How to maximize work impact and not die trying? The Ask-Need Matrix

How do we create impactful work? How do we keep our working hours and energy in check? How do we find our place in an organization?

Thinking about onboarding new team members, it occurred to me that it would be gratifying to provide the kind of guidance I wish I had received before in my professional life. An approach to work beyond logistics, hands-on training, and links with data repositories.

Most likely, any exploration journey about improving work will stumble into productivity models such as the Eisenhower Matrix. Following that lead, Eisenhower emerged as an unabated overachiever. He was the 34th President of the United States, served as a general in the US Army and the WW2 Allied Forces Supreme Commander, and acted as the first NATO chief. On top of all these distinctions, he is credited with a 2 X 2 matrix called after him to prioritize tasks. Curiously, it seems the matrix was derived from one of his quotes: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." So, Eisenhower created models while leaving quotes for posterity without even trying. He was like a Chuck Norris meme of productivity.

Why not just provide this matrix to my eager new team members? Because I believe the productivity approach needs a major update:

• Firstly, Eisenhower oversaw organizations that unequivocally allocated authority to ranking. Most of us do not come close to that level of formal authority—and autonomy—so we don't get to decide individually on our tasks, deadlines, or level of urgency. Additionally, informal networks and hierarchies are becoming more relevant today than in his time.
• ?Secondly, organizations are "messes." Any attempt at allocating our time and energy must consider the chaotic reality of contradicting priorities and incentives.
• Finally, productivity tools like the Eisenhower matrix do not say much about skills. Should we get better at planning? Should we learn to say no? What about negotiation?

Stakeholders and skills of the—very near—future enter the stage

At present, no discussion about work will be complete without some "stakeholder management" considerations. Stakeholders influence the tasks that are or aren't allocated to us and the perception of what is important; they set the norms of behavior and materialize the perceptions of our performance via formal and informal appraisals. They make magic transforming subjective opinions into objective realities by repeating, agreeing, and assuming. One by one, stakeholders might not seem as much or even harmless, but they are extraordinary as a collective with their reality-bending powers. Hence, how we collaborate, interact, disagree, and negotiate with them becomes a major consideration at work—and life for that—, highlighting the role of interpersonal skills.

Timely for our purposes here, in July 2021, Mckinsey issued an interesting study called "Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work ." This document listed skills needed to thrive within the current work context: digitalization, changing ways of working, and the need to add value beyond intelligent machines. They listed 56 skills, grouped into 13 skill groups, grouped into four categories: cognitive, digital, interpersonal, and self-leadership; noticeably, 3 out of 4 categories connect to "soft skills."

In my opinion, the list is relevant but not concise; if we master all those skills, we will probably become the super workers of the future; however, by that time, the list would have likely changed. Hence, after careful and subjective consideration, I picked four as the most relevant for the problem at hand: storytelling, win-win negotiations, structured problem solving, and understanding biases.

Introducing a new version: the ask vs. need matrix

"All models are wrong, but some are useful." George Box

Categorizing situations can create helpful maps; a simple map is typically better than no map at all. The ask vs. need matrix attempts to articulate the tensions between stakeholders' requests and business needs into four quadrants.

Before we go into the quadrants, let us define both axes.

On the horizontal axis, we have the "ask" component; here, we are concerned about whether our stakeholders are explicitly requesting work from us. One crucial refinement is identifying relevant stakeholders at work; for example, our boss and our boss' boss will be stakeholders. However, if you work in a large-mega-cap corporation, the CEO will not be (in case it is, congrats, probably you can skip the rest). Most certainly, closer colleagues will be stakeholders and often create most of your work demand, which in turn others demand from them, like a chain of favors of burnout.

The vertical axis is related to the function of the work you are doing; if we take the view that firms are a collection of decisions, then our work could be classified on whether it supports a business decision or not. A report nobody reads that you have been issuing because it was customary does not qualify as decision-making support.

See objectively: no ask, no need.

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Peter Drucker

This quadrant is similar to the Eisenhower matrix's "Delete" quadrant. These are tasks keeping us busy with negligible impact.

Why do we do them? They are likely perpetuated due to inattention, inertia, lack of critical thinking, or simply due to the need for signaling activity, i.e., "box tickers" in the celebrated—and polemic—David Graeber's nomenclature of work . Crucially, involvement with tasks in this quadrant could signal a lack of awareness of our biases and inclinations. For instance, we tend to attribute disproportionate value to objects or activities we invest effort in, aka the "Ikea effect .". Consequently, even if the activity is futile for the organization, we will attribute value to it and feel defensive if someone suggests eliminating it (e.g., we convince ourselves that others do all the useless tasks).

Likely, to recover this time, we may need to face uncomfortable realizations. We might realize we do these tasks because we lack the skill, network, or ideas to embark on other activities. Also, we might have inclinations towards "optimal busyness ," filling downtime with random activity instead of using the time for the type of creative reflection that comes with a premium in today's workplace. In any case, seeing this reality as objectively as possible is an indispensable step.

One way of understanding our inclinations and biases is exploring our contradictions and blind spots or asking others to pinpoint them. If you poke people enough, they will tell you. If we consider the latter too awkward, it could help tweak the question, e.g., change: "Do you think I do useless stuff because I'm a workaholic?" for "If you were me, what would you change to be less busy?" Some examples of uncomfortable realizations could be: If I declare my family is my number one priority, why did I arrive late to my 7-year-old birthday to finish that report nobody is using? If I recommend the Enseihower matrix to others, why don't I eliminate anything from my plate? This line of inquiry is uncomfortable but could help us if done with a pinch of self-compassion. Most people are trying their best. Let's take it like a cough syrup that tastes awful but alleviates us after a while.

Align goals: there is an ask, but no apparent need.

"The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment." Tom DeMarco

Often, we find ourselves overburdened by requests, and we feel we need to act on them like an itch. However, we might be operating under inaccurate assumptions; for instance, we might take for granted that the requesters know what they will do with that information or use it at all.

A straightforward solution would be to learn to say no. However, simply standing our ground might create a win-lose situation (we win by not doing it, the requester loses by not getting it). Importantly, allowing these situations to permeate our relationships may create a dangerous dynamic where the requester looks elsewhere for the information, leaves us out of the loop, or takes some form of soft—but harmful—revenge. Eventually, our colleagues might voice that we are slow, uncollaborative, or difficult to work with (we would learn about this in our following performance review and act hurt or take a shower in a fetal position for dramatic purposes).

Conversely, say yes to everything and welcome to burnout land. A land of constant pleasing and neverending tiredness, with low impact. The full pack.

Alternatively, suppose we seek alignment and develop the skill of win-win negotiations. In that case, we can turn these situations in our favor, plus help create a more transparent organization that confronts calmly and does not fake peace. Win-win negotiations have many advantages: we get to debate and deliberate and hence learn about our work from others' points of view, we make the other side feel heard, we help the requesters to refine their thinking, we assert ourselves and our positions in front of others, and we liberate time. Importantly, win-win negotiation means we must concede something; we could take it as an investment, the price of making progress instead of looking for winner-takes-all scenarios that just create stalemates.

Note: some literature contradicts what I am saying here—Machiavelli spinoffs, some power literature , even game theory—, calling for overpowering others and somehow glorifying deception. However, using the game theory language, I believe those approaches work best in a "one game" scenario when you do not have to continuously collaborate with the same people. If you have "repeated games," people will see you coming; plus, I think those kinds of organizations are waning.

Execute with excellence: decisions are needed, explicit ask

"A really great talent finds its happiness in execution." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We can gladly focus on excelling at execution for the portion of your work that falls into this quadrant. We can use kaizens, incremental improvements, 1% better every day, a six-sigma kind of approach, and we likely will be recognized and praised and feel fulfilled (provided the tasks are not too repetitive). Here we can use project management and a structured approach to problem-solving; this is the quadrant where people with structured minds feel comfortable.

By all means, leverage this kind of work as a bedrock of your performance, acquiring domain expertise and building your confidence; especially if you are new in a role, you probably need to maximize your time in this quadrant. In line with the latter, it is dangerous to switch jobs too fast; you might never get enough proficiency and become a "superficialist" instead of a generalist.

However, the chances are that aiming at having 100% of the work in this quadrant filled with RACI charts and Standard Operational Procedures is not realistic in most work contexts today. The more work you have allocated to this quadrant, the more likely it is you work on a 20th-century steel factory. I am not derogatory but trying to depict that only concrete, efficiency-oriented, measurable-output organizations can get away with tangibility alone and solely focus on execution and planning. Conversely, things get messier as work becomes more abstract and ownership of output gets fuzzier, like in most work domains today. Additionally, as many tasks get automated and the speed of change increases, we often observe that tasks in this quadrant become obsolete quickly, leaving some people behind, unable to add value, and feeling neglected.

We need to be aware that the days in which structured and impactful tasks & projects fell into our laps are in danger of extinction. If we are not careful with our expectations, we might be longing for the sort of structure, stability, and predictability that doesn't exist anymore. Work today is ambidextrous, ever rebalancing its emphasis from exploitation to exploration. Take this quadrant as a bridge for more disruptive work. In the words of Pablo Picasso, "Learn the rules like a pro so you can change them like an artist."

Shift the conversation: nobody is asking, but they should

"Organizations are defined by what they ignore." Karl Weick

The Execute with Excellence quadrant has one trojan horse. Your supervisors or colleagues do not always articulate what they expect or lack the imagination to think beyond what is in front of them; for instance, they may lack the courage to challenge the status quo—but expect you to exert change—or cannot articulate their intuitions—but expect you to read minds—. In both cases, we might execute with excellence, supporting precise and richly briefed business needs; still, we get short-changed in the appraisal of our contributions. Such are the treacherous ways of the counterfactual and the unsaid.

The Shift the Conversation quadrant is akin to looking for black cats in a dark room; it is the quadrant of exploration, trial and error, and situational awareness. This quadrant requires an enormous amount of cognitive power because we need to bypass your brain's wiring—in what Daniel Kahneman coined as "what you see is all there is"—and see the invisible. Alas, to engage in the kind of mental work needed here, we need to be rested, fresh, and energized; hence, we can only engage if we are cruising in our core work (following some of the advice of the other quadrants). Tricky, but paraphrasing Saul Bellow, treasures are always guarded by dragons; that's how you know they are valuable.

Yet, how do you unveil what you—and others—are not seeing? One promising way around this challenge is to become more mindful, attentive, and receptiv e via asking better questions, having better discussions, and transforming our relationship with error . Questions open new spaces of discussion and exploration in a non-threatening way. Errors—or near misses—force us to explore beyond established boundaries or routines. Indeed, there might be enormous pressures in successful organizations to replicate previous successes, industrializing decision-making, and narrowing exploration. This is why errors or near misses are so critical; they entitle us to bring issues to the table behind a credible narrative of a case for change.

The latter aspect takes us to the storytelling skill. Humans collaborate behind carefully crafted stories; as Yuval Harari popularized, our species came to dominate the world because we can act in coordination with strangers moved by tales. Here is the thing about storytelling: it is fundamental to elicit collective action, enact change, and gives enormous influence to the storyteller; for a moment, the reality is seen through the storyteller's eyes. Successful storytelling is equivalent to setting the agenda pro level. Happily, this is also a skill we can master by understanding the basics and practicing. For example, we can use standard story arcs as templates to successfully communicate our ideas, e.g., Icarus, rag to riches, riches to rags, a man in a hole, and Cinderella . These arcs make emotional intensity and emphasis fluctuate with a storyline, and humans love these emotional fluxes; conversely, we cannot get that with reason or numbers alone (by the way, an AI algorithm identified these arcs, somehow spooky).

Exploring the fringes of our current tasks following the lead of errors and becoming a master storyteller to shift a conversation that otherwise has become stale might help us reap the benefits of becoming a change agent.

Wrapping up

Hopefully, this model describes many cases in today's work environment. I firmly believe that overweighting work in the last quadrant might have positive externalities, emergent effects, indirect benefits, reinforcing loops, and any other way of expressing effects that we can't anticipate linearly. For instance, successfully creating impactful work typically depletes the requests for futile activities as people might start respecting your time more. This could happen by impactful work enrolling senior members into your story, who can shield you and your time with their authority halos.

Finally, any honest model needs to disclose limitations. In this case, there are probably many, but three come to mind. Firstly, it implicitly assumes we all want to impact beyond expectations, CEO-track kind of impact. The latter doesn't hold for everybody, and many people might feel like the sweetest spot is the Execute with Excellence quadrant, where you can become a masterful craftsman, filled with moments of flow . Secondly, I selected one skill in each quadrant, but of course, you need a skillset, let us not get fooled by parsimony. Last but not least, these ideas are speculative, and even though there are some scientific references, they haven't been empirically tested. We need to start somewhere, though, even in science.

There aren't magic solutions, but purposefully developing the skills mentioned here can make magic for us. I suspect even Eisenhauer would have agreed.?