Embracing the Invisible Work
Has it ever hit you that we can’t see most of what we rely on every day?
Happy August everyone! Hope that you’ve been or you’ll soon be on a well deserved vacation.
Me, I’m going to Disneyworld in three weeks (🦄) and I’m spending every moment trying to ensure nothing will explode at work or at home while I’m away.
This means lots of admin, aligning with people, putting processes in place, documenting a handover (and a guide to bunny-sitting) and all those little things that occupy all the headspace without many tangible outcomes.
And this is my topic for today!
Everything is invisible!
Time is invisible. Thoughts are invisible. Ideas are invisible. A lot of skills and struggles are invisible. When you think about it, the majority of the work we do is invisible to our teammates, stakeholders and managers. And their work is invisible to us too!
🤔 Do you know what your boss does? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot of things. Maybe things you could learn from. Maybe they’ll tell you if you ask.
🤔 Do you know what your teammates’s experience is? I mean the real stories, not just the internet stalking.
And what about how HR calculates salary benchmarks? Or who writes company policies? Who decides the priorities for the quarter? What’s the ROI of your projects?
Isn’t it funny how these things, even things that we rely on for our livelihoods, may as well happen in the Matrix?
🤡
What we can’t see, makes us nervous
🗣️ “I feel like my superiors spend a lot of time in a room talking about the work, without anyone present who actually does the work. And so they keep talking about this thing they can’t see or measure, and they end up getting anxious and freaking each other out, and that anxiety cascades onto us and then we’re on edge, trying to finish as fast as we can because everything feels on fire”
Feels familiar?
Whether you’re the person in the room getting anxious and freaking out your teams, or you’re the one on the receiving end, be consoled by the fact that you’re not alone. This is actually all too common, especially between groups like:
Senior leadership (who operate at a very high level) and their teams (more in the weeds)
Product management (who plan and ideate) and their dev squads (who code)
Investors (who put out the money) and their CEOs (who actually run the company)
So much of the way we trust is based on what we see. But the real work happens where we don’t see it.
Does it mean it’s not real? Burnout rates disagree 🙈, and so do all the products that keep coming out year after year!
Invisible work works, if we set it up right and then get out of its way.
What do we do then?
We stay curious, and we build trust.
💡 You can’t see electricity, but your laptop works.
From brainstorming to late-night revelations, team processes and quiet reflection, invisible work is what keeps the lights on and drives innovation. To build that one feature, there were hours of research, discussions, experiments, mistakes and successes.
When we measure people by their outputs, we miss their best qualities.
So, we:
Recognise and respect that there’s work we can’t see
Share what we do, and encourage others to do the same.
Get to know the people whose work we depend on. Invite them get to know us. Use humour to build understandings, inside jokes and trust over time.
Then, we set clear expectations, double-check they are understood, and LET GO, trusting that we did all we could and that now we’re in the hands of others. Others that, if we did the above steps right, we have mutual respect and understanding with 🤝
Try this for a month and I dare you to come back and tell me it was wasted time and you didn’t learn anything new or have fun at all 😉
What do you think about invisible work? What percentage of your job is invisibile, and how do you deal with it (a side from doing lots of energy-consuming internal PR)?
Personal note
I’ve been thinking about invisible things a lot recently, so, expect a small series on this. Next time I’ll focus on the invisible parts of communication, my favourite topic of all time.
I’ve also realised, fairly late, that Summer is a time when my brain wants to switch off and enjoy life, play video games until 2 am and do nothing remotely work-related or personal development focused outside of work hours. Which explains why I had to switch to once-a-month for this newsletter and keep missing the Friday release!
So, in the interest of healthy habits, next year I’ll take a summer hiatus ❤️
Bunny of the week
