The theory

Knowledge work isn’t factory work. It’s the assimilation, organization, and execution of ideas, which may or may not correspond to a physical act. A programmer can have a breakthrough idea while walking their dog. A marketer can envision a groundbreaking campaign in the shower. That makes management approaches based on inputs — commits pushed, bugs fixed, days and hours worked, meetings scheduled — irrevocably flawed.

Even worse, measuring inputs often leads to surveillance via “bossware”, a new crop of remote tools that incinerate trust and incentivize employees to “perform work” instead of doing actual high-value work.

Instead, focus on the results that drive the business, like product goals, sales targets, quality standards, and customer impact. The only effective measures of knowledge work are output, quality, and outcomes, not inconsequential productivity metrics and performance theater.

Further reading

• Orosz, G., Beck, K. (2023, August 29). Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey. The Pragmatic Engineer.

  Gergely Orosz and Kent Beck respond to McKinsey’s controversial method for measuring developer productivity.

• Poydar, H. (2022, August 18). Bossware, Trust, and “Productivity” Scores. Status Hero.

  High-performing knowledge teams operate on trust, yet many companies are rushing into adopting tools that destroy it.

• Jaworski, B., Parasuraman, S., Gowda, J., Spotts, E., Schloesser, D., Hunter, C. (2021, December 23). The Future of Work: Behavioral and Social Science-Informed Considerations for a Hybrid Work Environment. National Institute of Health.

  An analysis of the changing landscape of hybrid work environments, including the importance of measuring outputs over work inputs as a way to re-imagine the definition of workplace productivity.

• Molla, R. (2023, May 5). Your boss is obsessed with productivity without knowing what it means. Vox.

  Some 71 percent of business leaders say they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more productivity out of their workers. But most are measuring what workers put in, rather than what they put out. In turn, workers say they’re spending a third of their time “performing” work — that is, making an effort to look like they’re working rather than actually working.