The Work That Doesn’t Have a Box

The Work That Doesn’t Have a Box

If you’re a parent of a middle school or high school student, you  know the group project. A few students are assigned a shared outcome, a deadline, and a single grade. One person often ends up pulling everything together near the end. Earlier, quieter work - necessary but less visible - tends to fade from memory. 

We tend to remember these projects as lessons in unfairness or effort. But the more lasting lesson is about how value gets recognized. The work that shows up closest to the finished product becomes the work that counts.

That pattern sticks.

We Carry the Same Habit Forward

Organizations are built around formal structures: projects, roadmaps, roles, objectives. That’s the work that gets named, tracked, and evaluated.

But some contributions don’t arrive that way.

They show up as perspective that helps someone rethink a problem. As a connection between two people approaching  the same problem from different sides. As a question that reframes an assumption before it hardens into a plan.

None of this work begins with an assignment. And when it happens, there’s rarely a clear outcome to point to.

Work Without Label 

I’ve spent a great deal of time doing this kind of work without ever labeling it as work. Sometimes it meant offering perspective that helped someone see their situation differently. Sometimes it was connecting people who needed to be in conversation. Sometimes it meant asking a question that surfaced an assumption no one had examined. 

None of it fit neatly into a plan or OKR. In most cases, its value only became clear later — when a decision moved faster, an outcome was stronger, or  something new existed that hadn’t before.

At the moment, there was nothing to claim. Just the sense that the work mattered.

Why This Work Is Easy to Miss

This kind of contribution becomes legible only in hindsight. Its impact shows up in outcomes that feel smoother than expected or in problems that never fully materialize.

What gets remembered is the launch, the decision, the breakthrough. The earlier work that made those things possible collapses into  the blur of “how we got here.”

People notice this. Over time, they learn which efforts get recognized and which quietly disappear.

So they adapt.

They focus on the work that fits inside formal structures and produces visible results. The unassigned, connective work starts to feel risky, even indulgent, because it’s hard to explain and harder to defend.

Smart Organizations Lose This First

This isn’t a failure of talent or intent. In fact, highly capable organizations often lose this work first. 

As roles become more specialized and execution becomes more tightly managed, anything that falls between responsibilities becomes easier to ignore. The very clarity that helps work move efficiently also squeezes out the contributions that don’t fit neatly anywhere.

What Has to Stay Possible

Leaders get very good at managing the work they can name. Projects have owners. Goals have metrics. Progress is reviewed and revisited.

The other work has always been harder to hold onto.

It shows up as a conversation that reframes something before it becomes a problem. A connection whose value emerges months later. A question that doesn’t fit any agenda, but quietly changes direction. 

The risk isn’t that people fail to recognize it. The risk is that organizations slowly make it harder for this work to exist at all.

When everything has to be justified in advance, owned by someone, and tied to a metric, the unassigned work starts to feel out of bounds. There’s no obvious place for it to land, so people stop making room for it. Not deliberately. Just incrementally.

This isn’t work you can simply decide to manage better. It’s work that survives — or disappears — based on the conditions you create.

What This Leaves Behind

The group project never really ends. We just get better at disguising it.

The same pattern shows up again and again: value gets assigned late, credit compresses history, and the work that made the outcome possible fades from view. Not because it lacked importance, but because it didn’t have a place to land when it mattered.

What gets lost isn’t effort or commitment. It’s the quiet work that connects things before they’re connected, shapes direction before there’s agreement, and makes outcomes feel obvious only in hindsight.

That work doesn’t need to be noticed to matter. But it does need space to exist.

That’s human work.

Once that space disappears, the organization doesn’t just lose flexibility. It loses the quiet, human work that made better outcomes possible in the first place.

Berkson’s Bits

If someone hands you a blueprint for success, ask whether it comes with a maintenance agreement. The only constant is change.

What I'm Listening...

This one goes back a few years. This is an amazing exploration of the history of Jazz with two of my favorite musicians who are also great teachers, Jon Batiste and Wynton Marsalis.

It’s as much about listening and lineage as it is about music.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Some organizations do manage to leave room for this kind of work. Not by measuring it, but by resisting the urge to crowd it out. They leave space between plans. They tolerate work that doesn’t yet have a name. They understand that not all value arrives fully formed or on schedule.

In those environments, people are more willing to offer perspective early, to make connections they don’t own, to ask the question that doesn’t quite yet fit.

The work doesn’t become visible overnight — but over time, the organization feels different. Less brittle. More coherent. Better able to benefit from the judgment and care of the people inside it.

That kind of space is fragile. It’s easy to lose and hard to rebuild. But when it’s there, it changes what an organization is capable of.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation…
Alan