Dirty-work group

A dirty-work group (DWG) is a team where each member gets to pick job which they would love to do (even if it is not according to their core competence): "nice-work", and one they may not love to do (even if it is not according to their core competence): "dirty-work", which they would have had to do otherwise. Once the task have been picked, a person does his or her Nice-Work and the Dirty-Work is done by someone who has that task listed as a Nice-Work.

Table of contents

1 Creating a Dirty-Work Group
2 Advantages of forming a Dirty-Work Group
3 Organisation Structure using Dirty-Work Groups
4 External links

Creating a Dirty-Work Group

Following steps are involved in creating a Dirty-Work Group:

Beating Down the Idea
Gathering People
Shaping the Team
Distributing tasks

Advantages of forming a Dirty-Work Group

As the person who did not have to do his Dirty-Work is required to stay in touch with that task, there is always a back up in case there is extra effort needed or the person doing that task as the Nice-Work leaves.
This will make sure that the team is cohesive, the concept or the purpose is the leader and not any person (hence no leadership cult issues) and everyone gets to do what they would love to do.
It will help form small entrepreneurial groups.

Organisation Structure using Dirty-Work Groups

Such an organisation will be composed to many different sized Dirty-Work Groups. As communication is the most vital aspect, each Dirty-Work group defines three kinds of interfaces. These tasks are to be picked up when the group is forming.

An Interface is a person who is one point contact for everyone form outside the group for the Dirty-Work Group. The different kind of interfaces are:

Internal: One point contact in the DWG for all other DWGs in the organisation.
External: One point contact in the DWG for all communations coming at from outside the organisation.
Hierarchical: One point contact in the DWG for all communations along the managerial hierarchy.

One interesting thing about such an organisation would be split in teams rather than in projects. Teams will not be allocated to projects, but projects will be allocated to teams.