Years ago, a few friends introduced me to a new use of the word “skating” to mean shirking one’s work responsibilities. One is skating when at work, seemingly productive, and deliberately accomplishing little or nothing. Note the difference from other forms of work avoidance, such as absenteeism. One of the best executed examples of skating was a guy helping clean a building. He spent an entire week with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge sitting and looking out a window. When someone came by, he wiped the sponge over the window a few times. When left alone, he went back to looking out the window.

I just left a job where I worked in a department of about fifty people. Some of them were the best with whom I’ve ever worked. Others were a questionable use of perfectly good space, light, and breathable air. Among the latter, I observed repeated and common threads that begin to form a pattern language of skating. I catalog a couple of them here not to encourage their use, but to suggest ways to detect and counter them.

Please keep in mind that the goal is to drive toward getting the work done, not to assign blame. I don’t care who shot John; I just want to make sure we don’t shoot him again.

Name: Can You Spare a Dime

Context: You are asked to perform a task that you want to avoid. You are a manager with responsibility for a budget.

Problem: You want to block the task from being performed.

Solution: Explain that you have insufficient resources to do the job. Not having enough people or material resources are good choices. Putting a high price tag on an undesirable initiative is a good way to kill it before it gets started. Worst case, even if it doesn’t work, the allocation of excess funds provides some consolation.

Remedy: Working around this objection depends a great deal on the local political situation. Management must be convinced that the cost estimate is inflated. I usually try to get details on the assumptions underlying the cost estimate; that often exposes the truth.

Name: Fireman and Arsonist

Context: You want to avoid the intimidating prospect of day to day work according to a plan.

Problem: A predictable, measured, and planned pace of work makes it easier to evaluate progress and quality of work. Work must therefore be made to inherently chaotic, requiring heroic fire fighting efforts.

Solution: Ensure that there’s always a crisis. If the workplace becomes calm, pick an issue and create a sense of emergency surrounding it. It takes a good sense of rhythm to get everyone jumping through rings of fire regularly. The reward is that workers trying to keep hold of a chaotic job are often lauded for their efforts with little examination of the quality of their work. An expert at this pattern is seen as a hero for having exceptional crisis management skills. The risk in this pattern is that the effort to fight the fires may be too great to qualify as shirking responsibility.

Remedy: This is a difficult pattern to overcome, particularly if the fires are genuine. I try to help the fireman/arsonist to start looking past the next fire drill and planning ahead. Unexpected changes and critical issues are a part of any engineering job. The goal is to make as much of the work relaxed and routine as possible. The trick is reigning in the arsonist so that he or she doesn’t continue to create trouble. If necessary, I’d have regular, informal discussions with the arsonist about relative importance of their assigned tasks.

Name: Houdini’s Escape

Context: You work off-site from your manager, such as by telecommuting.

Problem: You’ve been so successful with the other patterns in this list that you’ve now done very little for a long time. You wish to avoid this becoming apparent.

Solution: Disappear. Stop answering the phone. Don’t reply to emails. Occasionally send a short email to explaining the work is almost done or on its way. You might get lucky; some tasks really do become non-issues after a particular deadline or milestone has passed. In most cases, however, this probably won’t work forever. At best it forestalls the inevitable.

Remedy: Overcoming this pattern can be a time sink. I find one of the best tools is close contact. Next time I see this pattern, I’ll probably try a quick daily stand up meeting with the Houdini. It may also help to break tasks into small chunks of work and track status to a fine resolution. Early detection of trouble is essential. Catching the beginning of the escape routine makes it easier to nudge my wayward worker back on course.

Name: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

Context: You are asked to perform a task that you want to avoid.

Problem: You need to reverse the decision to perform the task.

Solution: Explain that the proposed task is not feasible. It could be that the process or methodology doesn’t apply to your situation. It could be because there are more important issues to address. It could be because the effort itself would be detrimental rather than beneficial. But whatever you do, make it clear that having to do as asked would add considerably to the already unreasonable sacrifices you are making.

Remedy: This one is pretty easy to overcome. I explain that the decision has been made and the task must be carried out. I find I have to pay extra attention to following up, however, as this worker can be expected to drag his or her feet.

Name: Twenty Questions

Context: You’re attending a meeting during which you’re expected to report status on a task, and you haven’t made significant progress.

Problem: You don’t want to get caught having not done anything.

Solution: Go on the offensive. Instead of providing status, immediately start asking questions about the task, the method to accomplish it, points of contact for information, and your teammates work as it touches on yours. By asking questions, you make yourself seem motivated and active, covering the fact that you really haven’t done anything. I once had the privilege of witnessing a master at this: she even managed to get her work assigned to others as action items from the meeting.

Remedy: I have two options to handle this: endurance or steering. If going the endurance route, I let my worker wear himself or herself out asking every question imaginable, then calmly repeat the inquiry about what’s been done and what hasn’t. With enough endurance, eventually the slacker will tire and admit to a real picture of what’s been done. Of course, if I had enough time to stand around wearing someone down, maybe it wouldn’t matter that the work isn’t getting done.

The second option, and my preference, is steering. I simply steer conversation back to the point. I explain that questions need to be saved for later to keep the status meeting focused. It’s important not to allow other team members to get drawn into lengthy discussion; questions for coworkers should be taken offline. Some people are pretty slippery, so this may have the feel of nailing jelly to a tree. I try not push too far in a public forum after confirming that there’s a problem. I can’t think of a circumstance where there’s something to be gained by publicly embarrassing someone. It’s better to take up the topic later in a private setting.

Name: Waiting for Godot

Context: You have a task to complete, and it requires inputs from others, peer or supervisory review, or coordination among departments.

Problem: You don’t want to do the work.

Solution: Work diligently until you reach a stopping point that requires action from someone else. Saunter over to the water cooler while you wait or web surf at your desk. If the task is particularly important, then it’s vital that you not do any other work while waiting, as waiting for this first task is the most important thing you can be doing. If someone asks for status, explain what you’re waiting for and from whom. This subtly suggests that you are blameless for the lack of progress. Definitely do not mention that you haven’t followed up in three weeks or are getting push back that you don’t know how to overcome.

Remedy: This pattern can be mitigated with a very simple line of questioning. I keep asking for more information. If a task is held up by the need for data, I ask what data is needed, what needs to be done to get it, who’s working on it, the schedule to which they’re working, and the contingency if the deadline passes. My goal is to force the layout of a very clear plan and timetable to accomplish the work. If this conversation instead ends up exposing the lack of such a concrete plan, I help put one in place. (Remember, the goal here is never to trip someone up to justify blaming them. The goal is always to drive toward getting the work done.)

Name: White House Press Secretary

Context: You are asked a question to which you ought to know the answer.

Problem: You don’t know the answer, or it would be against your best interest to reveal it.

Solution: Pick some other question for which you do have an answer that doesn’t harm your interests. Provide that answer instead. If the question is asked again, explain your irrelevant answer in greater length and detail as though the problem is with the listener’s comprehension skills. An expert at this technique will exercise sufficiently poor communication skills that his or her supervisor will have difficulty telling if the answer really addressed the question or not.

Remedy: I do not know of an elegant way around this problem: best to go straight through it. I explain that the answer I’m getting isn’t sufficient, then ask the question again. I do consider, though, that I may be the source of the problem and try to ask my question more clearly.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Leading the Teeming Horde. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.