work more – In a new “Book Bite” drawn from Melissa Swift’s Effective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World, the founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight argues that many workplace frustrations aren’t personal failings. They come from mismatched job design, joyless te
When people feel stuck at work, they usually blame themselves first. Melissa Swift’s new book asks them to look elsewhere—at how jobs, tools, and organizations are built.
Swift. the founder and CEO of the consulting firm Anthrome Insight. lays out five counterintuitive ways to work more effectively in a fast-changing world. Her work draws on years of consulting leadership experience at Capgemini. Mercer. Korn Ferry. and Deloitte. and her quarterly columns in MIT Sloan Management Review have become some of the outlet’s most-read pieces. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek.
Her core argument is blunt: many problems we attribute to our own shortcomings are rooted in the mismatch between what our jobs are supposed to be and what we’re actually asked to do. She points to the frustration that follows when we keep pushing for more collaboration. more multitasking. or more effort—without questioning the design of the work itself.
1) Start with the work you’re actually paid for—not the job description
Swift says most people aren’t on a first-name basis with their own jobs. Job descriptions, she argues, are “rough approximations” of what the role becomes in practice. The real issue comes when the story around your work doesn’t match what you’re experiencing day to day.
If you asked your boss, coworkers, or customers what you should be doing all day, you might get answers that differ from what you’re actually doing, Swift writes. That “dissonance” can trip up both performance and happiness.
Her suggestion is to sit down with the people around you and discuss the nature of your actual job. In her view. talking about what the job itself requires is emotionally “neutral. ” unlike debates about how you do your work. The practical payoff: Swift says it can surface confusion and friction that, once addressed, could change day-to-day work life.
2) Use technology like a crow, not like a chore
Swift’s second tip borrows a striking image: think about technology like a crow. She points to research suggesting crows get real pleasure from using technology—using a stick. described as “cutting-edge tech in the crow world. ” creates more enjoyment than using a beak alone to complete the same task.
She connects that to how people experience tech outside work. In private life. she says. technology often feels playful—like “funny face filters on your phone” or “a good saucepan on the stove.” At work. she argues. the experience is different because people are trained to move quickly. get what they need from the tool. and move on.
That training pattern can leave workers stuck at barely competent. Swift recommends carving out bandwidth to genuinely play with new technologies and choosing one or two pieces to get “great at.” Her promise is simple: as enjoyment rises, annoyance falls, and work flows more smoothly.
3) Collaboration is built into humans—until it becomes too much
Swift argues that humans are designed for collaboration, using the white sclera of the eyes as her starting point. She describes how prehistoric hunters could use visible eye whites to silently communicate with their hunting group—gesturing toward a mammoth without scaring it.
But she also says collaboration can be pushed past its useful limit, and that’s what she believes is happening. Swift cites the European Working Conditions Survey. which identified “excess interdependence”—having to interact with too many people to get any task done—as a driver of work intensification. leading to burnout and productivity losses.
She also brings in research her company conducted last year: people who reported needing to involve a large number of people to get their work done were 49 percent more likely to always or often feel overwhelmed than their peers. By contrast. people who felt they were highly effective were 16 percent more likely to report being able to work largely independently.
Her frame isn’t an anti-collaboration manifesto. She points readers toward “figure 8” collaboration: work together, then work alone, then come back together. The endless email chains and back-to-back meetings, she argues, don’t serve anyone.
4) Knowledge work should borrow the clarity of emergency roles
Swift’s fourth tip centers on how knowledge work differs from jobs where the stakes are immediately understood. She says she spoke to a firefighter, an air traffic controller, and an emergency room physician, and that the contrast with corporate work “could not be sharper.”
One example she returns to is multitasking. In corporate settings, Swift says it’s common to multitask or “double hat,” doing two jobs at the same time. Firefighters, she notes, do not operate that way. As NYC firefighter Ro Rodriguez described. “you cannot be the person holding the rope and the person rappelling down the building. You need to pick a lane and do it well.”.
Swift also highlights communication clarity. She says corporate environments often rely on euphemisms and jargon. Emergency room doctors don’t have that luxury. ER physician Dr. Rebecca Parker explained to her that when someone’s loved one has died. you have to tell the family in clear terms—using the word “died.” Swift presents it as non-negotiable for compassion: in her description. it would be inhuman and unkind to be vague.
Her takeaway is that this kind of directness and discipline is something corporate life could use.
5) Sometimes “being effective” isn’t just hard—it’s structurally impossible
Swift’s final tip lands on a difficult truth: you can’t always be effective.
She argues that a job can have a “fatal flaw”—most often when you’re asked to accomplish something without the resources or organizational power to do it. She lists examples of workplace tasks that often don’t translate into workable authority: “Leading through influence. ” “Being a change agent. ” and “Vibes.” If the job is broken down that way. Swift says. success is very unlikely.
She also raises the possibility that someone takes a job the organization doesn’t actually want. The organization hired you, Swift notes—but she says some roles exist because organizations struggle to do that work internally, which means employees hired into the gap may struggle too.
Innovation teams built from the outside can be one example: Swift describes organizations creating these teams because they haven’t created the conditions for anyone to be successful at innovation.
Beyond that, she points to other “showstoppers” for effectiveness, including a boss doing the job for you, or an organization tolerating so much mediocrity that you have no chance to be great. The theme is consistent: effectiveness isn’t universally available.
This piece originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. Swift’s remarks were also included in a Book Bite that readers can listen to in the Next Big Idea App, where it’s read by Melissa herself.
Melissa Swift Anthrome Insight Effective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World MIT Sloan Management Review workplace productivity collaboration technology at work job design knowledge work burnout