In hindsight, could you document the steps your team undertook to get a task done?
If you try, you’ll likely realize half the real effort was shadow work.
Shadow work is the unofficial, unacknowledged labour people quietly put in to patch broken handoffs and keep projects moving. It gets the job done, but because it happens out of sight, leadership only sees the final output, not the friction they managed to get it done.
Relying on invisible effort hides broken systems, drives burnout and blinds us from making effective resourcing, scaling and coordination decisions.
In your next 1-on-1, ask one simple question:
“What is the most time-consuming thing you do every week that isn’t written down anywhere?”
Once you name the shadow work, you can stop guessing and start building real capability.
