The Crass Captain - Step 8 - Don't Worry About Who Can Do What Well

Step 8 - Don't Worry About Who Can Do What Well

Another step in creating organizational dysfunction is filling positions and functions with warm bodies instead of the people with the best skills for the job.

This is common in small organizations where everyone wears a lot of hats, in organizations that have grown from small businesses into large ones without regard for the changing needs of the business, and in business units acquired by large companies that were once small companies. Even though this trait is common in smaller organizations, it can still be found everywhere and can effectively employed in the largest of corporations.

Does the business need a safety director? That can be assigned to the receptionist. Does the business need an accountant? Those duties can be given to the graphic designer. Is advertising needed? Give that job to the manager of the QC lab. Does the company have a plant under construction? Both the construction management and the design work can be done cooperatively by the warehouse supervisor and the lead salesman. When the copy machine malfunctions, who is the best person for the job? That’s right – the president is the best person to fix the copy machine. Why not? He has a set of tools at home for which he spent good money and hardly ever uses.

OK, so there actually is safety manager and a safety team, a accountants doing the accounting, a team of marketing specialists doing the advertising, and engineers that work to design and manage construction of facilities, among other in-house and contracted specialties. Is the business on track forever? Well of course it is. Industries don’t change, new regulations are never enacted, the competition will forever be the same, and technology has ceased development. So why would any rational business manager spend good company money on training? Of course no rational manager would do such a crazy thing.

Employees are set up to fail by being assigned responsibilities for which they are not fully qualified or when they are not given ongoing opportunities to improve the skills that they do have. Sometimes, brute force of will can make certain ambitious employees somewhat effective, but leadership will never know how much they may be coming up short. Often, especially in cases where regulations are involved, management doesn’t know the shortfalls of the efforts that until they are slapped with penalties. Employee frustration is prevalent in a failure-to-train, sink-or-swim environment. What’s more, the company will rarely be successful or will be successful in spite of itself because the industry or market is simply so lucrative.

Comments

Only registered users can write comments!

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."