REPLY Why don't organizations function better? (SD6621)

[SDMAIL Jean-Jacques Laublé]

Posted by  Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble at wanadoo.fr>

Hi Tom

I agree completely with your point of view.
I have been managing a family SME with my brother for years and had to
manage about 140 employees when the business was at its best.
I can say that I have been surrounded by a swarm of fakers.
I do not use that word pejoratively but if these persons were acting this
way it was mostly our fault.

Generally the function of these people were not clear enough and the
verification of the way they worked and the reasons of reaching or not their objectives was
not efficient.

The second reason, probably the most influential is that one must be extremely
strong psychologically to tell people who are under your authority, years
long what you really think about them, particularly if it is varying and you have
been working with these people for years.

You can have somebody that does his work very correctly for years and who
slowly becomes less good and to justify this situation will use all possible ways,
in particular the fact that he was considered good in the past or relate some particularly
unfavourable external circumstances.

I must recognize that I was not tough enough to react immediately to the
slightest discernable change of behaviour of people under my authority and that it cost our
business millions of dollars.

I must add that I know very few people who can do that.
I have a friend who has just sold his business for about 40 millions euros,
which is not bad, and who had this faculty.

Needless to say that he is considered as an extremely rude, insensible and
wicked man, respecting only his business's interest.

But I do not think that it is his real nature, he just found that it was
necessary to act like this to avoid being fooled.

But by acting this way he has made more people satisfied than the contrary,
the people non satisfied being generally the most demonstrative.
Organisations deal with people and I doubt that it is within the reach of
any rational method to understand their behaviour.

Regards.
Jean-Jacques Laublé Eurli Allocar
Strasbourg France
Posted by  Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble at wanadoo.fr>
posting date  Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:10:49 +0200