The Essence of Work

Special Version of Endeavour

As a whole, THEE deals with endeavour. So what is the difference between endeavours that are work and other endeavours?

Endeavour covers whatever we do. It includes everything from ironing a shirt, to writing a book, to going out to the cinema, to competing in a tennis tournament, to travelling between cities. These may or may not entail work depending on what is going on psychologically and socially.

Social factors like whether you earn money, and personal factors like whether you feel forced (versus enjoying), though relevant to working, are not definitive.

Work's identifying feature in the taxonomy is whether the outcome really matters. Do you accept an accountability for its performance? The accountability may be to yourself or another.

If you can do it or drop it, if you don't have to worry about quality, if success or failure is irrelevant, if time doesn't matter—then it is not work. It is an activity and it may feel like working, but it is not what the term «work» refers to in these frameworks.

Altering Reality

Work can be perceived and explained in two ways because it is psycho-social.

• Psycho-: Work is an inner process of making judgements about reality in order to discharge a responsibility.
• -Social: Work is an outer process of interaction that alters reality by generating a socially desired output.

The output results through making something happen, i.e. work transforms reality in some fashion. (We think of work as «high-powered» or «higher level» when the alterations are of greater scope, depth or complexity.)

There is a large variety of transformations to consider and they must all be captured taxonomically.
Examples

• Trivial and physical transformation
  e.g. in delivery work—a parcel must be moved from one place to another.
• Profound and abstract transformation
  e.g. in scientific work—reviewing ten years of published research
• Complicated and emotional transformation
  e.g. in the film industry—directing a feel-good comedy.

Work therefore entails accountability for altering reality.

There is a demand to perceive and think about reality, and then confidently make judgements and engage with that reality in those terms. Above all, there is a need to collaborate with or handle others whose view of reality will differ.

Handling reality by exercising discretion and making judgements is a creative process that demands autonomy. The greater the scope and complexity of a task, the longer the time a person needs to work autonomously. You cannot see these mental work-processes directly.
So how do you know work is happening?

Reaching judgements on work is natural for each of us. We know when we (or close colleagues) are genuinely working on something and when we are dreaming or going through the motions or just mucking about. Performing our own work seems so natural and intuitively obvious.

But work is not obvious at all. We struggle to understand how others outside our ambit function and what work-reality they confront either mentally or socially. We may know via a superficial phrase what others do (e.g. «direct the Institute», «develop spin-offs», «re-engineer procedures», «write programs», «run a campaign»), but we have almost no sense of what judgements are involved. Even staff within an organization have little idea what those at distant levels actually have to face.

While it is easy to say that all work is about being responsible for changing reality, there is a big problem in practice. We do not know reality. No-one does. So a person at work must construct a good enough reality. This occurs by talking about it, i.e. by using language-PH'5.

Our use of language enables us to make sense of reality and the way we «make sense» affects how we think, relate and act to alter situations. This means that work (as responsibility) must be fundamentally understood through the framework for using language-PH'5. See more here.

Using language for work-responsibility --PH'5QH• differs from just using language for communication-PH'5.

Conclusion

In summary, work necessarily involves:

• use of personal and social resources to make something happen in reality
• variation in sophistication and social significance according to the reality being altered
• accountability for pursuit, completion, and achievement
• direct links to needs: fundamentally—personal survival and communal strength
• creativity harnessed to an unconscious approach to using language.

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• Continue to how the use of language determines work.

Originally posted: 11-Oct-2013