I have been fortunate recently to have met several rather intelligent people. Well educated, erudite, and willing to debate or converse on matters that are, let's say, on the upper levels of dear old Doctor Maslow's hierarchy. It's quite pleasant and very educational for me. I do not hesitate to contribute my humble offerings to the conversations, but I am certain that I am taking more than I am giving in terms of intellectual contributions.
These conversations generally embrace a few basic tenets of managing other people, in one way or another, or monitoring other people's behavioiur. I have had the experience where it was my job, albeit on a much smaller scale than most, to do both. Several of these conversations and debates have already contributed to my offerings here on the blog. Two of my articles even elicited responses. Huzzah!
The nature of these conversations, as I was writing a moment ago, usually involves ethical matters, personal morals, the culture of various organisations, complaince with regulatory bodies in the business world, teams of people working in unison. It can be fairly heady stuff for the unintiated, but again, the concepts that work do so for large or small organisations, so having had some experience, I can at least keep up.
Reflecting on some of these topics has given me pause for thought (and I intend to bring it up with these gurus and rabbis of the business world but I brought it here first) about the infamous and ubiquitous job review. Also, some of my earlier meanderings on life in the Interent world may have some influence on what I have to say here.
To begin with, most people are nervous about the boss calling them in for a review. I have met very few people who are sure enough about the job they've been doing to walk in and plunk themselves down all eager for the pat on the back and the accompanying pay raise. I've met a few who could fake it, but they are usually the first ones to start falling apart at the least bit of criticism. It doesn't matter to this conversation, what matters is, it is stressful, usually for both parties. As the employer, one should have some manner of scoring system that treats employees fairly and justly across the board. Liking or not liking the individual cannot come into play when scoring their job performance. Performance is the key word here though, when one talks about their organisation behaving ethically, one can look to the regulatory compliance acts for guidance. Did the employee always work up to the code of the Residential Tenancies Act or the Counsellor's Code of Conduct? Were client confidentialities protected as according to the bounds of the Personal Privacy Act? And so on. As long as there is some kind of legislation accorded to the work the employee does, the employer can score them highly when the answer is yes. If one is working with some kind of numbered scale from 0 to 5 and 5 is brilliant, by all means there must be a 3.5 right there. Both people can go away from the meeting feeling pretty darn good about it, about each other and about themselves. That's a bucket that's about to spring a few leaks.
My first question is: Does the bare minimum make for a good employee? As long as you didn't break the law, you did ok? That's kind of sad. How about encouraging an employee to express him or herself ethically, yes showing morals and principles that go beyond what the law demands?
That was just my first question, try this one on: What about ethical or principle matters that do not have any regulating legislation? What is ethical behaviour? In most cultures, and this really sucks by the way, if everyone else is doing something or close to everyone else, it must be ok to do it. That is sad but it is human nature just as sure as romance blossoms in the spring. If anyone out there walks into an office as a new manager and finds an employee who has been sitting there for twenty years talking about everyone else's private lives behind their backs with whoever is having coffee with her, guess what? She isn't going to stop. How do you put trustworthiness, or lack of, on a scale of 1 to 5? How do you measure the possibility that you suspect a higher ranking employee will betray you with a lie the first chance they get, for whatever selfish purpose it might serve them? Put that on a scale of 1 to 5.
Those are both attributes that can exist within any organisational culture and be so ingrained that there is virtually nothing a new leader can do to change them. Changing culture is the most difficult task for anyone to accomplish coming in to the 'big office'. Don't take my word for it, go read a book. A book on that subject would be most helpful. Pretty much anyone writing on organisational culture is going to agree.
With the advent of social media, skyping, chatting, texting and even good old email (still not that old to some of us) there is another aspect to the entire trust question and it engages employee performance issues as well. How much time are employees using on their computer? Obviously, so many jobs today are computer based that for an employee to be perched in front of a monitor all day is more the norm than the exception, but how much of that time is spent working? How much hanging out? Do you, as the employer, spy on your employees? What kind of culture does that establish if you do? If there was little trust before, whatever was left just went out the window. Do employers, employees, Boards, or the people who provide the spyware know that there are Supreme Court rulings about how one may spy on a computer? Or how one can disperse the results?
The part that I mentioned earlier comes into play now. I wrote an article (scroll down) on the compartmentalization of our society. With that compartmentalization comes a sense of apathy toward one's fellow man that any leader, ethically, I think should struggle to keep out of the workplace. Combine apathy toward others with selfishness though, and the die is cast. Is this inevitable? It may well be in workplaces where people have been allowed to skate by on the bare minimum in terms of ethics and competencies. In an environment where gossip and character assassination already reigned, albeit, subtly. If that environment includes people who look for love on dating services and take their Facebook acquaintances more to heart than the person standing across the desk, well, nothing much left to say. How does the leader trying to affect positive change and boost morale compete? I can sit here typing away and reflect on people I have met in my own life to whom I would love to direct these questions, but I doubt they would ever take the time to read something this lengthy (sad), some of them would never catch the references (sadder) and I'd bet none of them would reply(saddest...no actually, I'm ok with that) Oh well, like Journey said ...don't stop believin'
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