Are Managers Sabotaging Missions?

Last week I met an Operations Manager who seemed on the phone to be heartily in favour of workplace engagement. During the discussion, an idea surfaced that major players in the sector such as JLR and JCB could be encouraged to sponsor SME projects as improvements in the culture of small firms has an automatic knock-on effect of better productivity, reliability and customer focus. I was interested to see where our dialogue would go.

Outcome

After a long one-way conversation about his background and the company's history, he took me round the shop floor, telling me about the big names on the client list and how important it was that they were served well. They'd just bought a new CNC lathe and he would update more kit in a heartbeat, he said, given the clearance.

Only one employee made eye contact with him, an older operator who wanted to check on something. I watched carefully as the rest avoided interaction, noting the red flags of a disenfranchised workforce.

Back on my seat after the tour, I asked lightly what measures he had taken in the company to engender a positive attitude.

"We have toolbox meetings," he said. "They used to be weekly but we've got them down to once a month now cos they don't seem to do much." He told me of a time he'd caught workers complaining out on the shop floor after one such meeting. "I hauled them all back in," he said, "and told them to spill what they were moaning about." 

He'd ordered them, in other words, to be honest with him.

I questioned his prioritization of machine spending over the needs of the workforce - this was enough to send his enthusiasm down a sharp slope. He turned his back and left me to leave the building alone.

Frontage of the building was cracked and decaying. The lobby sported a large damp patch and a chunk of plaster had left the wall. But profits were healthy, apparently. The client base was full of big names.

Appraisal

Spending on machinery is a version of retail therapy that every company loves to indulge in, given the funds. A brand new piece of kit is immediate evidence of progress, and delivers instant results from the moment it's switched on. Investment in people, on the other hand, is perceived as a risky business, often tried before without success, and there is little faith in sustainability as prior experience muddies the water on all fronts.

In the past I have faced two incidents of direct sabotage on culture-advancement projects. On both occasions it was clear that the managers concerned were much more interested in preserving the status quo as it appealed to them than they were with enabling the workforce to develop collaborative and autonomous skills. With this personal insight in mind, and on evidence collected from conversations with others, it seems that the problem of "self-preservation at the expense of the company mission" is quite prevalent.

Two main reasons surface as being behind this. A primary motive for keeping things as they are lies in preserving methods of subjugation. Authoritarian dictatorship doesn't blend well with recognition, communication and collaboration, while freeing people to make their own decisions on best-practice sits uneasily with a manager's desire to rule the roost.

Another strong motive appears to be resource-guarding. Keeping information to oneself allows a manager to cherry-pick what is fed out to the shop floor teams, and plenty can go into the 'forgotten bin' when it comes to positive feedback or suggestions from above that play into the field of increased engagement. Managers whose desire for control outweighs their loyalty to the company are numerous, and their modus operandum presents a danger to internal progress.

Managers who adopt new ways of thinking, on the other hand, are glad of the opportunity to engage more effectively with their teams and swiftly see the evidence of discretional effort in productivity and profitability increases. They take part in the developmental process with enthusiasm, and end up with convivial relations emanating across all departments as a result of their leading by example.

Should you be facing a situation that resonates with this post, please get in touch for an informal discussion.

kathy@worldlinetraining.com