The Default Player: A Conversation with Jesse Adams and Nour Bitar

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A note from Jesse 

I recently watched an episode of Bluey with my kids, and it’s stuck with me. The family is having a barbecue: the men are at the grill, laughing and flipping meat, while the women are running around doing everything else from prepping food to corralling kids and setting the table. The older sister pretends to be “cooking meat,” while the younger one is stuck with the salad. By the end, everyone cheers for the meat, and no one pays attention to the salad, until the younger sister calls out how hard her mom worked to make it.

It is funny, but it is also telling. The work that looks visible (the grill, the jokes, the meat) is not the whole story. The harder, and arguably more essential, work in the background rarely gets noticed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. The everyday, mundane tasks, that are often overlooked but without them, everything else falls to pieces.

It’s both a home issue and a workplace one. When we talk about balance, we have to ask ourselves: how do we recognize and value the work that keeps the lights on?

This conversation with Nour Bitar, Vice President of Operations and Strategy Execution leader at Valsoft Corporation, reminded me just how much leaders carry the responsibility to rebalance recognition, so that invisible labour isn’t taken for granted — whether it’s in our families or our organizations.

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Invisible Work 

Nour had a similar experience, though not at a barbecue. She told a story about solo-parenting while her husband renovated her parents’ basement. On the surface, the renovation looked like the “big” job. But as Nour pointed out, it only worked because she was at home holding everything else steady, from feeding the kids to booking appointments and keeping routines in place so he could focus.

It’s not hard to see the parallel at work. The people running operations, answering customer calls, or handling maintenance are the reason big projects can even get off the ground. The issue is, their work usually stays invisible…until something breaks. 

When Nour talked about balance, she pushed back on the idea that it means splitting things evenly. “To me, balance isn’t 50/50,” she said. “It’s about tradeoffs that leave all parties feeling valued.”

Jesse connected this to what he hears from municipal leaders. “They describe their work as pushing a boulder uphill,” he said. “Ninety percent of their budgets go to basics like water, garbage, and electricity. Things no one thinks about until they fail.” The other ten percent goes to hot-button issues, and yet that small slice gets nearly all the attention.

At home or at work, it’s the same pattern: the steady, essential work falls into the background, while the flashy or high-stakes projects take centre stage.

Being the Default

The trouble, Nour explained, is that the same people often become the “default” for invisible work. “It could be women or people from marginalized groups,” she said. “And when those roles aren’t rotated, that’s when resentment builds.”

Jesse agreed. In his conversations with leaders who are women, this theme comes up again and again. Unless leaders step in, the pattern repeats which means leaving some people carrying the weight of thankless tasks.

That cycle leads to what Nour called the “punishment of competence.” Being great at keeping things running can trap people in roles where they’re overlooked for growth. “You hear things like, ‘We can’t afford to lose you in this role,’” she said. “What looks like a compliment can  actually be holding someone back.”

And it isn’t only about promotions. It’s about recognition and fairness. What starts as overlooked excellence can very quickly turn into exhaustion.

Leadership’s Responsibility

Both Nour and Jesse came back to the same point: leaders have a responsibility to shift this dynamic. Recognition can’t only come through promotions. Nour noted that leaders can also show it through wellness programs, team-building opportunities, or simply calling out strong operational work in public.

She also emphasizes the disproportionate impact on women, especially women of colour, who are more often assigned what she called “office housework”: note-taking, mentoring, or smoothing over conflict. “All of it is essential,” she said, “but rarely rewarded.”

Unconscious bias, she argued, is not an excuse. Leaders need to pay attention to who is taking on the invisible work and put systems in place to make it visible.

Jesse added that there is also an imbalance of energy in how work is treated. “The people keeping things steady mostly get “negative energy” — they’re only noticed when something goes wrong,” he said. “Meanwhile, those leading new initiatives get praise and excitement.”

Rebalancing that energy, he suggested, is critical. Operational work deserves coaching and praise, too. Both types of work (the visible and the invisible) deserve all four forms of feedback: directing, correcting, coaching, and recognition.

So…

The question for leaders is simple: who are your default players? Who’s holding things together without recognition while others get the spotlight?

Invisible work will always exist, but it shouldn’t mean the people doing it are invisible. Leaders have the chance to break the cycle or resentment by noticing who’s always stepping up and naming and valuing the effort they put in, but also by making sure responsibility is shared.

When invisible work is made visible and people are provided the support they need, teams become stronger and no one feels left behind.