What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless work

Question

What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless/pointless work based on either half baked ideas, of just o appease the higher ups.

Example: An organization have three tier management

1. CEO
2. Oper. Manager
3. Dept. Manager

Suppose CEO gives a strategic instruction and fails to followup much of the time. But with a imaginary deadline (within 2-3 days), at the cursory instruction of the CEO, the Oper. Mngr initiates action telling Dept. Manager to work on an assignment based on strategic idea provided by the CEO.

As a result, Dept. Mngr. instructs his staff to start working on the assignment, assigning resources to it, etc ASAP.

Now as the day comes to submit the deliverables, the CEO has initiated a contrasting idea to the initial one. So the work done on the initial one goes to waste.

What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless work in business setting.I suppose there must be an apt Wikipedia styled phrase for this phenomenon. I searched online for "Redundant work" which is usually used in some articles in passing, but on google, the search prompts for Redundancy rather than redundant work. The point is to read more article (pros, cons, effects, perils) or Wikipedia information on this subject phrase.

Answer 1

This is a problem of management (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management) of a large organization, in this particular case, a problem of delegation and follow-up.

On that particular issue, see entrepreneur.com/article/294559.

Answer 2

If work is done on a project which is then cancelled it is often said to be "A waste of time and effort."

Because the time and materials used on the project cost money it can also be "A waste of time, money and effort."

The wasted effort is the work done and the commitment shown by the workforce who, although they are paid to do what they are told, will usually have a commitment to the job as well.

The main problem with frequent changes of direction and frequent cancellations is that the workforce can begin to lose the commitment to the work and, therefore, put less and less effort into each project as time goes on because they start to believe that each project presented to them will be "Just another waste of time and effort"