Work as Imagined vs Work as Done

Work as Imagined vs Work as Done

In last week’s newsletter about human error, we looked at why and how people make mistakes. One of the categories of error we explored was “violations”, where people don’t carry out the work as per protocol or procedure. This is where we venture into the realm of “work as imagined” vs “work as done”.

Traditional Taylorist “Scientific Management” approaches to work typically had a tendency to assume that work as imagined could be translated directly into the work to be done. Scientific Management deconstructs the technical side of work down into its smallest components. It attempts to eradicate nuance and context, and it disregards the human factor completely by assuming that people will function as machines. Fortunately, we have since largely acknowledged that this approach doesn’t work.

“…in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is.”
– Benjamin Brewster

We recognise now that how people think the work is done, and how the work is actually done are different. This observation itself is not new, and dates at least back to the 1950s in L’analyse du travail: Facteur d’économie humaine et de productivité by Jean-Marie Faverge, André Ombredane. Maybe this idea emerged first in France because the French terms tâche and activité refer specifically to the task to be done (tâche) and the actual activity itself (activité).
 

In fact, we can break work down further, as this comprehensive article by Steven Shorrock shows. 

• Work as imagined: how we think others might do the work
• Work as prescribed: how the work should be done
• Work as disclosed: how we describe doing the work
• Work as done: how the work is actually done

Work as Imagined

Work as imagined will always be different to work as done. When we imagine work, we never make mistakes, we don’t forget steps, and we always do it “right”. But that’s incorrect. In fact, the more distant we are in time and space from the work actually being done, the less accurately we can imagine it. Additionally, particularly in emergency or high pressure scenarios, we tend to imagine a greater level of objectivity, and greater “situational awareness” than we have in practice when we’re doing the work. We suffer from optimism bias and neglect to think about all the real-world challenges that we face when actually trying to do work.

Work as Prescribed

Work as prescribed may be laid out by people who have previously done the work, people who have supervised others doing it, or surprisingly often, by people who have no experience of the work at all. The Toyota Production System (TPS) principle of Genchi Genbutsu describes the practice of getting as close to the work as possible to learn most about the work. Interestingly though, even Taiicho Ohno, co-creator of the TPS, failed to always follow this principle; he once insisted that operators work multiple machines simultaneously in order to maximise efficiency. However he had neglected to actually try to operate more than one machine at a time to see how difficult it was. This resulted in poorer performance and satisfaction from workers because how the person prescribing the work imagined the work was done was significantly different to how it was actually done. (From The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology and Management at Nissan and Toyota, Ma Cusumano)

In practice, it’s impossible to prescribe the work both accurately and completely. The work may be done in many different ways, the environment in which the work is done changes and the people doing the work learn better, faster, and more effective ways of working. 

Indeed, work as prescribed is rarely the “best” way to do the work, and violating the prescriptions may be the only way to get the job done in reality. In one case described by Sidney Dekker, a Renfe driver, frustrated at the company’s disregard for how work was done in practice, stopped the train and abandoned it at a station with all its passengers, because the official rules showed he’d exceeded his duty time limit. Renfe claimed that most drivers have “common sense” – implying that most drivers routinely have to breach work as prescribed rules. In fact, closely following prescriptions for work can be an effective way of preventing the work getting done. This is exemplified by the union approach of “working to rule”, where employees agree to do exactly what the official rules say they have to, to the detriment of the actual outcome or output. This is also known as “malicious compliance”, and in fact there is an entire very addictive subreddit dedicated to the topic!

Work as Disclosed

Work as disclosed (sometimes known as work as espoused) is, I feel, where psychological safety really comes into play. We cannot accurately describe the way we do work if we do not feel psychologically safe enough to be honest about it. If we feel we might be punished for mistakes, we’re unlikely to admit that the way we do work isn’t the same as work as prescribed. If we feel that our status, our role, or career is at risk if we disclose too much, we might instead choose to withhold that information. Then we’re becoming Brent, and work as disclosed will have very little overlap with work as done.

When to comes to work as disclosed, we’re fallible in our recollections and probably don’t remember exactly how we did the work. We may also deliberately, with good intent, simplify the description of work, to help a lay person understand it. And we may tell a different story to our boss than we do to our colleagues. In psychologically safe environments, the correlation between work as done and work as disclosed will be higher, whilst in environments where psychological safety is low, the correlation between work as done and work as described will be correspondingly low. 

Work as Done

Work as done is the actual stuff that matters – what we do and how we do it. This extends to the psychology of the people doing the work, the context, and the interactions between those people. The context in which work is done will rarely be as imagined; the real world is influenced by shifting priorities, cognitive demands, environmental factors, the presence of incentives or punishments and even personal feelings such as hunger or tiredness.

Gaps between work as done and work as imagined or prescribed may be very large. We may even be fully aware of these gaps, but tolerant of the delta between the categories. The work as prescribed may be written in order to comply with policy or regulation, whilst practitioners and management are cognisant that it “doesn’t work like that in real life.”

Acknowledging the gap between work as imagined and work as done can challenge traditional managerial authority and Taylorist management approaches. It means we have to recognise that the people closest to the work understand best how to do the work.

In order to improve the work, and make work safer, we must understand how it’s actually done, not just how we think it’s done, or how we’d like it to be done.

In order to improve quality, outcomes, and the safety of work, we need to maximise the overlap between work as imagined, and work as done – to close the gap between perception and reality.

Here’s a great piece by Claire Cox, Patient Safety Lead at Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, who shares a recent technique she used to explain the difference between ‘work as imagined’ and ‘work as done’. And here is a fantastic deck by Erik Hollnagel about work as imagined vs work as done, the ETTO principle, and the blunt end vs the sharp end.

Closing the gap between Work as Imagined and Work as Done

How do we do that? We can start by building a better understanding of how work is done, through conversations, observations, and simulations. We need to be able to ask the right questions – especially the “stupid” questions – in order to truly understand what’s happening and avoid assumptions and generalisations. Psychological safety in these environments is crucial, lest we build a false picture of work as done, and widen the gap between imagination and reality.

Psychological Safety in the Workplace

This is a fantastic paper by Jill Maben, Jane Ball and Amy C. Edmondson, focusing on three workplace conditions that matter for improving quality and safety in healthcare: staffing; psychological safety, teamwork, and speaking up; and staff health and well-being at work. I work with a number of NHS Trusts in the UK and this has become an invaluable resource.

In this podcast episode of “The Ludicast”, a podcast focused on pedagogy and academic teaching practice, called “Here Be Dragons”, Dr. Rowan Brookes talks about using improv techniques in class sessions, being authentic, and fostering psychological safety.

Here’s an HBR article from Tim Clarke (of The Four Stages of Psychological Safety) about How a CEO can create psychological safety in meetings. Tim suggests ten practices and behaviours that improve psychological safety, whether you’re a CEO or not.

Much of the world is currently experiencing a cost of living crisis. And it’s important to recognise the impact that this has on our mental health and of those around us. Here’s an infographic from Rehab Recovery that shows how affected different people are likely to be.

Here’s a great video from ZDoggMD called “Breaking The Silence: Shame In The Medical Community” with Dr. Emily Silverman. This highlights some real challenges for folks in the medical field, particularly around admitting that you’re struggling and asking for help.

This week’s poem:

“Of Treason” by Sir John Harington

Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.


Sir John Harington was a godson of Queen Elizabeth I, but he had been banished from court for telling risqué stories, and exiled to Kelston near Bath. During his exile, he built himself a house, and invented the first flushing lavatory, which he named Ajax.