Work is the activity of applying force over a distance, which creates motion and generates energy. Work can be applied to anything that moves — but it only does the job if the force exerted is sufficient and the direction of the force matches the direction of the displacement. This formula is usually expressed as the product of force and displacement, which we call the “force-displacement” product (or, more formally, the dot product of vectors).
As a physical concept, work is different from energy. Energy is a broader idea that covers all forms of mass-energy, including potential energy, kinetic energy and rest-mass energy. There is also thermal energy and pressure energy, among others. Whether something qualifies as “work” can be rather subjective. A physics teacher standing motionless in front of students will drain their energy, but it isn’t work by the strictest definition because the teacher doesn’t exert forces that displace anything outside their bodies. But a teacher pushing papers across a desk will do work because the force is significant and the displacement is in the direction of motion.
The amount of work done is proportional to the product of the force exerted and the displacement, and it’s equal to a certain number of joules, a unit of energy. The dot product also takes the direction into account. A force-distance product is always maximized when the direction of the force is parallel to the displacement, but that’s not necessarily true in practice. Machines often decrease the amount of work required because they reduce the size or the distance of the displacement, and they may change the direction in which the force is applied.
In the business context, work refers to the effort a person or company puts into achieving its goals. Whether this is the goal of manufacturing goods or creating software, it’s important to understand what constitutes work. This helps companies and individuals set appropriate expectations when they’re looking to hire or be hired.
Work is one of the most important things people can do, and it’s not limited to jobs that require manual labor or complex tasks like engineering or coding. It’s even more important in a society that relies on services such as health care, education and transportation — and especially in a world where automation is rapidly replacing many jobs.
To maximize the value of workers, organizations need to identify and tap their unexplored capabilities for creative work that can solve new problems or capture fresh opportunities. But redefining work isn’t as simple as reskilling employees for an adjacent part of the workforce that hasn’t yet been automated or moving workers into management or product design positions. The only way to unleash this capacity is to redefine what we think of as work itself. Only then can it fully unleash the potential of humans to generate more meaning and more value for themselves, their customers and their communities. 1
