Our work is organized functionally and effectively to the degree that it is easy to keep our attention on it. Put differently: our work must be challenging enough, while at the same time we must be able to handle the challenge. As discussed before, handling the challenge well is a matter of a golden mean, and where this mean is located is strongly individually determined.
Work that Implies Insufficient Challenge
When work does not challenge us sufficiently to hold our attention although we still have to perform it, we have to switch over to another kind of attention: we have to force ourselves to keep our mind on our work. Such a forced form of attention soon becomes very tiring.
We can only go on this way for a limited period. Then our attention is diverted, we become strangely sleepy, we have to yawn and it gets more and more difficult to do the work. This makes us less effective. Several causes of insufficient challenge are discussed here.
Too Few Activities to Fill the Time
For many people, having insufficient activities to fill the time in a work situation, while not being allowed to leave either, is intensely unpleasant. Too little to do is the stuff of which imprisonment is made. The same goes for too slow a work pace. In the longer run, we become drowsy, we get bored and have difficulty concentrating on the little work we have to do. We become less effective and chances are that we are going to make more mistakes.
Social contacts often play a crucial part here in keeping us focused and effective.
Lack of Demands
Older employees often find themselves in, or have steered themselves into, situations where no one expects a great deal of them and they reflect that in their attitude. In addition, younger managers often do not stress older employees’ responsibilities, even when those employees’ performance becomes less than acceptable. The due respect for these elderly employees, who have won their spurs in the organization a long time ago, often makes it
hard for a manager to treat them in the same way as they do younger employees. Correcting these older employees may evoke feelings of uneasiness and guilt. As a result, the older employees hardly feel any demands, which makes good performance less meaningful.
Work with Insufficient Meaning
Work without much meaning appeals insufficiently to our talents and motives. The effect is that it is hard to keep our mind on the task’s execution, which makes us ineffective.
Insufficient meaning can have different causes. Some tasks have very little variation and consist of infinitely repeating short episodes. Examples are assembly tasks at a conveyor belt (such as assembling one simple, tiny part), working at a counter selling tickets or at a call centre. In the last two examples the personal contact involved may still appeal to us somewhat. Often such tasks are quite easy, which is not good for concentration either (‘Because you really can do this work when you are almost sleeping, I have been thinking whether someone like you may make something out of that idea’). The lack of meaning can also stem from the remoteness of the task’s contribution to the final product (‘I see to it that these little things here are in the correct position when they enter the machine over there’).
Too Little Decision Latitude
Some tasks are so regulated that there is no freedom to influence the course of affairs in any way ourselves. Everything – breaks, the sequence of partial tasks, work pace and so on – is fixed. This lack of freedom occurs for example at counters or call centers, as well as when our work links us up to some machine or assembly line that we cannot influence.
Often such work is strictly supervised as well, with or without the help of electronic devices. For example, some cash registers produce receipts that do not only show the stuff paid for, the prices and the final sum, but also the number of seconds it took the cashier to execute the whole transaction. Together with the date, the time of day and the cashier’s number, this small slip of paper becomes legal evidence of the cashier’s performance.
Moreover, strict supervision can also interfere with the possibility of social contact during the work. Because strict supervision usually is characteristic of tasks that also fit under the heading ‘tasks with insufficient meaning’, it becomes obvious that this kind of work, when things do not go so well, can make us highly ineffective.
Moreover, tasks with little meaning and decision latitude as well as monotony and repetition often have to be done in large quantities and at a fast pace. As a result, these tasks also can be too challenging.
Very Formalized Work
In some organizations, the way tasks are performed becomes more important than their results and outcomes. The task then turns into painstakingly sticking to time-consuming formal procedures, checks and double checks, a ritual way of working, capitalizing on following conventions without paying attention to, or even disdaining, outcomes and
results. The task itself may become empty and devoid of meaning. To get anything done is almost impossible: too many rules, too much hierarchy, too many people who have to approve first, too long communication lines. This degree of formalization may make it hard, if not impossible, to keep our attention focused on the task. This formalized work occurs frequently in big bureaucratic organizations, such as ministries and other public and semi-public organizations, but also in big companies and other organizations with a strict hierarchy, such as (para)military organizations and some churches.
Checklist 4.2Too little challenge in your work
Yes
Too few activities to fill your time . . .
Too few job demands . . .
Too easy tasks . . .
Meaningless tasks . . .
Irrelevant tasks . . .
Work that demands much less knowledge and skill than it used to do . . .
Too much repetition . . .
Too little variation in tasks . . .
Works in which painstakingly sticking to formal procedures is more
important than outcomes . . .
Tasks that Imply Too Much Challenge
Work can also demand a level of challenge that is too far beyond our competence. Either everything happens too quickly and we cannot keep up with it, or the task gradually becomes too complicated for us and demands more knowledge, skills and abilities than we can mobilize. We then start to make mistakes. We are not able any longer to deal with the task in a systematic way or survey things properly. We experience mental chaos and task performance breaks down. When we still have to perform our task, we become completely ineffective. The following issues can play a part.
Too Many Things to Do in Too Little Time
Doing things at high speed can be very pleasurable, especially when everything goes well.
In this sense, deadlines can be pleasant challenges. We can surprise ourselves, be proud of our accomplishment and enjoy relaxing afterwards – if everything goes well. It becomes a different story when things are not going well, for example if we:
Ĺ are not in the mood
Ĺ are angry about the way in which our manager allocated the work to us Ĺ are tired
Ĺ cannot keep our mind on our work Ĺ feel that we are not really doing very well
When on such an occasion the deadline is difficult to meet, it becomes harder to work ourselves up to it. In general, deadlines should not be too hard nor too numerous. However,
the concept of ‘just-in-time’ management has increased the number of hard deadlines in all kinds of work. ‘Just-in-time’ management is based on the idea that things should be ready or available just in time, not too late and not too early. This prevents stocks of materials, half-products and completed products from piling up, getting in the way and demanding extra storage room while they are not generating any returns.
Tasks that Are Too Difficult
Difficult tasks that we can only just handle have similar effects to those mentioned above, in a positive as well as a negative sense. It is a different scenario, however, when some parts of the work are already too difficult to begin with, due to the fact that we lack the necessary experience or training, for example in the case of new tasks. We then make a lot of errors and task performance becomes chaotic. Attempts to repair the mistakes take time and are not always successful. We can then try to work around the problems and get some of the work done anyway, if that is at all possible. Things become especially annoying when the tasks that we are finding difficult used to be relatively straightforward. An example is a new word processor or other computer program that we are not used to and where commands for all kinds of familiar tasks are almost, or completely, opposite to those of the former program.
Serious Consequences
The challenge presented by a specific task becomes greater in proportion to the degree that the consequences of doing it wrongly become more serious, for example when we have to take decisions that have serious consequences for different parties. In the latter case, this difficulty does not need to be only a matter of mistakes. As it is, often we simply do not have all the necessary information. Still, we do not want others to suffer from this and we want to do everything correctly, which is impossible. This dilemma becomes even more acute when a choice is involved about where the burden of a certain development is to be laid (see under ‘Incompatible responsibilities’ below). Because of the fact that organizations have become flatter and more responsibility has been pushed down to the shop floor, people who were used to doing what the boss said now have to take such decisions themselves.
For these people, having this level of discretion to take such decisions can make their work more challenging than they like it to be.
Ambiguities
In many jobs, it is not completely obvious what is expected of us. The challenge then is to do well anyway. When the ambiguities are too great or when we take them too seriously, it is much harder to carry out the task effectively. Ambiguity can take many forms. Sometimes the goals of the task are unclear: ‘I more or less manage things around here.’ Sometimes it is the way in which the goals have to be attained: ‘How you do it doesn’t interest me much. I don’t even want to know, as long as you do it.’ Sometimes also it is a matter of insufficient feedback: ‘Did it work out?’ ‘We’ll know more in five years.’ Other issues that can affect our effectiveness are a lack of clarity of responsibilities (‘I think you should take
this up with Peterson.’ ‘No Johnson, I must have you’), appointments (‘I told you it would be soon’), criteria for performances and quality (‘You meant something like this?’) and so on.
Too Many Divergent Responsibilities
When a task brings too many divergent responsibilities, the result may be a decrease in effectiveness too. To begin with, such a task demands that we mentally change gear a lot concerning both problems and people. Such a task also means that we are doing very different things, have to keep many loose ends in our heads and are never ready, because each time, as if by itself, the next responsibility emerges. Consequentially, we cannot really relax and recover. Furthermore, the ways in which we deal with the different responsibilities may interfere with each other from time to time, for example when the timely completion of the one makes the timely completion of the other impossible and vice versa.
Incompatible Responsibilities
A special case of divergent responsibilities is role conflict or incompatible responsibilities. A familiar example is the position of the lower or middle manager. When such persons please their superior by increasing production, they may evoke a conflict with the department’s employees. This conflict is not only a matter of employees not wanting to work harder, but they also may see their manager as the advocate of their interests. However, when our poor lower or middle managers take on such a role, they risk a conflict with their management.
The dilemma is obvious: what is good in the eyes of one party is wrong in the other party’s and vice versa. Though a completely perfect and correct task performance, to the full satisfaction of both parties, will always be problematic, the managers in question have still been hired to do as good a job as they can.
Checklist 4.3Too much task challenge
Yes
Working under continuous time pressure . . .
Too many deadlines . . .
Too much overtime . . .
Being understaffed . . .
Too difficult tasks . . .
Too many decisions . . .
Having to work too fast . . .
Too many responsibilities . . .
Incompatible responsibilities . . .
Tasks that disturb each other . . .
Work in which you always have to be on your toes . . .
Work that you never can do completely right . . .
Work that demands creativity when you cannot deliver it . . .
Lots of demands for immediate action . . .
Insufficient feedback on the results and outcomes of your work . . .
Unclear criteria for performance and quality . . .
Having to keep in mind too many instances of unfinished business . . .