Bureaucracy at work
by Andrew Smith on 03/07/06 at 4:52 pm
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The other day I saw an e-mail addressed to a shopping centre, which went something like this:
“Hi. Please could you send me a map of your shopping centre. I’m coming to watch a movie straight after work today, and I would like to find out where to park so that I can be closest to the theatres, because I’m going to be rushing.”
From what I could see, this person had to stay at work until exactly 5pm, but the movie they were going to see was probably at 5:30pm, so they were going to be in a hurry. Their boss was obviously not going to let them off 15 minutes early, and yet they were able to spend 15 minutes surfing the internet to find the shopping centre’s site and send an enquiry. A classic case of bureaucracy plugging some holes (“you must stay at work until 5pm!”), and yet that alone will never encourage productivity. As a boss you have two options:
1) Block internet access, limit coffee times and introduce clock-cards.
Result: Everyone will think you’re a jerk, and your staff will do just enough to not get caught.
2) Make sure everyone is working in the correct role, their contributions are valued, and the work they are doing makes a difference.
Result: You won’t need to monitor your staff’s every movement. They’ll motivate themselves.
Unfortunately, option 2 is a lot, lot harder to implement than option 1.
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
