It’s quite funny, really, whilst contemplating the relevance of policies and procedures in companies of any size, an article appeared in a local newspaper about a rather big organization concerning this exact matter… and it most definitely made my day when I read the article as it proved a point. This company claimed that it had put in place stringent and extremely rigorous policies and procedures, and therefore it is rather impossible that anything could go wrong in their organization and processes.
This company also claimed that it had put in place these procedures to ensure quality, quality maintenance and assurance of their processes, people, business tools, manufacturing, production and inevitably all for the sake of delivering quality and timely outputs to the customers.
What I really found quite interesting is the fact that QUALITY was mentioned on more than one occasion. PROCEDURES and POLICIES were both mentioned in complete excess, however, business is about people, whether you look at it from the inside or from the outside. Whether you look at it from the customers’ perspective or from the internal human capital point of view doesn’t matter.
People run companies, people buy from companies, people invent products, people manufacture products, people sell products, and so the list goes on. It is quite impossible to imagine an industry without people… and that notion will most probably stick until we are honoured with a visit from outer space, or androids and artificial intelligence become more readily available and reliable.
So why mention the people thing yet again, after so many academics and other business leaders have been shot down whenever discussing “the people thing”. It’s quite simple really: your stringent policies and procedures, HR recruitment policies, hierarchies, red tape, reporting structures, delivery schedules, manufacturing timelines, Sigma and ISO process controls and whatever other incredibly technical and stringent, rigorously disgusting procedures are completely fallible.
Doesn’t this make you feel a bit of discomfort, slightly uneasy and even paranoid about the info and graphs you have to complete as a technician, right up to CEO and board level for strategic analysis and planning purposes?
Coming back to the company mentioned in the beginning: they claim that they have put in place all these incredibly amazing policies and procedures, and therefore the problems caused by their failure to deliver to the customers at this point in time cannot be caused by internal factors. Fact remains that people are internal factors. Their morale, competence, adequacy, performance, personality, significant life events, feelings towards the company and all the other touchy feely things do have an effect on their want, need, will and tenacious ability or lack of ability to complete whatever tasks they have to complete in order to check up, monitor and re-plan pre-plans for anything that might go wrong.
How do we solve this kind of stuff from happening in our companies? How do we prevent it? Frankly, there is NO WAY we can solve it or even prevent it really. It feels completely demoralizing to say the least, but its fact. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to control someone else’s emotions, feelings, attitudes, beliefs and commitments to the company.
The surest way is to most probably make very sure you employ the right people from the word go, which undeniably adds up to a helluvalot of work for the HR department and department heads, but the fact remains: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Whn I was still a little boy, my mom always said: “You’ll always have work to do, but if you wash your dishes every night and wash your clothes regularly, you’ll never have a helluvalot of work to do.” Basically it boils down to the same old story of prevention is better than cure: doing proper work now means minimalizing sorting out the crap later… or employ dung beetles.
I’m sure this particular company must’ve said to themselves in the recent past: “shucks, if only we dealt with so and so/this and that when we had to deal with them/it – geeez, at least we wouldn’t sit with the media and PR fiasco we’re dealing with now… what a mess…”
Basically your policies and procedures are as efficient as the people using it, completing it, managing it, controlling it, checking up on it and making sure it works… and those making sure that those making sure that other’s are doing their work, also do their work. “Is trust enough,” I hear myself say, “and is it, in fact, about trust or is it about teamwork where you check up on my work and I check up on your work… just to make sure… for the company’s future, my future, and your future… for our families’ futures, for our clients’ sake.” Think about hierarchy and the inter-system information transfers that take place as different people in different divisions, at different levels of decision-making get the wrong information. Talk about synergy!
Think about the crows nest on those old boats that Jan van Riebeeck sailed on en route to
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lehan Stemmet is one of those rare people who studies one thing and ends up doing something else. His brother reckons: Shrinks are mad, Scientists are eccentric, Marketing people are dilly and Authors just completely lost touch with reality... This bloke studied biochemistry, microbiology, psychology and industrial psychology, ended up in marketing and well, got his first book (Deal With It - emotional empowerment) published in the
