Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Bottom up leadership?

Listening to the common workers around my little world through the years always had me thinking (bad habit of mine). I listen to them complaining about idiotic policies, rules, proclamations, changes and procedures constantly coming down the pike from who in the hell knows where at their jobs. Somewhere toward or at the top of the totem pole of whatever big company or government agency they work for. Usually they come from some guy/gal in a fancy suit who got some kind of degree from a collage proclaiming they are way smarter than those little guys out in the field actually doing the work on the ground, or in the air for you pilots. Everything they learned came out of some usually very expensive books having almost nothing to do with the reality of doing things logically or right.

Interestingly, most if not all small businesses don't have these kinds of problems because the decision making processes are still being handled by the owner and he has to run a tight, efficient ship or he doesn't make any money to keep going. He has no desire or the money to hand out vital, important decisions for his company to some collage graduate to analyze.

No, most of these crazy things happen in the big business or even bigger government arenas. These become so large that they completely loose track of the real purpose and mission they started out to do. They lose sight of the fact that the actual worker, laborer and employee doing the work day in and day out is really the only ones who see what's really happening. They are the only ones who know if the work is being done in a logical, reliable, efficient, product producing way. They are the ones who see the waste, inefficiency and just plain stupidity being handed down from up above.

What brought all this to a head was a customer just the other day who works for PG&E. He works in their building and maintenance department. He was complaining up a storm about how these stupid directives come down the pike and eventually get to him. These papers are telling him to do things which he plainly knows are just plain stupid and wasteful in the extreme. He told me of a case where PG&E was setting up a job to put parking and directional stripping on the pavement around one of the buildings he is responsible for. So of course they put out bids to all the giant paving/stripping contractors in the whole state of California. Then bids for 5 or 6 other contractors for various other issues involved with this project. He said this relatively simple little job is going to cost the company some astronomically high amount of money. He told his boss to give him the budget set up for this one job and if he couldn't do it for less than one quarter of the money, they could fire him. He was so disgusted with their insanity that he meant it but alas, they just mumbled some crap and walked off.

Now in PG&E's case, guess where their headquarters is? Guess where the suits sit making these kinds of insane, wasteful decisions? In downtown San Francisco. Yup, these idiot suits have never even seen the job site. They have no need to actually visit the work site in person to know what the best, most cost effective, logical way to get the job done.

What kind of world have we inherited where this kind of foolishness can happen. Shouldn't the first and foremost people big business and government look to for answers be those very peons at the very bottom of the hill. The ones with the shovel, hammer, tape measure, tool kit or sales laptop in hand. The ones who are sweating, trying their damnedest to do the best job they can with the tools, instructions, skill and information they have available. They are the ones to ask, Mr/Mrs stupid CEO, Manager, Stock Holder for the answers you need.

One more thing and I'll try and climb down from my self inflicted soap box for today. These lowly workers, if asked their valuable opinion, should be paid a hell of a bonus (yea, cold hard cash), if and when their ideas are put in place.

So......wherever you work. Do you see waste, ineffective, idiotic policies happening and if asked could probably do it way better with better results, profits and a much better end product?

Then read the next bit and add your bitch to this blog....




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This also works from the bottom back to the top as well. Let me give you an example. This has to do with the wonderful world of medicine. A patient with medicaid insurance (government backed) has abdominal pain and saw a surgeon. The surgeon diagnosed a gallbladder problem which was very obvious and set her up for a surgery the next week. Now a medicaid reviewer denied the surgery and stated that the patient had to see a stomach specialist to rule out ulcer disease. Now this reviewer is not a doctor, but just some person whom reads through a an algarhythm. In the meantime, this patient gets another gallbladder attack and goes to the ER and has to see another surgeon, a GI specialist, get a upper scope done to look for ulcers, be admitted to the hospital and then finally get the surgery that the first surgeon wanted to do but now at a extra cost of over 20,000$. This is just one example of the waste we have in medicine. Multiple this by many hospitals in many states and you can see why health care is so expensive. Okay, now I will step off my soapbox.

Mickey B said...

This reminds me of the complete remodeling of a supermarket checkout process. I asked the checker how they liked the new arrangement. They said it was designed by someone who has never checked out the check out process. It added several seconds to each customer. Not much for an individual customer, but thousands of hours for the checker over time. The book that came to mind is " The SOB's Didn't Listen To Me."