Why are we so bad at measuring knowledge worker performance?
And why are we outsourcing the very human business of managing and mentoring to software?
The conversation around “quiet quitting” sparked a lot of debate about what it is, is it a real thing, does our new post-pandemic remote-work culture work? And, then, of course, was this horrifying article and podcast from the NYT about software that employers are using to not only monitor their employees, but deny them rightful wages for work done outside of a measurable context.
That wage workers have long been subjected to such indignities should not go unnoticed or uncommented, but the move to monitoring knowledge workers was both surprising and confounding. How on earth do you measure their work and productivity, and why are we so bad, collectively, at determining if knowledge workers are effective in their roles.
As an elder Millennial/Oregon Trail gen, I often work - write, roadmap, ideate - in a notebook or otherwise offline. I have to think through problems, and often do so on a walk - either outside or pacing my home office. I prefer voice to Slack. Much of the work I do would not be captured by the software described in the article.
If these cutting edge graphics were a part of your childhood, you know the middle-child angst of being caught between Gen X and Millennials.
For the last 10-12 years of my career - when my roles and responsibilities became more managerial and strategic - many of my stated goals on a quarterly or annual MBO were either laughably nebulous (“demonstrate leadership”) or highly, highly dependent on other teams. There was little of my role - largely product marketing and go-to-market strategy - that was entirely within my control, and, I imagine, that made determining my value and effectiveness difficult. (This may be why marketers gravitate to endeavors like lead generation and branding that they can 100% control, but that don’t necessarily serve the organization best. I’ll touch on that in more depth soon…
But, beyond complex, strategic, cross-function goals, I just don’t think we have a good framework for understanding what knowledge worker effectiveness is, and the remote-work culture spurred by the pandemic has really brought that to light.
First, let’s talk about facetime. I’m talking about everything from arriving and leaving the office earliest/latest, to attending meetings, to having a pulse (if not any actual responsibility) on the goings on in the org. Facetime is a focus on presence, not on output. For the record, I’m not some recluse who hates the idea of gathering together - quite the opposite - I can’t wait to get back into an office, and I am my most productive when I can meet physically with people and collaborate. What I want to note here is the tendency to conflate presence with output and effectiveness.
We all know the guy (or gal), who attends every meeting, comments sharply in each one, but has little to no responsibility for any projects. I’ve known several of these people, and they were all perceived to be “working hard”; their effectiveness was often in doubt, but their work ethic, commitment to the org, and participation were not, and these things were valued. Plain and simple. And, if they were being monitored by the software noted in the NYT article/podcast, they would be rated very highly. Always present, always accounted for, but not necessarily contributing.
Next, let’s talk about output and expectations. This one is a doozy, and, after 20 years experience, I can firmly state that no one knows how long anyone’s knowledge-worker job should take. Of course, I’m oversimplifying here, but, in my career, I have seen wildly different volumes of output for individuals and in roles that, on paper, were identical. And, we haven’t even touched on the quality of the work, simply, what can one person be expected to contribute in a given period of time.
To me, this lack of insight and understanding is the product of two main managerial failures.
Managers who have never done the job of the people that they’re managing.
Relatedly, a failure to properly scope both work and a new role, which would require years of hands-on experience.
I’m going to break down one stark example of this that I experienced back in the late aughts. A marketing manager that I had recently inherited was tasked with drafting a blog post for a new feature release. After several early meetings with her, I came to understand that this was her only current responsibility. When I asked her when I could expect to see a draft, she pondered for a moment, and then replied “2 weeks”. I’ve drafted many a blog post in my career, including ones focused on feature and product releases, and I can confidently say that it should take no more than 3-5 hours to research, outline, and draft in a start-up, <100 person org environment. Maybe 6-8 if the product is extremely complex, which this was not. But, my direct report suggested that it would take the better part of 80 hours. I pressed, both to make clear that I expected it completed in less time, and to break down the elements of the project: Research with product to understand the feature, draft outline of the salient points to be confirmed with product, and drafting of the copy.
…he didn’t have a firm grasp on what she was doing or how long it should take, and this level of output, over time, became acceptable.
To be clear, the issue wasn’t the 2 weeks - it would have fit within the product launch timeline - the issue was that this was all she was contributing to the organization. My predecessor was the company’s head of sales, and he didn’t have a firm grasp on what she was doing or how long it should take, and this level of output, over time, became acceptable.
The issue is that this situation didn’t exist in a vacuum. Other team members were working on this feature launch, many contributing far more than she was; some were waiting for her blog post to do their work. When I first started in my role, and saw the backlog of work to do, I assumed we needed another hire, but quickly came to realize that we just needed a productive hire in this marketing manager role. The effects rippled throughout the organization, but it wasn’t glaringly obvious to anyone. I’ve seen - and I’m sure you have, as well - this scenario, over and over again.
To come back to our NYT article, the solution isn’t employee-monitoring software and a rapid decline into an Orwellian dystopia, the solution is to hire managers with experience in the roles they’ll be managing, and afford them the time and space to scope the work their teams do.
Finally, if we’re talking about knowledge workers, we have to acknowledge that there can be a marked difference in quality of output, especially for those tasked with solving problems or otherwise developing solutions that aren’t readily apparent.
This is especially hard to do when an employee’s success or failure isn’t 100% (or sometimes even 50%) in their hands. I’m going to offer up an example I’m intimately familiar with: My husband does environmental and climate change advocacy, and he spent the better part of 2 years working with legislators from Virginia to Maine, advocating for TCI, the Transportation & Climate Initiative. He was incredibly excited about this piece of legislation and worked tirelessly on it through the pandemic, through my first pregnancy, and the birth of our first child. Late last year, it was dealt a death blow by one of the participating state’s governors because of rising gas prices, and the legislative momentum has yet to recover.
Did John do anything wrong? Of course not, he’s my husband ;-)
But, in a situation like this, how does a manager assess performance? By using experience to distinguish between actions that he is responsible for, externalities that he can influence, and externalities that he can not influence. In this case, obviously the externalities that he could not influence were overwhelming, but this type of scenario is not uncommon. And there’s simply no way for software to capture any of these details. Frankly, even the far less creepy goal-setting software like 15five, with its red/orange/green marks doesn’t allow for much of this nuance.
And, we haven’t even touched on the perverse incentives that the goal-setting and monitoring software create for employees. Don’t do that abstract work that takes you off-screen, just sit and click on things on your computer, and you’ll be marked as a high performer.
The solution is that companies have to value and invest in experience, managerial skills, managerial time, and get comfortable with the nuance inherent in strategic, knowledge-worker performance.