Business Stupid - Being in Alignment....or Not and a dose of Chaos

Good Morning,

 

Years ago I spent a short time working for a company where there were many, many problems. I being new to the industry was not much of a help like one person in a lifeboat trying to keep it afloat during a hurricane.

 

One of the many issues was chaotic leadership which often created the hurricanes and tsunamis which hit the site week after week.

 

About two months into my stint at this company, the site manager pulled me into their office and scolded me about providing training for the new hires that were coming in the door nearly as fast as those who quit were leaving the site. To put it in perspective, I have never filled out so much termination paperwork in the three months I worked in this company than in any other management job I worked...combined. Most were people simply quitting. 

 

Anyway, this manager berated me for trying to train the new hires, that I was not skilled enough to provide the training that was necessary to do the job right. And, in all honesty, I wasn't the right guy to do the training as I was very poorly trained (the trainer who I started with printed out notes and read them out loud to a group of new hires). The problem was, there was no trainer, that person who had 'trained' me had either quit or was fired shortly after I started, I never found out. In either case, there was no trainer and the new folks had to learn from someone, so, being a line supervisor, folks looked to me, and I took initiative. I thought it was my job.

 

Oddly enough, the VERY next day after the manager ripped me a new one, the HR manager who started there a few weeks prior walked up to me with two new hires who happened to start that day and needed to be trained. My counterpart was very skilled in the company and could train, but was not in on this day.

 

I advised the HR person that I was not to provide the training as not having the necessary skills. That I was forbidden to train by the site manager.

 

That HR person advised that there was no one else who could provide the training, therefore I had to start their training.

 

So, the vicious cycle continued. Management was not aligned with HR on who was to perform the training and when. Attempts to rectify the situation on the front lines was met with reprimands.

 

This being one of many problems facing the site, it only served to make matters worse. Needless to say, shortly after I was terminated from that position (I see it now as a blessing), the entire site was shut down. What a mess....

 

A good part of the trouble was the lack of alignment in the management strata. Little to no communication between HR and Management on core issues like new hires and training.  Little or no communication between management and management itself.

 

What could have been done? Planning for one. Instead of constantly reacting and triaging problems, management could have actually formulated a plan which could have been communicated to all stakeholders.

 

In the end, quality suffered and stress increased, and ultimately chaos driven by a healthy dose Business Stupid cost many people their jobs as the site closed.

 

Enjoy

 

Sanford Berenberg
sanford@berenberg.net
www.berenberg.net

 

Business Stupid - Positional Wisdom...

Good Morning,

The company had shaken up its support structure in an attempt to re-invent the service model and improve service across the boards. In a nutshell, the entire experient was a huge success with best ever service performance and a huge drop in complaints.

Within the success, though, there were some disturbing trends among the restacked staff and new leadership.

In one case, one of the re-positioned staff members was from Human Resources, with certification, years of experience, etc. This person now worked on the service front lines. A different person, sans certification and with some HR experience, was placed in Human Resources.

When a front lines situation came up requiring Human Resource advice, a line manager advised not going to the former Human Resources professional for any HR advice and rather go to the person in HR, but only go to HR. This was not for an action, but for simple advice. Had this been for an official action, the only option IS to go to HR.

The former experienced HR staff member was not removed from their position due to poor performance, or mistakes, it was more of a political move. And when they moved from the HR position, they did not carve out part of their brain with that experience and leave it in the seat for their successor.

In effect, the manager said, go to the person in the position, not the person with the knowledge.

What makes this so interesting is how incorrect Human Resource actions can cost companies thousands of dollars or worse.

In "Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell" by Oren Harari we see how Colin Powell epitomizes a better way to handle this well when he needs advice or information. He goes to the most knowledgeable person on his team to get it.

You can see the same in Captain D. Michael Abrashoff's "It's Your Ship" where the Captain would tap sailor with the most experience and knowledge to handle the task at hand. Even if the person were to present a new system to the Admiralty (a task normally handled by the Captain's or their senior leadership).

Not using key resources because they are not in a particular position can cost your organization a lot.

And is just plain business stupid.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg
sanford@berenberg.net
www.berenberg.net

Welcome to Business Stupid - Saving Something....

All,

This subject has been a passion of mine for several years as I started collecting tales of business and organizational stupidity. In some cases I was caught up in the center of the lunacy and others I witnessed it from a safe distance, although there were casualties....

Anyway, here is the inaugural post to Business Stupid -

Business Stupid - Saving Something!?!

There was the technician standing over the still broken icemaker. He had been working on the 2 year old unit for over five hours. He had yanked out every moving part and replaced everything he could find that might be slightly at fault for causing the unit to breakdown....again for the fourth time in 2 years.

Doing the math in my head, guessing an ice maker the size of a small cube college dorm-room sized fridgerator would cost somewhere about one to two hundred dollars...

How much was the cost of this five hour service call? No matter who ever was paying for it, it had to be close to the cost of the unit. Not to mention it was the fourth such call during the life of the overworked machine.

When I asked the tech why not just put in a new one, he just sighed, having seemingly pleaded that case and been handed his head for thinking of such a logical solution.

What is the service company and the customer who uses the machine saveing by keeping a unit long since beyond its time up (and all warrantees have expired) and running (as neither wanted to replace it)?

Turns out it cost more to go through all the paperwork than to requisition a new unit. That is, it would involve greater use of 'shop time' for filling out paperwork, filing or data entering, getting approvals, making disbursements, updating inventory, etc. That a five hour service call was cheaper than the bureacracy set up to stop a simple and effective solution.

So by the end of the day the ice maker is up and running again and the tech is on his way out. I will miss him, but not to worry, I will get to see him sometime again in about four to six months when the icemaker decides to die again.

That's Business Stupid.


Sanford Berenberg
sanford@berenberg.net
www.berenberg.net