Performance through People

Our section has recently undergone a re-organisation.  The team of external consultants who were brought in to sort us out had their work cut out.  It seems that our traditional structure didn’t effectively meet the challenges of the modern era.  That we’d employed this structure with success for the last 50 years only added to the problems.  We’d become institutionalised with everyone stuck in their silos.  Trans-organisational flexibility wasn’t our strength, it seemed.  Although in truth, few of us know what that particular skill is, and why it is so important.  Because our traditional values had become engrained in our business process, changes to our value structure would also require a fundamental overhaul of our operating norms.  Or was it the other way around, I can never remember.

But if you are going to go through such radical surgery, it is comforting to have at hand a consultancy firm with the experience that our “partners in change” clearly have.  Six different individuals each with their own unique experience and expertise took charge of the military operation.  High level strategic goals were defined, agreed, reshaped and re-affirmed.  A working party was established to collect performance metric that could be cascaded across the organisation as we communicated details of the new look organisation.  We adopted the phrase “Performance through People” as a summarising slogan of how we were going to get to where we were going.

Although there were no losers in this Win-Win situation, one of the senior managers in the group found his hitherto sphere of control realigned somewhat when two of his direct reports were promoted to an interstitial project management role.  As a functional leader, he would be expected to contract with these two individuals to resource and support them to deliver their project deliverables.  But of course the most important thing was not personal gain but the overall company benefit accruing from individual tolerance of ambiguity and that people got over having staff promoted above them.

It is probably only fair to say that both newly advanced project leaders were ill equipped to deal with their sudden elevation.  God knows (apparently), even in that most traditional of hierarchies, the Catholic Church, Bishops go through a ‘TR001 – Becoming a Cardinal’ training course before they are let near a conclave.  However our organisation has had to reprioritise personal development plans, training curricula etc because the entire HR section is fully immersed in managing/containing/undermining the business process realignment project.  

The now eclipsed Section Head has taken his relative demotion badly.  He refuses to acknowledge publicly the obvious slight that he has suffered.  He will not speak with either of the two project leaders which must make the whole “contracting with for services” negotiations interesting.  He has sat silently at client meetings watching one of the new managers floundering.  He refuses to respond to queries, requests and begging emails.  Uncomfortable with the atmosphere, the second project manager has just tendered her resignation.  Her telling comments – “one of the reasons that there aren’t more women in the board room is because we realise that life is too short to endure such shit”.

But it is comforting to know that our organisation is focused on “Performance through People”.

Paige