Michael White, Founder of MashTank | Getting leaders the data & tools they need to map-measure-optimize success.
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Productivity, retention, sales…There are a host of variables that determine long-term business success. But there’s a mother to all variables that many leaders aren’t paying attention to: work type.
Every activity that happens in a business is either a transaction or a project. The problem is that few people know how to identify and separate them as such. When leaders are left unaware, and tasks are left unidentified and mixed across the two categories, key problems occur that can lead to business decline, such as:
• Switching costs rise. Unchecked waste is incurred when people change from one work type to the other.
• Team managers struggle to manage the work not just within one person but between teammates.
• Senior-level leaders or directors lose the ability to clearly measure the work being done across teams.
Understanding The Types Of Work
Transactions are tasks that are recurring, have known outcomes, easy-to-measure units and predefined steps and are usually completed in a day. Think: ringing a cash register, pulling a crank, restocking a shelf, paying a single invoice.
Projects, on the other hand, are tasks that are done once or infrequently, have goals but no known outcomes, are hard to measure, steps are organic, and they can take weeks or months to complete. Designing a better way to process invoices is a project.
(Sure, a third type of work could be management. However, this role is about identifying opportunities, motivating people, monitoring outputs, driving consensus, innovating and scaling. In this role, a manager or leader is still partaking in the other two types of work to reach their goals.)
The Pitfalls Of Switching Between Types
Here’s a simplified example.
I’m a grocery store employee. You’re my manager.
While I’m standing idle at my register, you say the display out front looks pretty bad. We agree, and I run out to refresh it. During that time, an older gentleman waves at me from my register. I wave back.
A moment later, the gentleman has approached me and asked, “Do you work here?” Seemingly out of nowhere, you approach and ask why I haven’t helped this man.
I gesture at the display. “That’s for when there’s no one in line!” you say. Crestfallen, I walk back to my register, key in and help the older gentleman check out.
Here’s what happened.
1. The business incurred switching cost when I walked away from my register, when I walked back and when I had to key back in. This happens anytime a person has to physically, mentally or emotionally reorient to a task (such as something that requires creativity versus data, research or rote performance of practiced tasks).
2. Upon checkout reporting, I’ll likely perform worse than any peers who never had to leave their register. This is standard-breaking, and I’ll be defensive and unhappy in any performance review that doesn’t reflect that nuance and responsibility.
3. It’s not just the employee suffering; it’s also the manager who no longer has a sure-fire way to measure the performance of their people and the senior-level leader who no longer has a way to measure the performance of their teams and departments.
Taking A New Approach
So why does identifying and separating by task type solve all of this?
When you identify the two different types of work, it becomes apparent quickly that few people in your organization are solely dedicated to just one. By separating the two work types for every person, a world of possibilities opens up.
Not only do you reduce switching costs, which can instantly boost productivity on both sides, but on-time delivery can rise, financial metrics around these activities improve, people gain a deeper appreciation for the clarity of their role, and it becomes easier to compare performance between people and teams.
Imagine being able to perfectly understand the payroll cost per widget within a given department. Imagine being able to adeptly evaluate project delivery performance of a dedicated team that is not distracted by transactional work.
Mixing Work Types
For smaller businesses, this might seem like an impossibility. “We all have to wear a lot of hats” is what I hear most often. If you absolutely, invariably must mix work types, then at a minimum, block off separate time. Do so by the day, not the hour.
If you must mix work types in a given day (like if the transactional work must get done daily and the people doing that work are also the subject matter experts who should be in charge of the project-based work), then dedicate blocks of time to each work separately. This at least gives managers discrete blocks where tasks can be managed and measured differently.
Transaction work can now be specifically managed with a BI dashboard, whereas projects will have a progress tracker. Transactions can get a productivity boost (and clear forecast) through tools like gamification, whereas projects could use scrum points and a burn-down chart. Transactions can now be measured in productivity and quality, and projects can be measured by things like decreased time or spend.
The Purpose
And that’s really the whole point: This awareness and separation of work types is not only so that team members have clearer goals, greater happiness and retention because they’re being measured fairly and experiencing higher productivity/performance/efficiency/ease. It’s also to save the manager and directors from the cost of all those opposites: foggy vision and goals, turnover, switching cost and lost productivity/performance/revenue.
Financial reports will no longer put ROI, breakevens, IRR (project-based success measures) mixed in with payroll or vendor costs (transaction measures). Leaders can focus on load balancing, stakeholder reporting, driving ownership, increasing transparency and things like scaling, because other tasks (improving transaction efficiency, reducing rework, people management) are better sorted and taken care of by managers.
Then enters clear new opportunities, like where AI and automation can reduce workload, friendly competition can increase motivation, throughput can be more accurately projected and achieved, and empathy and cooperation keep everyone performing at their best for longer.
You’re not just separating types of work, you’re separating types of management, measurement and philosophies. That separation provides clarity. And that clarity provides higher ceilings for success.
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