Tag: bureaucracy

Before and After. Big and Small

I’m going to take a quick look at the love/hate aspect of work from my time in big corporate land and in micro business world too. Neither are perfect, both have their wonderful highs and frustrating lows, so here goes:

Big

I hated the way there were targets for everything. The trouble with targets is that people game them all the time. Set people a target, hook it up to the reward system and sit back and watch everyone screw the business and the customer and each other. So I loved trying to find pockets of enlightenment where we could experiment with doing the right thing because we believed it mattered, not because we were driven to it. The handy, overlooked thing about big business is that you can often play around and get things done differently. Everyone is watching the targets, so go play in the spaces in between. It helps if you don’t make a fuss about it, just go ahead and lay a few small bets around service improvement and watch some of them grow. Proceed until apprehended. I hated the games people played, and I love to play games.

I hated the way performance reviews were a) historic b) forced c) tied to reward and d) even existed. Good managers communicate with their people often enough that this old fashioned lack of trust has surely run its course, and yet it goes on. Big business learns very slowly sometimes. What I loved about performance reviews was trying to make them as flowing and continuous as possible, because that meant it was all about the conversation. Getting to know people, to understand what they are good at and then to get out of the way long enough to allow them to be good at it is an on-going process. I love that dialogue.

Small

I hate the way everything takes so long. I feel like I’m always waiting for decisions to get made. When I started my own business this used to rile me badly. I wasted ages wondering why people weren’t getting back to me, particularly when the discussion was started by them. And then I got to realising – for the time we are together, our discussion, the idea, the proposal, whatever – it has some immediacy. Then I depart and the often badly organised whirl of work just picks people up again and deposits them who knows where (how often do you hear a colleague exclaim – ‘I don’t know what day it is!’ I don’t know where I’m supposed to be next’). I manage this better now by having more things on the go, and looking for other reasons to be in touch – not about the proposal or the idea, but about work and life in a wider context. I believe these interactions add value to a relationship and that in time, they will come back around. I love the faith I have that this approach will work, and it simultaneously scares the crap out of me too.

Big or small it matters not. Game less, target less, worry less. Talk more, believe more, love more.

A version of this post originally appeared over at CostofWork run by Chris Fields.

Mummy HR

mummy by publicinsomniac
mummy by publicinsomniac

We’re continuing our series of HR ghosts and ghouls and tonight it’s the turn of the mummy. When I think of mummies I think of them in the classic horror pose, arms oustretched, shambling along bound in tape and bandages. And it’s the tape which binds these soulless creatures that I want to focus on. The bureaucratic tape which binds organisations and lashes them to the stumbling shambling gait of the mummy.

I enjoyed reading a great conversation started by Ben Eubanks over at UpstartHR recently all about whether companies should have a working through lunch policy. Seriously, lunch policy. I recommend you pop over and read the whole piece, to get you started here’s a snippet provided by Steve Browne:

My question is “Why is the HR person looking to add yet another policy?”

If the behavior isn’t working, or if the employee isn’t doing work, then just TALK TO THEM !!

Sorry to yell, but it blows me away that HR has fallen into such a deep hole when it comes to writing policies. We forget that there are many employees who work for us and not just a few. Most policies are written because of the behavior of a few folks.

And what about dress code policy? I was talking about this with a couple of HR practitioners just recently and one of them said “dress code policy is a great way of showing folks that you don’t trust them with even the most basic things”. Unnecessary bureaucracy and more tape round the mummy. I went to agree and before I could do so – the third member of our conversation violently disagreed. “You have to tell people what to wear or they will just wear what they like”. All I could manage was a head slap of disdain. I slapped my own head, not theirs.

Sometimes my work involves carrying out stakeholder engagement audits. As part of these audit my associates and I talk with lots of staff, and the stories they tell us about unnecessary policies written and implemented to “legislate” against things that haven’t happened and in all likelihood won’t, are eye boggling. I can’t go into detail but things like no alcohol and no toasters (yup – no toasters) are often used to bind the policy mummy even tighter. The tighter the policy, the greater the lack of trust, and this lack of trust is a root cause of people feeling disengaged from their employer. It is damaging and unnecessary.

You may think, I can run faster than the mummy, it’ll never catch me. And you forget – the mummy is undead. It will shamble on until you can run no more and then, and only then will it wrap you in its lunch/dress code/alcohol/toaster bandages. And you will suffocate.

Despite my punk roots I’m not advocating anarchy, and I appreciate the requirement for policy. But surely policy should be stuff that enables work, makes things happen, not stuff that binds and chokes the life from the company?

I’d love to hear from you if you have ever seen mummy HR stumbling along your corridors binding folk with its policy bandages.

photo c/o publicinsomniac