How to Go from Good Work to Great Work

Meeting Summary by Floree Thistle

What is the difference between good work, great work and bad work?

Michael Bungay Stanier at the OPMA dinner, Weston Golf & Cuntry Cllub

Michael Bungay Stanier shed some light on this subject for those of us in the pharma world who think we all do great work all the time. Is that the reality?

  [You can see Michael's slide presentation here.]

Those of you who were not able to attend this OPMA Dinner Meeting on April 7th were probably too busy doing great work... or maybe good work... or even bad work!  Which one was it? A rule of thumb for most of us, according to Michael, is that good work comprises 50-80% of our time, bad work 10-40% and great work 0-20%. He began by engaging the audience in an exercise of defining what they considered to be good work, bad work, and great work. Here are some of the spontaneous answers he was given:

What is good work?
"Work you do most of the time"
"Work that makes sense"
"Work that has been done before"
"Work that fills in all the corporate boxes"
"Work that you know how to do, and are comfortable doing it"
"Work that is really important for organizations"
"Work that is efficient, productive, generates profit"
"Work you have been doing so much that you can do it in your sleep"

What is bad work?
"Work that sucks your soul dry"
"Work that doesn't pay"
Michael's own definition: "WOMBAT - Work that is a Waste Of Money, Bandwidth And Time"

So what is great work?
"Transformational"
"Exciting"
"Fulfilling"
"Inspirational"
"Invigorating"
"Work that makes you lose track of time"
"Work that you would rather do"
"Work that can be a paradigm shift"

So how can you tell the difference?

Another interesting exercise in which the audience participated was for each person to draw a circle and to identify the percentage of the work they do that they would consider good, bad or great; and to provide examples. The key element of this exercise was to tell an example of Great work you did to the person sitting next to you. Not only did this bring back great memories (because people are always proud of their work and especially great work), but it allowed people to become passionate about their work, and was an inspiration to those listening to want to do more Great work. As a manager, this could be motivational for your employees - to allow them to discuss their examples of great work and let them get excited about it so they are motivated to strive to produce Great work more often than just good work.

This all sounds very easy, said Michael, especially when sitting at an OPMA meeting, after good wine, good food and talking to good friends, but in reality if it was this easy, we would all produce Great work all the time. The key challenge to this lies in the fact that we are very comfortable producing good work - it is risk-free and our organizations force us to churn out good work because things have to get done. Good work can keep us busy and we never have to think about it.

So, as individuals we need to stop and think, learn to say "No" to doing good work and especially bad work so you have the time and energy to produce Great work more of the time.

As always, we as individuals need to be responsible to ourselves for the work we produce, even though we work for organizations that can have very rigid protocols in place. Keep in mind; the organizations are only as good as the people working for them. And we are those people!

About the Author:

Floree Thistle is the Principal of Thistle Research Consulting. She can be reached at floree@thistleresearch.com, or (905) 709-1176.