Improvement needs trust
- To improve your organisation you need to understand what needs to be improved
- You will only find out what needs improving if your staff tell you what is really going on
- Your staff will only truthfully tell you what is going on if they trust you
- Your staff won’t trust you if you don’t trust them
- Therefore, if you don’t trust your staff you will never improve
Q.E.D. – or at least I think so, my maths teacher might have been a little more rigorous
Do you trust your staff?
Does your management approach show how much you trust your staff? (targets, incentives, audits, controls, yada, yada, yada)
Or is it an exercise in controlling a bunch of useless gits who should be taken outside and shot?
What do they think? What do they do?
Will your performance ever get any better?
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Image by Vinoth Chandar
Bad day at the office today? ;-)
I agree with the progression of your bullet points, though. And that trust is a two-way street that must be there in order for us to have employee engagement.
Annette :-)
I’m too old to have a bad day at the office. The greyer I get the less frustrating it is.
Funny how we mature.
Hello James,
I find myself in EXACTLY the same situation. Just about EVERYTHING (including all that shows up as stupidity or folly) is water of a duck’s back. Could it be that you/i are of the same age?
Maz
May well be. When I was in my 20’s I had a boss who said to me:
Just keep taking the money James
He was a wise man.
Added to which, no folly, no pay check
James,
I must admit that I am a fan of the Undercover Boss TV series in all of it’s geographic forms as it often leads to ‘epiphanies’ for many of the senior execs that embark of a week’s work on the front lines. It’s curious how it takes a disguise and a week of undercover working to break through and let them see and believe what their employees are saying and going through. So, maybe your list should include an ‘undercover boss’ exercise?
Adrian
I wholeheartedly agree Adrian. Annette has a lovely phrase…
you can’t transform what you don’t understand.
Funny how a fake moustache leads to understanding
Hello James,
What is in operation today in organisations is the consequences of embodying the fundamental assumptions and attitudes of Theory X. And theory X based on a lack of trust/respect for those lower in the organisational ladder.
If trust was the foundation of organisational worlds then all kind of control mechanisms (policies, processes, practices, metrics, technologies, people) would end up being redundant.
Just imagine the costs that would be cut out of the organisation. Imagine the delays that would be cut out. Imagine how much human energy could be unleashed. And the impact on organisational performance.
Who would ‘pay the costs’? Usually lower level supervisors and managers. And of course the staff functions that exist to formulate mechanisms (of compliance) and then enforce them.
All the best
maz
Interesting point Maz, but would they really pay the costs? Maybe in the short term, but not much longer. Maybe the Trust revolution would be akin to the Industrial revolution