focussed and intense rather than shooting off into space. The Office talked about how architecture and interior design can help you. In this article I will talk about how the shape of the work can help you manage better.
But what is this ‘shape of the work’?
The ‘shape rotator’ pejorative wouldn’t be so hurtful if it weren’t true. We’re good at it. It got us through engineering school. It made software development tolerable and this allowed it to turn into a full-blown obsession. We’re used to thinking in systems and their interlocking parts. We’re driven by shapes. Shapes are amazing. Shape a system correctly and it does all the work for you.
And so it’s a shame that when we become managers we think we have to somehow behave like Bill.
We don’t. It is shapes all the way down.
And the shape of the work is one of the most psychologically important tools in the managers toolbox. What we’re doing is turning the work at hand into a ‘quest’. Game designers know all too well that a quest works best when it is just beyond the limit of the player. Some stretch, not too much, not enough to break their motivation. So for a moment, forget that you’re a manager and imagine instead that you’re dungeon master (you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Tell the truth.)
How to do this in real life? I’ll explain with a few examples:
The State Machine
I had been consulting with a company and it wasn’t yet known by many that I was to be the CTO. So the developers would be quite free and open with me. One day, down at the paan-tapri, I found two of them smoking desultorily.
‘What’s going on these days?’, I ask.
’Oh, nothing at all’, they say.
’Nothing at all?’ I ask, surprised.
Yes, they say. Well you see we run the Acquisition flows, and they are now so brittle and at the same time so critical to business that no one dares to touch them.
It is true that the onboarding flow was very complex, full of branching conditions and loops and offline verifications and so on. Even so, I shake my head and say - well actually that sounds like a very interesting situation. Looks like you’re looking at a rewrite of the onboarding flow as a State Machine.
A State Machine? they ask. What’s that?
’Homework’, I say as I stub out my cigarette and leave.
I was equal parts surprised and not surprised when they come by my desk three days later, their eyes shining with newfound knowledge and they start babbling - we looked up State Machines, they’re awesome, I can see the whole system in my head, this is so cool, we’re going to go rewrite the whole damn thing as a State Machine.
And they did. A few months later some PM came up with a plan that required changes to the acquisition flow and the team was ready - deployed a whole new acquisition flow with the new feature.
Do you see what happened? I ‘shaped’ the work so that it would be meaningful. Starting from a place of desultory disconnection with their work, I brought them into a deep connection and made work a joy. After that I didn’t need to tell them twice. They worked hard and worked well and worked wonders. And they started to love their job. This is what happens when you shape the work well.
My father tells the story of how he, when he was a young officer in the army, was taking a train journey with another officer. As they settled in for the long night ahead, my father kicked off his shoes and lay down on the bunk. His fellow officer on the other hand took out a fresh bedsheet, changed into pyjamas and thus prepared, fished out a bottle of rum, two glasses and some dry snacks from his bag.
Seeing the look of equal parts shock and awe on my father’s face he simply says -
VK, Any fool can be uncomfortable.
And so it is with work. Any fool can turn work into a boring grind and then glorify hustle culture and 70 hour weeks. Very few can shape the work to be meaningful.