> My purpose for relating the story was to
> illustrate the tremendous unintended negative effects a comment from a
> leader can have if he/she does not check out the facts before laying
> undeserved blame on the workforce in general. To many people in the
> organization it implied a lack of trust and that the leader believed many
> of them to be dishonest. The result was that people began to withhold the
> gifts they were freely giving the organization-their valuable time and
> dedication.
A twist on this effect:
When someone is doing something that appears questionable, a common
practice is to say something to the larger group in a very generic manner
so as not to directly embarrass the guilty party and still get the point
across to all that such behavior is unacceptable. We hope the guilty
party(ies) get the message, as well. However, these comments often come
across as a shot at the entire group with the result that motivation to do
a good job is diminished.
Case in point: at a recent meeting a comment was made by the CEO to the
entire assembled body that we didn't want Tech Support sitting there
chatting on the phone instead of taking customers from the queue and
addressing their concerns. The implication was that we needed to process
as many people through the phone tech support system as possible. Makes
intuitive good sense doesn't it?
Unfortunately, the CEO doesn't know that one of the reasons this company
got off to a fairly good start to begin with was that customers calling in
with problems knew that their problem would be fixed, even if it took a
while. Now the pressure is on to address the SPECIFIC problem without
looking at the larger system and addressing problems that we know from
experience will appear later on. This means that we will process more
people, build a lesser relationship with the customer (a cornerstone of
good customer service), and have to deal with these other problems that
are presented at a later date. It only takes a few calls with persistent
problems to convince a customer that they made a poor choice in using our
service. That leads to loss of customer base and loss of revenues, as
well as loss of motivation on the part of the technicians who must endure
often simple and repititious problems while trying to stay (sound very)
interested in that particular customer's situation.
I think I shall pass your posts along.
--Clyde Howell orgpsych@csra.net
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>