In the classic children’s story of the three little pigs, I see a parable for modern managers. Indeed, as I read and reread the story to my three sons, I wonder about today’s odds of keeping the wolf at bay and the house of bricks in tack.

My guess is that if my three sons-or your sons and daughters-set out upon graduation from the College of Commerce seeking monetary fortunes first, they will join the two-thirds majority who are masters of quick and easy, straw and sticks.

Already, our teenage population is perfecting the art of work-avoidance while taking comfort in inflated grades and “don’t worry, be happy” friends like Joe Fifer and Sam Fiddler.

Work-Avoidance Strategies

No self-respecting, college-educated American youth is going to do any real work of the organization beyond age thirty. I define real work as the creation and delivery of the primary products and services of the company; the serving of actual customers; selling to potential clients; value-added support and management of those functions; and faithful, fruitful leadership.

If by age thirty, people haven’t mastered the games of delegating up and down, putting on appearances, politicking, and socializing, they deserve the awful fate of having to work for a living.

Meanwhile, back at the brickhouse, old-school professionals-the practical pigs-continue to work themselves into early graves or early retirement, whichever comes first. No storybook ending here-in fact, many executives are finding themselves on the outside of the highly politicized house of bricks, with all the real work of the organization, while their quick-and-easy partners are comfortably situated inside, sipping lemonade with the doors locked.

Frankly, I’m no longer shocked when I see such pigs running around the corporate house, letting the big bad work (work they were hired to do) in the back door for others to deal with.

So, who’s doing the real work of the organization? Primarily folks in four different camps:

• Third-world nationals who don’t know any better
• Women and minorities who do it because it’s there
• Youth (under thirty) who have no power to avoid it
• Seniors (over fifty) who do it out of duty

This leaves the late-twenty, thirty and forty-something folks relatively free to maneuver: to play games at the expense of their employers; to mate and merge; to divorce, divide and conquer, even fear itself. What’s to fear when there’s no big bad work in sight?

These gamesmen and politicians avoid work in many ways.

• Seek training and development. Who seeks and gets the training? The pigs who least need it. In fact, training has become one of several work-avoidance strategies and havens for many professionals. Of course, one reason we see so much white-male flight into training seminars is because the minorities, women and powerless people are needed to do the work-somebody has to stay home when management and “high potentials” are in training.
• Play office politics. Office politicians spend big chunks of time developing liaisons, networks, CYA policies and procedures and other work-averse practices. Running the office has come to mean running for office, away from any real work. Office politicians flourish in staff roles, where they are safe from line fire. They become purchasing agents, accountants, lawyers, communications specialists and public relations agents: people who don’t do the real work of the organization. Some, in fact, would not recognize it if they saw it. And these professionals can stay on staff for generations, safely tucked inside, while others-including many senior executives who built these houses brick by brick with their bare hands-are exposed to all the hostile elements of the competitive environment.
• Engage in busy work. Keeping busy or appearing productive has never been easier. With so many mazes and machines and mergers, one can busy himself or herself with the endless minutia of managing and working in the modern organization.
• Build and serve “internal customers” and private networks. Bureaucracies-just look at the Federal Government-tend to turn and feed on themselves when no external crisis is occupying their time and attention. We then see dozens of people serving their “internal customers,” even though these “customers” aren’t engaged in anything even remotely related to the real work of the organization. Dozens more are using the organization as a springboard for developing their own private networks.
• Pursue private agendas. Many people are employed in modern organizations for reasons other than to do the real work of the company. In fact, their busy private agendas won’t even permit them to get close to the real work.
• Do rework. The “hidden organization” employs an alarming number of people who are doing over the things that weren’t done right the first time.
• Attend long meetings and lazy communications. Sacrosanct meetings, chit-chat, socializing and stale communication can easily fill an average working day.
• Take breaks, succumb to distractions and diversions. Extended coffee breaks, lunch “hours” and “flex time” maneuvers easily eat a couple of hours. In fact, in some companies, working six hours a day is “close enough,” given the degree of confusion, clutter, noise, distractions and diversions built into the working environment.
• Log telephone and computer time. When your line is busy, you are thought to be busy. And turning to the computer screen is seen as a sacred experience. Like confession, it’s not to be interrupted, even if all that’s going on is game-playing and pirating.
• Read and write nonsense. Keeping abreast of new thought and development is commendable-but in reviewing the “literature,” many get side-tracked into reading articles and books (on company time) that have little or no relevance to their work. A host of other folks spend their days writing stuff that nobody reads.

This list is hardly exhaustive; it just scratches the surface. Professional work-avoiders-some executives foremost among them-know there are a thousand ways to skin the wolf.

Sticks and Straws

In all too many circles, America has become a parody of itself. Long fed a constant advertising diet of “quick and easy, fast and free,” we now face the penance: for every past sin or indulgence, we must develop a discipline-not just the discipline of early-morning workouts and smart diets (as healthy as that is) but the discipline of doing the real work of the organization better, faster, more effectively.

If we can regain and maintain that basic discipline in business, we ought to be competitive, even in brick-and-mortar industries. But if we become a nation of sticks and straws, then we must rely on our shop-worn political and marketing savvy; and we must hope that outside in the streets, the wolf is too preoccupied with his own problems to mount an attack. Any real competition, and the house of sticks and straws will collapse like cards.

Once into minutia management and counterfeit leadership, executives get all caught up in a myriad of social problems, as if the corporation exists to nurse, burp and diaper its newly hired MBAs; play welfare agency to employees with disintegrated marriages and families; and provide general education to a poorly educated work force.

Management then becomes a self-justifying endeavor-excused from doing any real work; incapable of getting any real results; divorced from the front line (if not the first wife); and engaged to the social and political networks. Each real worker must then support two or three work-avoiders-and it’s a heavy load to bear.

How to Get More Real Work Done

Precious little real work will get done as long as people are paid for straw-and-stick activity.

Nothing of much meaning, substance, quality and worth can get done in modern organizations without genuine leadership.
The genuine leader sets a high standard; defines what the real work is; and makes sure every person is either doing the real work of the organization or directly supporting the people who are doing the real work and serving the real customers.

Genuine leaders create more meaning for whole people in challenging jobs; they install responsibility and accountability at every level; they reward performers, especially those on the front lines; they find better ways for getting the work done; and they tie compensation to performance of real work and to achievement of desired results.

Is Anyone Safe Anymore?

I’m not sure anyone is “safe and sound” in the house of bricks anyway. Corporations have too long perpetuated the myth that they can deliver on the promise of security and safety and supply life meaning and satisfaction to every worker.

We hear “practical pig” executives making such false promises, as if they had a kettle of boiling water under the chimney. No big bad work is going to get them and theirs-la, la, la, la, la.

Even a house of bricks will collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy-if the competition doesn’t get it first. If executives are afraid of the big, bad real work of the company and are into sexy substitutes-the battle is lost. The houses of straw and sticks have, for the most part, already fallen. Bricks, too, may collapse: there are many precedents, and Donald Trump and his towers may soon be the next case in point.

Precious little real work will get done as long as people are paid for straw-and-stick activity-perpetuating the myth of corporate welfare independent of real work and global market competitiveness.

Ken Shelton, Editor