Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [21]
All this expended time and energy and at no point has anyone thought for a second about the outcomes the business was trying to drive.
All this expended time and energy to do nothing more than reinforce the status quo that doesn’t work.
All this expended time and energy over a few lousy minutes. The thing about Sludge is that it doesn’t take much of it in your day to have a negative impact. Take any company that is struggling, or any division or group that is having a hard time with the actual business at hand, or one with poor leadership or intense market pressures, and a culture of Sludge can erupt like an algae bloom. And the more a company buys into those old attitudes about time and beliefs about how work gets done, the more Sludge can run rampant. It can even become an integral part of how people socialize.
We call this Back Sludge, or, if there are enough people, a Sludge Conspiracy. This is the watercooler talk that we’ve all witnessed or taken part in. You can hear it almost any time you get people together at work and the conversation turns away from the business at hand (or what was on TV last night) and the daggers come out for whoever is not in the room. Kara’s comment about how other people would view her department getting control over its time wasn’t paranoia. Every company has a person, team, or department that other people slam when they’re not around.
“Those IT people are always goofing off. They should try doing a real job instead of playing around on the computer all day.”
“Those smokers are practically always on break. I think I’ll take up smoking. I might get lung cancer but at least I won’t have to work as hard.”
“Rick isn’t getting any younger; he should retire and make room for someone who isn’t a hundred years old.”
Just look at these examples and think about what is behind them. The first one says that work that involves socializing with clients isn’t real work. The second one says that the time in your chair is more important than your ideas. The last that old people can’t possibly be effective. But each of these comments serves a larger function. In its sick, twisted way, Sludge brings people together. This is old-fashioned tribalism. You’re in my tribe. That person over there is not. When you create a Sludge Conspiracy you’re really saying, “We play by the rules. We’re good workers. That person over there is not.”
When we Sludge in groups we are also creating a public mask for our own deficiencies. You don’t have to be responsible for results as long as you clock in your time. You don’t have to be competent if you can make someone else look incompetent. You don’t have to have ideas if you can make someone else look stupid.
Every Sludge Conspiracy just reinforces these bad attitudes. You might feel temporarily superior to someone else for bashing their work habits, but you gain nothing. If anything you reinforce the bars of your prison. Because if you slag someone for being fifteen minutes late, you’d better believe you’ll be fifteen minutes late yourself someday. And then you go from being the Sludger to the Sludgee.
Sludge, even in small amounts, holds us all back. We could give the laundry list of what this kind of behavior does to businesses—reduces engagement, lowers motivation, slows down the organization—but what it really boils down to is common sense:
When you’re giving Sludge or receiving it or anticipating it you’re not contributing to work or to your life.
When we allow Sludge we’re accepting and reinforcing a workplace that values time and appearances over genuine accomplishment. If you were judged and paid based on what you actually contributed to your organization, then time and place wouldn’t be a factor. You could be the person from the previous chapter who negotiated