High-maintenance processes.
Is this a picture of the Department of Widgets and Doodads in your organization?
The picture actually displays an homage to the great cartoonist Rube Goldberg, pictured here with a couple of young volunteers while giving a talk in front of the drawing board.
Goldberg’s famous namesake drawings were hiliarious because the contraptions in them were elaborate and impractical beyond all reason. But I talk to plenty of people whose daily frustrations make them feel like their organizations are built along the same lines. (You can see more of Goldberg’s famous contraption drawings at the official Rube Goldberg site.)
The other day I polled the crowd about what to do with high-maintenance people, so now let’s broaden the focus:
How do you deal with the high-maintenance processes
in your organization?
~
(Contraption photo by freshwater2006; Goldberg photo courtesy of Alan Light.)
Category: Management, The working life2 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
Subscribe to the RSS Feed
Ironically, I think high-maintenance processes are the result of laziness.
A co-worker once said to me, “You know why people don’t want to share new ideas, or better ways to do things? Because it will equate to more work from them personally.”
So, it seems to me that you have to talk about the end game — why the investment in improving a process will pay off. More work now will mean less work later.
To win this argument, you have to combat laziness, as well as fear of change, both of which are powerful motivators (or un-motivators??)
Can you tell I’m a proponent of change? Thanks for making us think Tim, as always.
Outsource them! On my team, we all share some routine daily/weekly tasks. I’m amazed how some of my teammates *love* the processes that absolutely drain me.
Getting my complaints out in the open, and having the ability to re-arrange duties and swap tasks according to our strengths and interests, has been a big help for my sanity.
And because I’m a nerd, I like to put numbers on these things. “This frustrates me because it takes me/our team X hours a week, and I’m not sure we’re getting a good return. What do y’all think?”