<< During the last 2+ years, I have worked in tandem with external
consultants
on various projects. It's seemed to me that their external status gave them
at least two sorts of freedom regarding these feelings (if not freedom then
at least more perspective/distance).
First they are on fee rather than part of the managerial judgment system
(usually built on OLD policies, habits and behaviors) which creates our
"rewards". Second, they are contractors not employees which changes their
own expectations of the "system". I cannot help but fall prey to my own
reading of our managerial rhetoric about the culture of the workplace, the
way we will treat each other and have expectations for how I'll be treated.
>>
I'd like to add that it's not just consultants who have a different status;
new management has a different status, too. I've been in situations in which
hospital management repeatedly turned down a clinic director's requests for
increased resources. Then the hospital management blamed the clinic director
for poor performance, brought in someone new to run the clinic, and gave the
new person the resources the original director had been denied.
I know that there must be some mental model with which such actions make
sense, but I haven't really figured it out.
-Jeff Brooks (BrookJeff@AOL.com)
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>