Customer Reviews

Fake Work: Why People Are Working Harder than Ever but Accomplishing Less, and How to Fix the Problem

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My Name is Tyler. I'm an actor, and a musician. At fist glance, a title like "Fake Work", immediately brings to mind the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."
As you delve into the book (further than 10 pages, Mr. Karten), you are immediately cast into a world of corporate nonsense, and Tom-Sawyer-foolery; where the things that seem so critical to being or SEEMING successful are placed under a microscope, and revealed to be a hindrance to oneself, or to whom one works for.
This book forces everyone to ask a Hamlet-esque question: Am I Doing Fake Work, or Real Work? As an Actor, I read this book without the focus of a corporate lens, and yet it still spoke to my profession as well. How many films have gone over-budget due to poor planning, or misguided alignment - the cogs in the proverbial machine not all turning at once? How many millions of dollars end up on the cutting room floor? How many of us - not just in our work, but in our lives - do things that don't serve our ultimate goals?
While reading this book, I conjured the metaphor of a beehive. In a beehive none of the worker bees are micro-managed. None of them spend time - or rather waste time - doing things that don't serve the hive. Every member on every level of the hive understands its strategic relevance to the success of the hive, and they all just do their job. (and they don't even get paid.)
I know full-well that a metaphor like this is missing the complex intricacies of any corporation or business, but the key message to me is: Understand your job, and how it helps your company thrive. From an extra to the producer of a film - everyone plays a critical role in telling a story successfully.
I don't know about anyone else out there, but the story of a long, hard day of bailing hay, and plowing the fields; and coming inside to a warm home-cooked meal and a smiling wife, is a Romance to me. The story of the person sitting in front of a computer, of staying up all night or weekend, of pots upon pots of coffee to get that one document done for your company, and have it ignored - is a Tragedy.
We could all use a little more family time, a little less stress, and a better economy, but this book won't solve that problem on its own - It needs the help of dedicated workers. Read this book. Follow the Paths and just do real work.

I was glad to come into a copy of this book "Fake Work". I am a supervisor at a computer support desk with student employees. Because of the stories and examples in this book, I have been able to teach better ways of thinking to my students. As they graduate and go on to jobs in all fields of work, I hope they take something with them to do real work and have time for family and to live life!

I love the examples throughout the book. The examples help me to find comparable situations in my work life as well as my home and family. I appreciate the time and experiences Mr. Nielson and Mr. Peterson have had and now share in this book.

Additionally, I love that each chapter has the "Road Map For Action" to summarize the learnings and give me a place to start asking questions.

I have told and retold the story about 'The Road To Nowhere' so many times. It has almost become a theme in my life.

I highly recommend this book not just for a manager to read, but for an entire organization to adopt the teachings of this book. Every member of the team can be a part of making a difference in their own way and collectively.

What a great book! A kind of anonymous whistle blow; yet another inconvenient truth about work-life. As a psychologist in solo private practice with zero necessity for "fake work," having read this book, I find myself feeling overwhelmingly fortunate with the opportunity to earn a living with minimum of pretense. "Fake work" - the phenomenon, not the book - is an existential calamity. Building roads into nowhere is what rotted Soviet style socialism from inside out (as they used to say in my country of origin, "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work"). Sure, work that is not aligned with company's strategic goals is a tactical productivity loss. But, most importantly, "fake work" is a loss of morale and authenticity of the work life - and as such a productivity loss of strategic (long-term) significance. On a personal level, given that the lion share of our adult time (and progressively more so) is spent at work, "fake work" (work without meaning) is an existential suicide. Peterson and Nielson are calling on us to step away from the ledge of work-life meaninglessness.

As a book, "Fake Work" is the kind of book that could have sent the authors to Gulag if it had been written in the Soviet Union. Peterson and Nielson, with a mixture of compassion and straight-shooting mercilessness, strip away the layers of corporate pretense, delving deep into the administrative and psychological motivations behind "fake work." The authors go well beyond the statement of the problem: they offer both individual-level (bottom-up) and managerial-level (top-down) solutions for preventing and/or controlling the morale- and bottom-line-rusting effects of "fake work."

As such, the book is a must read for anyone who works for anyone (I am allowing myself an assumption that self-employed individuals are less susceptible to the "fake work" phenomenon although, as the authors imply, this might not be necessarily so in the cases of where "billing for time" can create Potemkin-village illusions of productivity).

In short, "Fake Work" compels the employees and the employers to shift away from the paradigm of pro forma processes towards essence- and meaning-focused work. Why? Because it pays!

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., licensed psychologist, author of "Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, 2008) [...]

The authors provide the research for understanding the sources of conflict, misunderstanding and poor productivity in organizations. Good case studies illustrate problems that we can easily relate to and a usable roadmap for improving team performance. The book contains numerous profound insights. I would recommend this text to anyone who leads or is a member of a team.

The project was long and involving, and pointed the organization in a new, refreshing direction, but its final report was rejected by the executive committee who wanted the firm to stay on its current path regardless of the consequences. These leaders discarded several similar projects before. Peterson and Nielson label such projects as Fake Work, the title of their recent book. These tasks take considerable time and effort, but lead nowhere for either the person or the organization. In contrast, real work moves a company forward. Real work is in line with the organization's goals and strategies.
Fake work is often difficult to differentiate from real work in an office; whereas, in a factory, one sees product going out the door. Fake work includes unused paperwork, meetings that go nowhere, unfocused training, and projects that have the hidden agenda of verifying the desires of upper management rather than being truly critical examinations of a problem.
Peterson and Nielson recommend using a 3 step audit to determine if work is real or fake:
1.Analyzing each task that is being done to determine its importance, alignment with company strategies, how it can be accomplished, and who should be doing it. The staff in a sales department did fake work when this step was skipped: their manager heard a rumour, failed to check on the rumour with the production department, and directed his staff to develop of a plan for selling a new product. The sales plan was thrown out when the new product was delayed and modified.
2.Emphasizing real work by determining if each person is doing the most important assigned tasks rather than wasting time with trivial, make-work items. One sales person failed on this point by entertaining big clients and ignoring smaller accounts. Much of the entertaining was fake work as it took lots of time, did not increase sales, and substantial sales were lost on smaller accounts.
3.Evaluating performance against company standards and industry benchmarks. Lots of fake work occurred when a producer of small appliances developed, but skipped having consumer trials on a replacement product that met new environmental standards. Sales of the product plummeted.
Another chapter in Fake Work points out how some personality traits encourage the development and continuance of fake work. The chapter contains a chart of more than 20 of these personality traits and their counterparts that foster real work. In fact, this chart could be interpreted as a list of personality characteristics that are possessed by good office workers. One trait is Hyper-analytical which is contrasted with Balanced. The hyper-analytical person does lots of fake work by over-analyzing, doing lots of unnecessary research, and disregarding deadlines.

On the one hand, the content of Fake Work is quite focused on getting everyone in an organization to do real work rather than fake work. On the other hand, the approach of Peterson and Nielson has a broad scope as it is based on their insights from many years of human resources consulting for industry and government, and Peterson's experiences as a professor at BYU. Fake Work contains one chapter for each of nine pathways out of doing fake work. As well as the paths discussed above about auditing fake work and assessing personality traits, the nine pathways include:
-Discover fake work in a company by listening to stories that others tell.
-Develop communication amongst team members to better align the synergies of everyone's work with organizational goals.
-Modify traditional performance management to be an alignment model where critical tasks are given more emphasis.
-Promote a corporate culture of doing real work.

Fake Work does get readers thinking about their current jobs as well as planning to improve them in the future.

This book is the first book I've read in a long while that changed the way I think about work.

This book tackles the biggest problems I find with my teams, my employees, and my job. I have found numerous ways to increase productivity, increase morale, and reduce workloads by killing the Fake Work in my business.

The book Fake Work has great stories that wake you up to the amount of "fake work" that goes on in an organization. The best part it has many suggestions to solve or confront these issues we all face(or care to admit we face).

Ironically, the authors are themselves guilty of fake work by stretching to 245 pages what could be dealt with in 10. Case studies are redundant. Most workers are probably aware of which aspects of their jobs are irrelevant time-wasters--the endless meetings, the ignored project papers, and the like.

Nielsen and Peterson do a good job but this book lacks root cause analysis of why some companies produce so much "fate work". The real work in this book would be to analyze why so many companies waste so much time? I don't think it would be prudent for an employee in most companies to point out to the mgt. the amt. of fake work done in the company. It may not be worth the risk. If companies were open and listened to employees they would not have the problems described. In this tough job market employees need to exercise caution.