Making Good Work Add Up

An organization can have capable people meeting their objectives and still fall short of what their combined work could achieve. Understanding that gap means looking closely at individual work, across the functions it touches, and at the broader outcomes it's intended to support.

We tend to recognize people for excelling within their responsibilities. We praise that performance in reviews and reward it through advancement. Those expectations matter, but they can also narrow our attention. I think of them as “prescribed priorities”: The objectives we are expected to deliver, which naturally shape what we notice and pursue.

A task can continue to meet those expectations even after its original value has changed. Familiarity can become its own justification. “We’ve always done it this way” starts to replace an examination of whether the work still serves its purpose. On paper, everyone may be doing a great job while the connection between their effort and the intended outcome weakens.

Learning to see across functions

My experience in matrix leadership has taught me the value of understanding how work fits together. Over years of building and growing a services business, and more recently working across marketing functions, I have depended on contributions from people with different responsibilities and priorities.

When people do not report to me, pursuing my objective alone gives them little reason to contribute. I need to understand what they are trying to accomplish and find ways for our work to strengthen their contribution as well as mine.

That requirement creates a useful perspective. Learning about another function’s challenges helps me see how our work affects each other. It can reveal an opportunity that is difficult to recognize from either function’s responsibilities alone.

The aim is to find shared value: A way of working together that helps each function achieve something important. That gives people a reason to participate and provides a strong basis for collaboration over time.

Connecting the detail to the decision

Understanding objectives at different levels of the organization adds another dimension. A problem that is obvious within a task may appear small against the broader business. Its consequences still exist, and many such problems can accumulate. Leaders also have their own prescribed priorities, so the connection can remain difficult to see from their position.

This is where translation matters. An inefficiency affecting two functions needs to be understood in enough detail to explain what is happening. It also needs to be connected to the outcome those functions and their leaders care about.

That connection can help bring the issue to the level where a useful decision can be made. The conversation has a clearer purpose when it shows how addressing the problem could advance several objectives together.

The broader objective then gives us a reason to return to the detail and examine what should change. Improving a task, changing a process, or addressing a condition affecting several functions each requires a different scope of action.

Making work visible

Creating the AI Think Tank gave me one way to put this perspective into practice. Colleagues across functions and levels of the organization were exploring and applying AI in separate efforts. I saw an opportunity to make that work more visible and help people connect, learn from one another, and build on what others were doing.

I started with one area of activity, then widened the view to consider how connecting those efforts could help people across the organization. The purpose was to make participation useful to their own work and create opportunities for collaboration.

Since then, people I had never met have sent me notes about how the Think Tank helps them in their work or connected them with someone else to collaborate. That feedback makes the value of visibility tangible: Someone gains something useful for their own responsibilities through a connection beyond them.

This is the movement I mean by zooming in and out. I look closely enough to understand an aspect of the work, widen the view to connect it with other functions and broader objectives, then return to the details with a clearer purpose. Another aspect of the work can start that movement again.

The value comes from carrying what we learn between those perspectives. Seeing the detail helps us understand what needs attention. Seeing the relationships helps us decide where and why to act. Connecting the two gives people a better chance to improve their own contribution while strengthening the work around them.

When we deliberately connect our goals, helping another function becomes an investment in shared success. The dividend comes through the work itself: Progress toward both functions’ objectives at the same time.