Below are some notes from my past experience from different companies I have worked with.
Coordination
There is a lack of coordination within departments and how they interact with each other. A main cause of this is the build of bureaucracy, which I will discuss separately. The organizational chart inhibits interaction as it is seen as black and white, whereas it should be seen as written with pencil, to be changed when needed by management, the departments or teams when there is a need.
Workload
In line with too many internal emails and programs to work on, the lack of proactivity increases workloads on a few selected persons, which are the sales, but also the sales support. Problematic is that every step needs to wait for information of some kind, which was not necessary in the past.
Due to this and few incentives such as trust, bonuses, etc., the pressure rises on everyone and there is no time to concentrate on what is important. Again, an example is the amount of internal emails. Further, decisions can't be made on their own or just with 1 person, but there is a need to answer to at least a handful of people and get the blame otherwise. Often I noted 10-12 emails internally compared to 1 from a customer.
As noted by many with new technology there are tools to make it easier such as online forums or programs like BlueKiwi, Slack or Confluence. There are entire companies that do not allow internal emails, and work based on this system, which include Total, Allianz, Atos, etc. all with over 100,000 employees. Research clearly indicates a causation of less emails and lower stress levels and more importantly, more work getting finished.
We need to look at things from a project perspective, not only from a job-title or organizational chart and collaborate.
Bureaucracy
Many are building up bureaucracy when other companies are removing it. A study by Harvard Business School stated that adding bureaucracy in a knowledge-based company inhibits interaction and problem resolution. Adding levels of management and systems, in between either people or programs, takes up too much time, to do the actual job.
Discussions aren’t done within different teams and department, stifling new ideas and solutions, or as it may seem, it is the goal to keep information separate in many companies.
As I have mostly sales experience, bureaucracy inhibits the actual sales potential by doing the folowing:
- Arrange everything from, offers, tech questions, shipping questions, payments, flights, parts, hotel, complaint.
- Talk to all departments every time (nothing is passed on, or can be passed on)
- Arrange meetings, with many people involved.
- Supposed to work within programs, but not being able to speak directly as "tickets" or "flows" are needed.
- Check several programs to follow up on issues.
- Involve many people and thus also need to wait longer, because someone is always missing (I have had 6-7 Project meetings and at least 1 necessary person is usually missing, making them ineffective)
- Increase of many layers or steps to solve an issue
- Organizational chart and rules overshadow common sense and logic.
- Need to follow the un-bureaucratic route most of the time to get answers.
Information exchange
There is a total lack of information exchange. To start of with are the different programs we need to work with to do the daily work,such as outlook, offer programs, CRM, etc.
Yet there is often no tool to combine info, share issues, make notes or for reference in the future, such as an idea archive. There are software solutions out there and several at no charge. I believe it is a question of trust. Companies such as Zappos, Virgin, Google, Netflix or Airbus leave several things up to the respective staff, such as travel costs, vacation, expenditure on new things needed. In all cases this has decreased cost and time spent, and again we are moving towards the management of the 1980’s.
McCord, CTO at Netflix said “ Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results and at a lower cost.”
We need to go back to the essence of a family owned company: Trust and autonomy to some extent, so that everyone has a sense of belonging and want to get things done.
Cooperation
Many teams have been working well in years past and most companies, including Mercedes, Bosch, Google, Adobe, Microsoft and others have implemented this or is part of the reason to their success, even though they have over 100,000 employees each.
Many are getting stuck in our own “little world” – the organizational chart makes it easy to do so, as noted it should be seen as being written in pencil.
It makes more sense to let team members or different departments decide on what products or projects to work, so that others who may be interested or can contribute from different departments, making sure all knowledge is shared, but currently knowledge is supposed to be with very few specialized persons.
There are many large companies who rely on flatter management hierarchies, such as we used to have and not just Tech giants, but also Morning Star, the largest tomato producer in the world and even in countries such as India.
Micro Management
Decisions won’t be made from lower tier management or staff responsible for a task, without prior consent of upper management. More time is wasted and clearly, there is a worry of some kind involved.
We used to have the rule of bottom-up management, starting at sales, which reports to the General Manager. We have added a lot of management and decision makers, which decreases productivity and try to control more as opposed to getting things done, because they also get stuck in the bureaucracy. There is enough research and books to back up this statement.
Timeframe
Due to the added complexity of all the systems in place, it takes longer to get a job done. A main reason, I believe, is the added amount of internal emails i, to concentrate on the job at hand, since no one is able to multitask on so many levels. A solution are more face-to-face and phone calls with several persons, so there is more of a personal connection and liability, but this is difficult to achieve at all times, with the existing structures.
Responsibility
A reason the sales are so heavily involved in processes is that they have a sense of personal responsibility to the customers and agents. This is much less so within companies, or better put, much less than it used to. They have no further incentive to improve the current situation. So we need more personal contact and less micro-management, which has to do with entrusting the personnel with some autonomy and gaining some advantage monetary or otherwise.
Everything needs to be justified and many do not want to take up this responsibility, without getting something in return.
Sitting arrangement
There is a clear problem, in my perspective, of the involved departments sitting to far from each other, that interact with each other every day. In line with this problem is the fact that there will be at least 1 person missing who may be necessary, increasing the length of a solution. Further, in many offices are several departments and persons who are required to use the phone frequently and the additional noise creates problems and stress.
There is a need both open and closed types of offices and importantly more space to set up quick meetings, which are now only possible in the show room.
Solutions
Streamline and clear up info streams so departments have more grasp of the main job, which is to SELL! This starts with how much support the sales are getting – management should be bottom up, starting with the people on the front: Sales. Meaning everything should be aligned towards the sales. The management should help the sales sell, but there seems to be the mindset that management should control the sales and all supporting departments simply are doing their own thing, wary of trouble. “Sales and profits are driven by customer loyalty, customer loyalty is driven by employee satisfaction and employee satisfaction is driven by putting employees first (Harvard Business School)”. Several studies, showed a link between customer loyalty, increased sales and profits to employee satisfaction as it is linked to “value” of a service and we don’t value our service as we used to.
I want someone to make quotes, when I can’t.
I want someone to call me, before an email is sent, when I am on travel
I want to be able to answer within 24 hours to a request of any kind from a customer
I want to be able to share instantly with all people involved in a project
I want to be able to work on new products with the technical team
I want everything aligned to be able to sell.
I don’t want to get more emails then necessary
I don’t want to be informed last when something happens
I don’t want to have to wait for support for our agent’s or external staff
I don’t want to work with 6-10 programs on a daily basis
I don’t want to lose a single customer, even if I only sell them a single lightbulb
Quote source: https://www.gq.com/story/adam-grant-productivity-interview
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