Empowering or Abrogating Responsibility

Are you empowering – or abrogating responsibility?

There’s an old piece of advice to management from the military.  It goes something like this:  “Give a man a shovel and tell him to dig a ditch x feet wide and y feet deep.”  The message is that he’ll figure out how to do it. 

That works well for ditches and other fairly routine tasks.  BUT – as I’ve learned through the years, it doesn’t work well under many other circumstances.  For example: 

• ·       If the task is complicated and the person to whom it has been assigned hasn’t any experience with it.
• ·       If it’s too easy for someone not experienced to make it too complicated.
• ·       If the person to whom the task has been assigned doesn’t know the value of what’s being asked of her/him and sells it much too cheaply.
• ·       If you want it a certain way – and haven’t given them a model to work from.

I could go on with examples, but you get what I mean.  In my years of consulting I’ve seen so many examples of people doing work that is unnecessary or too complicated because no one taught them how to do it the simple way. 

Recently, I was at fault and lost some money because of it.  This situation (which I will describe in a minute) is what stimulated me to write this blog.  It’s not about the workplace – but I think it makes the point. 

I hired two people to do a garage sale for me.  I had a number of things that were no longer needed and were just cluttering up space in my townhouse.  Among the items I gave them were two small antique (eighteenth century) tables and 40 years accumulation of Halloween and Christmas decorations.  I didn’t put any value on these – and apparently they didn’t hear me say don’t sell them too cheaply.  Because they practically gave them – and a bunch of other stuff as well – away. 

I was given $125.00 for items that collectively were in the thousands.  They actually sold one of the tables for $1.00.  (Yes, one dollar!)

Clearly more my fault than theirs.  I should have put a minimum price on the items and told them clearly that if they didn’t get at least that much money they should return the items to me.  I trusted their intelligence and competence – my mistake.

OK – yes not a workplace example…..

Here’s one:  I was brought into a startup company to set up their bookkeeping, insurance, and filing systems.  Rather – to undue what someone had done badly and set them up correctly. 

As a new startup they hired one of the executive’s wives to be receptionist and administrative assistant.  She was lovely – but inexperienced.  They tasked her with setting up all administrative systems – and what she created was a complicated mess with checks and cross-checks and files for every day (rather than monthly) etc.

Here’s another one:   While consulting to a large transportation agency, I was in the finance department and noticed something that I questioned.  The accounts receivable clerk was taking an adding machine tape of the checks she was about to deposit.  I asked her why and she responded that’s what she had been taught.  Well, yes, I too was taught to take tapes back before computers.  We were taught to take a tape of the checks and another of the deposit slip to make sure they balanced.  Good idea when you don’t already have a total from the computer and another total from the check endorsing machine.  In other words she was doing double work.

These are simple examples of tiny things that waste tons of time.

Here’s another good one:

In a City permit department, I discovered that it took two weeks to get a certificate for something that did NOT require an inspection.  Why two weeks, I asked.  Well, we have to change the paper in the copier and we don’t want to have to do it every day.  My solution – which they followed:  Get a dedicated small printer (about $200.00) and leave it on the counter with the certificate paper.

I am sharing small and easily noticed wastes – imagine what you can find if you are looking into more complicated processes.

Abrogating Responsibility to create the simplest, most effective process.

Abrogating Responsibility to create the simplest, most effective process.

I’ve written about this before, but my experience last week at an event leaves me having to write about it again.

An intern, a young man in his twenties was assigned to add some labels to a few hundred programs (there had been some last minute donors after the original programs had been printed) and to fold the programs for distribution to people as they came to this event.  The expectation was that it would take about a half hour to complete the task.

As the time for guests to arrive was nearing, the event coordinator for the event noticed that the programs were not yet ready and since I had arrived early, she asked if I would help finish the project..

I joined him and observed him slowly and carefully – too slowly and too carefully – folding the programs one by one.  As I watched for a minute or two, I noticed the labels sitting on the table.  There were two sets (two different people needed to be honored on the program – in two different locations on the pages.)  They didn’t look touched.

He explained where they needed to go, leaving me to ask, “So, are the ones that are folded complete?”  “No”, he replied “they still need to be inserted.”  “So, why are you folding the programs only to have to unfold them again to insert the labels?”  I asked.

“Oh” he replied.   I quickly recruited two other young men to help.  One to unfold, myself and another man to insert labels, and the original intern to refold – this time much more quickly since I showed him how to do it.

OK, you could say the intern was lazy and that might have been true, but more to the point, no one showed him how to do it properly – leaving him to figure out his own system.  No one even checked to see if they could offer suggestions for process improvement.  As usual, the assumption was that he would figure it out himself.

This happens much of the time in the business/government world.  Managers think they are empowering when they assign a task without teaching a proper process, or at least finding out if the person assigned the task knew how to complete it in the most efficient and effective manner.

Time is wasted.  Money is lost.  People become frustrated.