LEADERSHIP: Choose the right language

For modern-day organisations, success will depend on whether the right balance can be struck between ‘thinking work’ and ‘doing work’.

- L DAVID MARQUET

There is tension at work between ‘follow the procedure’ and ‘be creative and think’. Most of the problems at work occur because we are being creative when we should be conforming or we are conforming when we need to be creative.

We label the ‘doing work’ redwork, and the ‘thinking work’ bluework. The reason we need to understand which type of work we are in is that doing and thinking—redwork and bluework, respectively—involve two distinct mental processes: ways of interacting and languages.

During the Industrial Age, organisations managed this dichotomy by assigning the two different kinds of work to two different groups of people. Each group was given a label: white collar and blue-collar, salaried people and hourly people, bosses and workers, leaders and followers, blueworker and redworker.

By redwork, we mean the focused, performing, and doing part of work. Redwork is typically production, physical, and routine work. A factory worker on an assembly line is engaging in redwork. The key is that variability is an enemy to redwork. Redwork benefits from reducing variability and having predictability and controllability.

By bluework, we mean the creative, collaborative, and thinking part of work. Brainstorming, problem-solving, and designing are all bluework. Designing the process that the factory worker on an assembly line will use, the product they will make, and how that product will be updated is bluework. Variability is an ally to bluework. Bluework benefits from embracing variability, independent thinking, and alternate perspectives.