Scott J. Simmerman wrote -
> Reminds me of working with a public utility company where the top team
> came up with a set of potential statements for their mission.
>
> So, one said,
>
> "We manage with uncompromising integrity."
>
> Top management liked it. So, we then took this and other statements to
> the middle management teams and discussed them. For this particular
> statement, the reaction was generally, "Always?" Guess they saw some of
> the more obvious problems it would cause them in their day to day
> activities. Kinda like the "white lie" issues discussed in lots of books.
>
> At the front lines, there were a number of reactions when it came to
> issues of service quality and the like. But one significant theme arose,
> to the consternation of top management, which also caused some significant
> rethinking of their actual behaviors in the organization.
>
> Seems that the workers reframed the above to become:
>
> "We manipulate with inflexible righteousness."
We have used something similar to the above on purpose to illuminate what
the top believes versus what the working level knows to be true. We use
it to get the top down into the trenches with the troops to resolve these
and other issues, to all start playing on the same team and to change poor
leadership into outstanding leadership. These differences are easy to find
and straightforward to fix by bosses who are willing to conduct regular
meetings with their workforce to receive and answer their complaints,
suggestions and questions. The challenge for the outsider is in convincing
insiders that these different perceptions are very detrimental to the
bottom and top lines, can be effectively addressed and that the potential
gain is greater, perhaps far greater than 30% productivity per person.
Regards, Joan
Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
About the book go to http://pages.prodigy.com/DMHD39A (use caps)
--"jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>