The Executive of Contextual Organization - Part 2

This " articles-organization-2 " is about

Serving and Mentoring Management

(Excerpts from the book Contextual Communication Organization and Training.)

The DOCİ 5-level line management system helps to make the picture of serving and mentoring management clear. (Diagram in the book).

As each level "serves" the level below as "mentor", empowering the staff with their responsibilities, each manager is made aware of the requirements of their functions, special tasks or projects. Ideally managers should have been there at some point, if not, they should make it a point to spend some time at the work area of those they serve and mentor.

Empowerment is the ultimate demonstration of trust that management can give to the people below. Delegating is also part of empowering, but many don't understand what delegating is.It is not passing mundane jobs to subordinates, often with unclear or incomplete instructions and improper authority. When jobs or responsibilities are delegated, appropriate empowering and authority is given with it to the recipient.

I remember a contractual job I took once, where the manager I reported to would gave me information, but not all of it. She seemed to enjoy keeping people guessing. Her behaviour was not inviting to openness or discussion; her facial expressions would turn to slight annoying or puzzling frowns whenever one asked a question, as if one "should know". She would adamantly emphasize whom the supplier was for certain jobs, then when there was an exception to the rule, she would not pass this on appropriately. She "delegated" but kept the people in the dark each step of the way, stripping them of any authority to make intelligent decisions at appropriate times.

Many executives at the top may know the trucks they're building, the service they're marketing, but they don't know the communication that interlocks the people who build the trucksand deliver the services along with them. Most problems in business are caused by lack of communication one way or another.

Over half of quality control problems alone have been traced to communication discrepancies somewhere along the line between production and marketing, accounting and sales, worker and supervisor, supervisor and management, or any other combination of people and departments.

I recall a company convention I attended one day. After having made the presentation of the corporate goals for the years ahead, a panel of the top senior management people was arranged on the stage, sitting on high chairs in a row facing the employee audience. The floor was then opened to the group of some two to three hundred members to ask whatever questions they wanted to ask.

At one point, someone brought up the existence of low morale in the organization. The president was totally floored. Looking at the row of executives lined up to his left, he said "I didn't know we had a low morale problem". The senior management team was just as shocked. One after another employees came to the mic and expressed the same feelings. Several people specified that they "didn't know where they fitted". The president, was so disturbed that he brought it up again at the end of the segment and invited

people to e-mail him their concerns in the coming days. He and his senior staff blamed the low morale on the changes the organization was going through.

It's easy to blame it on "change". After all isn't that what "experts" tell us? That people don't like change? The reason they don't like change (or appear to not liking change) is because, organizations don't let them know where they stand within that change. It's not the "change" that bothers people, it's what senior management don't tell them about the change taking place.

If you let people know where they are on the organization chart and how their job is affected or will be affected, they will have no problem with change. It's when people are kept in the dark that they become disillusioned -- it's the darkness not the change that bothers them!o communicate this, there must be visuals and there must be meetings to communicate these visuals. Meetings must be regular but short and to the point.

Organization charts must be kept simple, consistent and meaningful in order to be understood by all representatives of the corporation. A five-level line management system used consistently throughout the company, from division to division, will build that common corporate picture, and everyone will understand

where and how they fit. And a 5-level serving and mentoring working relationship will reinforce this picture.

Even if a company does not change its old organization chart, it can devise visuals that can tie in with the old octopus, to implement the new communication strategies. However for contextual organization, the old has to go eventually.

Whatever system you use doesn't matter, as long as it is clear and workable. It is only within a clear context that corporate vision can be seen equally by all the players.

Management people often do not let their staff communicate back to them because they don't want to hear what they have to say. They don't want to hear what the "clerks" know about processes. They don't want to hear what the floor worker thinks of the causes for the production breakdowns. They want things done and fixed without feedback.

Serving and mentoring from top-down will eliminate this critical discrepancy.

dmh

(Articles-organization-2 is one of the pages of articles excerpted from the 300 page book "Contextual Communication Organization and Training"