Employees Have Brains. Let them Use it.
In my previous life, I was a low level bureaucrat. From my headquarter’s ivory tower, I wrote advisories, memos, manuals, and procedures. But there was a problem: I received instructions and guidance from managers who were disconnected from the actual work. While managers were preoccupied with maintaining budgets and schedules, I wrote instructions on work that I would not do on a large scale. The material was peer review by headquarters staff prior to release.
Week after week in regional conference calls we (headquarters) would dribble endless guidance on how to perform the task. Then I went to a regional office to observe their work. I went to *Larry’s desk and saw how he transformed headquarters guidance into beautiful origami. Memos were turned into swans, birds and I even saw a dog. Larry was very creative. A regional employee told me bluntly “we don’t use the stuff from headquarters, we make procedures that make sense for our office.”
We do stuff that makes sense for us.
Even though I think administratively, I understand and accept that I represent a minority. Thank goodness for that.
Are you in a task overseer position? Are you responsible for compiling status updates? If yes, I want to share some advice with you:
- Chances are, your staff doesn’t read anything past 250 words. So, please stop wasting your time.
- How about those hour long plus conference calls? Go have them if you enjoy inducing boredom.
- No matter what you write, your staff will complete a task in the best way for them, not you.
- Do not write memos and guidance without receiving and using input from staff.
- Memos and procedure paper make awesome wrapping paper for the holiday gifts.
- If guidance must be written, convert it into a checklist.
Checklists are great! I create them when I have a series of things to complete. Here is an example:
Build a deck for 206 Main Street property
- Create list of supplies
- Create budget and timeline. Spend no more than 30 working days and $1,000 in supplies.
- Create risk register and proposed mitigation plan.
- Make it look like this (show picture)
- Purchase Supplies
- Create weekly progress reports
- Take pictures of completed work
- Document lessons learned
Keep guidance simple and straight to the point. Allow your employees to use their brain and gain autonomy. They are required to use their brain if they are paid at least $35/hour.
If people are not working your plan exactly the way you want, then it is because of one critical reason: it’s your fault. Yes you read that correctly and I did not mistype. Yes, it is your fault. You failed to communicate properly. You may have spoke or wrote your guidance, but they listen to none of your words. Remove yourself from your high horse and connect with your staff. Ask them how they prefer to do their work. Listen and allow them to do that, they may do it better than you even imagined.
Stop killing people through the slow death of administration.
Got feedback? I’d love to read it! Please drop me a note in the comment section below.
*name was changed to protect the innocent and creative.
Originally published at victornovis.com on January 9, 2019.
