Shortcuts and Makework

On the face of it, shortcuts and makework may seem like they are opposites.

A shortcut is a faster way to do something that effectively pushes out the consequences down the road. You take the quick and easy way now, only to pay for it later.

Makework, on the other hand, is anything that you are made to do that does not directly or indirectly contribute to the work at hand. For instance, you fill out a complicated form with copious details that is ultimately ignored forever.

Makework is usually some people trying to control or throttle others, often an abuse of power, or a justification of their value.

In bureaucratic organizations, the centralized control over poorly understood aspects of the company is usually thick with makework. There are plenty of administrators trying to control things that they do not understand. Thus, the rules and processes get weird and form the basis for lots of politics.

But the two are oddly related. Where you see one, you usually see the other.

The root cause is time. There is a project that has a tight timeline. But the people working keep losing huge blocks of time to makework. However, as makework is an integral part of the organization, blaming it for being late is not allowed. So, in order to try to catch up, they resort to a lot of shortcuts. The long-term consequences don’t matter if, in the short term, you will get in trouble for being late. The context of the project forces mistakes and panic.

It gets triggered the other way, too. Some people just take shortcuts out of habit; the project looks initially crazy successful. But as the long-term consequences come due, it collapses. In the downfall, lots of unrelated people jump in to “help”, like bureaucrats and generic management. Since they don’t understand and they don’t know why a once successful effort suddenly flipped, they propose a lot of work that they believe will fix the problem. More tracking, more documentation, more sign-offs, more meetings, etc. But all of this is effectively makework, and the real problem of replacing the shortcuts causing all of the grief gets ignored. The project ends up under the microscope, which amplifies its problems and does not correct them.

Mostly, though, the best approach is to be rigorously practical. Minimize both shortcuts and makework. Carefully assess any and all effort with respect to both of those categories. If it smells like one or the other, don’t do it. Get the core work done as best as possible.

The other part is to tackle the hardest parts first, don’t leave them for later, and don’t rush through them. While that gives the appearance of being late right from the get-go, it provides two valuable properties.

First, if you get stuck, you can raise a late flag early, rather than later, which tends to mitigate some of the bureaucrats coming out of the woodwork and drowning you with makework.

Second is that a shortcut on the hard stuff is way more destructive than a shortcut on the easy stuff. If time forces you to take shortcuts, then the ones with minimal consequences are far better. They are less costly to repair later. If the foundations are solid, you have a better shot of recovery when late. In many organizations, you are already late long before you even realize that you have work to do. It’s normal, so you need to adopt habits that mitigate it.

The biggest problem, though, is that coming up with shortcuts or makework is often a lot easier than doing things properly. It’s the easy path for both the workers and management. But it is an unsuccessful path too. It distracts from the things that really need to get done.

Ultimately, there is some work that needs to be finished with at least enough quality to keep the detractors at bay. Do that work, don’t get lost by trying to avoid it.