Searching for Fake Work and Do More with Less

 

Remember that 2019-2020 had been a very difficult year for all citizens of Hong Kong as well as people in other countries of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused social distancing among families, friends and the communities or led to disasters in whatever ways, e.g. cities closing down, companies down-sizing or bankruptcy, family separating or breaking and increased mortality, etc. In 2020-2021, the pandemic even brought much more inconvenience to people in the global world and in all walks of life. To us, we cannot enjoy schooling as before. We cannot resume daily face-to-face operational mode in schooling as well. However, the pandemic seemed to have no sign of diminishing even in 2020-2021 or beyond.

 

In order not to let students stop learning, we have adopted online mode instead of face-to-face learning mode since last year. Even after class resumption, our teaching time has decreased from full-day to half-day, from 45 minutes per lesson to only 35 minutes in duration. The life experience learnt in the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have guided us to reflect on the concern of “How we can use less time but do more” as a big challenge ahead. It also appears to be a common topic nowadays among the entrepreneurs who want to increase productivity with less manpower, less investment as well as less expenditure.

 

So, the question is: In considering the concern above, how can we effectively use our time and produce more with less in education? How can we meet our learning targets and the curriculum requirement as set by the school each year?

 

Rodger Dean Duncan (2014), in his paper, “Doing more with less: Avoid fake work”[1], comments that one of the most useful ways to sort priorities is to launch a relentless search for fake work, because fake work is work that’s not explicitly aligned with the strategies and goals of the organization. People who engage in fake work just don’t notice that what they’re doing is not producing intended outcomes. And, because of spending time to do fake works, people mistake activity for results. And working hard is not a barometer, because you can work very hard and still be building a road to nowhere.

 

What are the fake works we are doing at school? Hope the following reflective questions and reminders can help. As teachers,

 

1. Are we clear about our school tasks that are most important to accomplish?
2. Is the connection between pedagogy and teaching objectives closely matching with each other?
3. Is our hard work failing to produce the expected outcomes?
4. Are we reading and preparing a lot of useless or irrelevant information for selves and others?
5. Does our teaching always lead students off-tasks?
6. Are the assignments and assessments designed reflecting the real capability of our students?
7. Are we having meetings that are long and ineffective, wasting time?
8. Are we writing a lot of paper works that we shall never revisit or seldom refer to them?
9. Are we focused enough on meeting the needs of our students?
10. Have we overdone anything?

 

Remember: fake work can be invisible because it often masquerades as real work. Therefore the strategy to deal with fake work is to identify it and eliminate as much as we can, and be focused on the real work. With reference to the ideas initiated by Duncan (2014), he suggests that there are five quick tips for focusing on real work:

 

1. Be clear about strategy. Don't mistake mission for strategy. Make sure job descriptions explicitly focus on work that matters most.
2. Use meaningful metrics. A common cause of fake work is not knowing what results are required and when they should be achieved.
3. Beware the activity trap. Fake work prospers when people are uncertain about priorities. Focus on the work that matters most.
4. Treat communication as a communal task. Communication about work issues needs to be simple, clear, compelling, and often repetitive.
5. Understand the people around you. The key is to recognize how other people's behavior can cause fake work, then figure out how to avoid falling into the fake work traps and assessing whether you are the one who's creating fake work for others.

 

Hence, please be focused, fellow teachers. Don't fool yourself, nor others!