When “Helping” Hurts: How “Helping” Slowly Destructs Your Organization Structure

Disclosure: This article was translated and proofread by ChatGPT from my original article written in Chinese.

In an organization, “helping” should be considered an anomaly that needs to be handled carefully.

When dividing responsibilities, it’s inevitable that there will be times when the distribution is unreasonable or unclear, leading to occasional needs for help from others. As a supervisor, you should be alert whenever you hear someone needing help.

Regular helping creates a gray area in the organization

Asking for help is easy and effortless, but the biggest fear is not knowing how much help is needed or to what extent. Over time, the person originally responsible for the task may mistakenly believe or get used to having someone cover for them; however, in reality, others may only help occasionally or when they have spare time. Eventually, this creates a gray area where no one is responsible, and it only becomes noticed when shit hits the fan there.

If your team members really need to ask a colleague for help, they should clearly explain the “reason,” “specific content,” and “duration” of the assistance required. Once the time has passed, it’s no longer the other person’s responsibility. After the help is provided, managers should carefully review the situation and consider whether it’s necessary to adjust the job content or even the organization.

The fear is that the so-called “help” becomes more and more frequent, and responsibilities are unknowingly shifted, leading to a discrepancy between the job description and the actual situation. This not only hinders the soundness and development of the organization but also causes problems of job handover in the future.

Sometimes they are even unaware of being helped

Another common situation is that team members doesn’t even know others are quietly covering for them.

For example: An accountant proactively corrects unclear forms for colleagues. Over time, everyone thinks it’s okay to fill them out casually. When a new accountant takes over and requires proper form completion, everyone feels that the new accountant is being nitpicky. In fact, they never had a correct understanding of the company’s processes from the beginning, and the company’s regulations are virtually nonexistent.

Managers always fight “entropy”

I always say, “Managers are always fighting entropy”.

After you design and settle down the organization and think “Um, the machine will keep running smoothly”.

No, it will not.

Due to the laziness in human nature, workers tend to be “chaotic”, much like the entropy we know in physics.

Therefore, as a manager, you not only have to design the organizational structure and establish rules and workflows, but you also have to keep an eye on the machine.

Things can always go wrong. Trust Murphy.