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Good
People . . . Unworkable Organizations
After the
last issue about the high cost of difficult people, several subscribers
suggested that sometimes it's the organization that's difficult, not the
people who are trying their best to get good work done.
Valid point.
When good people are trying to work in unworkable organizations, they'll get frustrated, creative, difficult, or even leave. Some will blame themselves because they don't succeed. Others will just get angry and start acting out.
Often, I'm called in to "fix the people" in these organizations, only to find I have to give the executive team the tough feedback: "It's not the rank-and-file employees who are being difficult, but the unworkable structure of the organization that is preventing the work from getting done."
While each unworkable organization may exhibit unique symptoms, the underlying causes are often very similar. Whether it's a smaller, family-run business or a large industry leader, four factors account for most of the problems:
1. No clear direction from the top. If people don't know what they're supposed to be doing, they'll get together, talk it out, pool their best ideas - given the information they have at the time - and develop their own plan.
If the executive team is lucky, the employee's scenario will match the goals and achievements they've chosen. More often, they won't.
One senior manager asked his team to meet for three days to develop their goals for the following year. When the employees asked what the vice-president of the division needed them to do, the manager replied, "She's looking to you for ideas."
The team worked hard for most of the three days. They considered a wide variety of market and internal forces, reviewed their resources, and by the middle of the third day were ready with a report for the vice-president. When they reviewed it with their manager, he thanked them for their hard work, and only then told them what the VP had really asked them for: targets and deliverables vastly different from what the team had identified.
The manager permanently lost their respect and confidence in his ability to lead. The employees felt the meeting was a waste of their time and company resources. They could have come up with appropriate working plans much sooner if they had just known what the VP wanted.
Good people perform best when they have clear direction. They need to know where the organization is going, where it isn't, and their part in it.
2. No shared strategic plan. Strategic plans translate direction into goals. What needs to be done? How is the work to be divided up? Who is responsible for what? When must each phase of a project be completed? How will resources be allocated?
When roles and goals are not clarified, when business processes are not articulated, good people do what they think makes sense. Often these activities are very different from what their colleagues are doing and from what management needs and wants.
A technical company was reporting less-than-stellar results with its new networked product. Customers were complaining, new features weren't integrated, core features weren't completely functional. The new group manager was on the carpet. Why couldn't he get these people to work together?
Looking at both the structure of the organization as well as the working relationships, our assessment revealed the product development manager was also the manager of one of the component teams. That meant in a group of equal component teams, one had become more equal than the others.
First, the group manager appointed a new project development manager, then I facilitated a "roles and goals" session where both the technical specs and development expectations were aligned with product features. The teams quickly realigned resources and people to be congruent with the product features. Their new comprehensive set of specs integrated all the components and accelerated the development schedule.
A side benefit was a dramatic decrease in the number of "fire alarms" and "floods" that had been bedeviling the project. Everyone could focus on their core deliverables and disregard the "would be nice" suggestions that had been slowing them down.
3. "Just do it!" Implementation. It might work at Nike but it spells disaster for most companies. No matter how valid the plan, good people stumble without shared processes and practices. Even very experienced professionals must agree on the what, why, when and how of actions to be taken to achieve the goals they've targeted.
A fast growing company was having trouble meeting market demand for its services, so it hired only experienced sales and sales support professionals who were presumed to require little training or orientation.
Sales increased dramatically. New customers were commenting on how great the sales people were, and at the same time complaining about how difficult it was to work with the sales support staff. Two of the new sales support staff applied for stress disability.
The executive team decided the sales support staff needed a motivational team building experience so they would be as good as the sales people. Our assessment showed this was the last thing they needed.
Under pressure to produce sales quickly, the sales people promised the sun, moon and stars to their new customers, making up whatever pricing structures and add-on features they felt necessary to close a sale. Once they had a yes, they moved on to their next prospect and turned the customer over to the sales support team.
These employees were expected to make payment, delivery and customer support service arrangements with the new customers. Using an unfamiliar proprietary sales support system, they were supposed to unravel all the varieties of conditions and terms promised by the sales people, ensure payment before delivery, and convert the customers to standard terms and conditions.
They didn't need motivation. They needed standardized processes and procedures. They needed consistent prices and features. They shouldn't have to make up a new policy and procedure for every customer they worked with.
When the executive team reviewed the quarterly numbers, they discovered while sales were up, income was significantly lower than anticipated. Without clear pricing guidelines and service delivery costs, the sales people had been making unprofitable sales. They literally had put into operation the old joke about losing money on individual sales, but making up for it on volume.
Once sales and support were working off the same page, complaints lessened dramatically and profits from new sales soared.
4. Taking a Short View. The short view is what makes sense in the moment. Disregarding the long-term consequences of short term actions. Getting caught up in needing to be right, rather than to do right.
In the example above, the sales people were taking the short view. They were measuring their success on how many sales they made, not on the profitability of each of those sales. When the executive team understood the real source of the difficulties with the sales support staff, they were able to take corrective action.
Unfortunately, when executives or owners take the short view the whole organization suffers. Their corporate stewardship is lost in service to their egos.
One business owner socialized with lower level employees, encouraging them to disregard the company policies for on-the-job behavior standards. The junior employees would get dispensation from the "big boss" for being late to work, spending excessive time socializing, being out of uniform, not meeting deadlines. More senior employees were frustrated with the performance of the favored employees, and supervisors had little leverage in managing inappropriate behavior. Morale tumbled and turnover continued to increase.
A senior manager favored the men in his department, believing their profession was "no place for women." When women compared notes about missed opportunities, they realized there was a pattern of discrimination, so they filed suit and prevailed. Both the company's financial health and reputation were affected.
Then there are the senior executives who approve questionable financial arrangements and bookkeeping practices to influence monthly and quarterly profitability reports to influence stock prices. And let's not forget executives who misappropriate company resources to influence policy makers. The list goes on and on....
The question you need to ask is, "How is my organization preventing good people from doing good work?"
And then get the help you need to fix any problems you find. You can't afford to wait.
__________
Since 1986, Patricia Wiklund, Ph.D. has helped some of America's largest, and smallest, organizations resolve expensive and troublesome people problems and conflicts by leveraging the strategic power of soft skills®. A former mental health professional, she is as comfortable on the front line, as on the shop floor, or in the corporate executive suite, and also works effectively in government and educational settings. Call her today at 415 641-5997, or email her at pat@patwiklund.com to discuss how she can help you put your people and organizations back on track.
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