The Proxy Organization - five ways to battle a wasteful culture
Every organization forms a hierarchy. This is how we make sense of the world around us. We define structures such as responsibilities and mandates to make sure we know our place in the organization. In an organization where these structures start to be confusing or poorly defined you often see the number of people between the leaders and the people that make things happen grow. This is because not only is it very difficult to handle a poorly defined workload, you also start to have meetings for everything. Not to take decisions, but to form consensus since it is not clear who should take the decisions.
The more meetings you have, the less time you have to think about what happen in the meetings and the more help you need to go to more meetings. And so you enter into a running organization. Meetings happen all day and without time to reflect you start to make poor decisions and reduce time to communicate outside the meetings. So you hire more people to handle that, but soon they also get sucked into the meetings, and they need to hire more people.
As these people start to get more and more stressed they feel the need to attend more and more meetings to keep up to date with everything that happens. As stress sets in the need for control grow. We introduce KPI's that are designed, not to make teams work better together, but to make the team accountable if anything goes wrong. We implement restrictions and control points in our systems to "ensure" people work "correct". Morale drops and segregation begin to foster a "we vs them" attitude.
Slowly the organization split into silos, and we have more managers than people actually working. The managers spend all their time forming a biological proxy network with a single purpose to receive and send information in the endless meetings. People start to get sick from stress and start to leave the organization as the distance between the workers and leadership is made up of dozens of proxy positions all focused on control from a top-down perspective.
Sound familiar?
This is a very common thing as companies grow, and it is actually not that hard to turn around. It will require a lot of effort, and it will take time, but you will save a ton of money long term and most importantly you will stop hurting your staff.
Step 1: Define roles.
The first thing you should always do is define the roles in your organization. Make sure all roles are clearly defined, following a standard that is the same in all areas of the company. Don't make up roles like scrum manager or other combined roles. Stick to proper roles that are the same across the globe. You are not unique, so stop making up unicorns because you don't live in an imaginary fantasy world. Define responsibilities and mandates for all roles, so everyone knows what is expected of them.
To avoid a situation where you pretty much play the whisper game and just forward information you define what input and output for each role. Every role should have some value passed in the output that is higher than the value they receive in the input. If the role does not add value, then consider why that role exists in the first place. If it actually reduces the value, then remove that role.
In this step you should also match the role definition with the skill and experience of the manager(s) that hold that role. You will often find that you have the wrong person in certain roles, and you should try to match the roles with the people to get the best result. Never put a manager in a position on the merit of being with the company a long time. That is not the right experience to promote.
Step 2: Define decision processes
Endless meetings often come from poorly defined decision processes. So set clear decision processes that either comes as part of the portfolio process, or inside the teams if the team and product owner are given mandate. If everyone knows what need to be decided and the process to get that decision, the number of meetings are reduced drastically.
Defining the decision processes also prevent "ghost projects" that are driven in isolation without coordination elsewhere in the organization.
Step 3: Define information flows
One of the reasons why proxy organizations exist is because the information flow is poor. By that I do not mean that you don't have information flowing, I mean that it is difficult to get the information you need. This is just as common with an overwhelming information flow as with an underwhelming one.
Make sure that information is properly classified, so it is easy to find the type of information each person need or is interested in. Also make sure you make the information easy to overview with short snippets that I can drill down if I want. Lastly make sure the information is both sent in regular intervals when it is information that affect the whole organization, but also, so I can subscribe to get information of my choosing.
If you do this right, then confusion and uncertainty is reduced. This lead to less stress and better decisions from everyone as they are better informed.
Step 4: Define Meeting guidelines
In a proxy organization meets are used as crutches by managers that are afraid to take decisions. Either because they don't understand what they are supposed to take a decision on, or because they feel unsure on their mandate, so they seek to get as much approval from others as possible.
In Step 1 you make sure that you have the right people in the right position. This alone will help mitigate the endless meeting syndrome. Next you require every meeting to have a set agenda, what outcome should come from the meeting and most importantly a cost for the meeting. This will discourage meetings that are not really necessary, or that people that actually just want to have control join without having any impact on the desired outcome.
The last thing to do in this step is to set limit on meetings. If all you do is going to meetings, then what do you actually produce in value? Everyone need time between meetings to reflect and take care of the actions undoubtedly coming up in the meetings. Enforce 30 minutes waiting between meetings and 2 periods each week with 2-4 hours of consecutive meeting free time. Sometimes it can be a good idea to have this hard blocked in the calendar for everyone in the company, especially during the change process.
Step 5 : Introduce bottom-up evaluations
In most organization evaluations of people's performance within the organization is done top-down. To best understand the performance of the people in your organization you should also have the opposite represented. As a manager your job is to ensure that those below you in the hierarchy have what they need to be successful. In a Proxy organization this is often forgotten and a blame and punish attitude is used towards those below you in order to look good to those above you. This should be removed and introducing bottom-up evaluations is a good way to do that.
This should be done often as a way to determine where in the organization people are running off to meetings instead of taking care of their people. It will also indicate where you have the wrong people in place or where people have too much responsibility to manage.
Don't think you can change your organization "organically"
While these five steps seem easy to implement they are not. This is not something you can throw into your organization in the form of "read this article and make it happen" kind of activity. This is something you need an organized change management process for, and it will cost money and time. As with all change you must commit to it and pay the price short term to enjoy the benefits long term.
It will hurt, and it will not be an easy journey to stop running in an eternal meetings based proxy organization, but it will be worth it. If not for the financial gain, then for the well-being of the people.
-
- 0 1837
Treat people well when they leave and keep your ambassadors!
The employee have spent time in your company and they probably liked you when they started. Had hopes and dreams of what the time with you would be that either was not fulfilled or their dreams changed during the time with you.
Unless you already screwed up your relation with the employee by being a bad company that care more about your spreadsheets than the heroes that work for you, then you have a great opportunity when someone leave. You can both learn how to be a better company and secure an ambassador that will work for you even after they leave the company!
Leaving a company is usually done with relief if the time have been less than enjoyable or with guilt if it have been a great time. Regardless of what situation you can turn it to something good by simply being nice and support the employee. Just express that you are sorry that they are leaving and then go out of your way to make the transition as easy as possible for them.
I am not saying that you should trip all over yourself to get rid of them, but take some time to sit down with them and go over what will happen next so they feel that you are there for them. Have lunch with them and have some laughs and reminisce about good times you hopefully have together.
Ask them about the reason for moving on without trying to push the issue. Some people don't want to tell you their reasons so respect that. Most importantly if something during the transition to end the employment is causing issues for the employee, then fix it. Even if it is a cost involved and your instinct is to not spend money on someone that is leaving, take that cost because it is an investment!
On that last day of the employment have a moment together with as many as you can to say goodbye to the employee. Show that you will miss the person and give a gift that really matter. Don't give them a book (unless they really like books), but give them something that is a little expensive, but still not to much.
My favorite is an iPad mini in gold with an inscription on the back saying something like "We will miss you like crazy Name! - Company Name". It's a little pricy, but the value you get in return is worth a thousand times more. You can also add a little poster or something where everyone closest to the employee have written their names and a nice farewell message (personalized if possible).
A former employee will talk about you, that is natural as you have been in their life for a while and work is the majority of our time after all. You can dictate how that conversation will go based on how the last few weeks are with your company.
If you treat them well and go out of your way to show that they have been an important part of the company and that them leaving does not change your perception of them, then they leave with nothing but good will in their hearts.
For as long as they can remember you they will speak well of you and if they should not be happy in their new workplace chances are that they will remember you and possibly ask to come back. Having that iPad means that every time they use it that feeling will be reinforced as well and most people do use the iPad quite a bit.
There is an old saying that say that even if you have had the best vacation in your life with the best hotel, great weather and the best time of your life, all it takes is a bad experience on the flight home to ruin the experience. The last experience is what we remember most.
So if you give an employee a bad experience leaving the company, or worse screw them over so they get mad they will speak of that forever. As they know inside information about your company they will speak loudly to anyone that listen about every little detail you make look bad and sooner or later that will cost you business for sure.
So treat your employees well while they work for you so they don't want to leave and should they still want to leave, make it the best experience possible. In return you will have someone that will speak well of you and they will defend you long after they have left your company.
It's the smart, and right, move to make.
-
- 0 1356
Great companies have great attitude!
I am sure you have felt it many times stepping into an office regardless of what business you are visiting: The stale and boring office where work is the only thing that matters where silent people stare at their computer screens with faces of stone that indicate a high performance company with little to no love for their employees. The bright and a little messy office where people talk and laugh, walking around with that enthusiastic light in the corner of the eye indicating a passionate company who cares about their employees.
It's a vibration in the air, a smell of freshness and a soft light that seem to be around everyone that works there. It is as if everyone is just full of life and creativity. It is in companies that can maintain that passion that you will find the best value because everyone will go out of their way to make sure their clients not only get what they think they want, but also that they get what they need.
It is also in these companies where change is always welcome and even encouraged. New ideas are born spontaneous without fear of rejection, no matter how silly or strange and everyone are open about their opinions on how things can be improved. This is where the employees come early and leave late and it's in companies like this where not all work is being charged because the people will work on it even when they are no longer at work. Not because they have to, but because they want to.
I have had the great fortune of working for several companies having this great attitude. I also work with clients that have this same great attitude and the thing that they all have in common is that its easy to make changes and people are passionate and willing to make things better. These are the companies that grow and become successful, not because of the products or services they sell, but because people will go above and beyond to make success happen.
I have also worked for companies that are the opposite. Stale and almost impossible to make changes happen, even if it's obvious to everyone that change is a necessity. Companies that treat people like numbers in a spreadsheet that use protocol and rules as ways to make others feel bad because they themselves are unhappy at work. The employees in these companies will never go the extra mile because they have learned that no one cares if they do and their passion have all but died inside them.
So the next time you consider doing business with another company think about what you want from that business arrangement. Do you want someone that will just give you want you ask of them even if it may not be the best solution, or do you want someone that will be passionate about giving you the best possible solution, even if it's not exactly what you ask for?
Do you want a silent grey production machine or someone that will work with you to get the best possible solution for your business?
Greatness is just around the corner, you just need to have the courage to go for it.