In every organization, there is a small segment of workers whom I term “actors and actresses”. These are the employees whose version of work is showing up and looking busy.

They are “smart” people. They are aware of the power of perception. They also realize that people are usually influenced by symbolic rituals of form rather than substance. They, therefore, “act” at the workplace to take advantage of this phenomenon. They usually have a reasonable amount of work to do, but try to exaggerate this by looking busy, so as to serve vested interests and to have more power and influence for their own survival and success in the organization.

• They always walk around very fast, carrying a file as files are symbolic of work, and walking fast gives the impression of being busy.

• They leave the office late everyday, giving the impression that they are hard working and have a lot to do. (Actually, it simply means that they are inefficient, they are not organized enough in their work, they don’t delegate enough, or else, they are acting!).

• They are excellent at “bumping” into the boss at the car park late after work. Their intention is very clear. It is not good enough to work late but the boss must also be aware of it.

• They keep up this façade of being hard working by constantly telling their colleagues how busy they are, and how little time they have for their families, golf, jogging and so on. The more times they tell everyone how busy they are, the more others start to believe them.

• When they really have work, they make sure the whole organization knows about it by calling for endless meetings, sending emails to everyone about progress reports and generally looking busy.

• These actors and actresses are at their busiest prior to appraisal time. They take advantage of the “recency” effect, that is, people tend to remember more of what happened recently.

Got that? Now, can you identify them?