FLOW FROM THE BOTTOM UP
[Influencing Flow-Of-Work]
What do you do as an employee if you recognize how poorly things are going in a different department in the company? You can see exactly what's gone wrong and you want to help. But how? In a perfect world, a simple "heads-up" will do, but in a perfect world, that department wouldn't be limping along in the first place. It's limping because it's shooting itself in the foot, and it won't stop squeezing the trigger. As an outside observer, you're keenly aware of the mistakes that are being made. But the complexities of human nature predict:
1. Your advice might be taken as criticism and backfire.
2. You might be seen as a detractor rather than a supporter.
3. Even if the department believed you, the entangled relationships that feed the problem are not going to relent.
4. People may think you are out for their job and you have made an enemy for life.
Betsy came to us with these questions. She ran the Logistics Department in a service company of 350 employees. A small group in the neighboring Sales Department seemed hell-bent on destroying customer relations in a take-no-prisoners approach. The Sales Manager seemed to be letting it go on. Betsy had already met with the woman, to let her know about the problem. Her insights were not well-received. She persisted. Finally, she learned that the instigator in the sales force was the son of the Vice President.
The Vice President was known as hot-tempered, and no one wanted to risk a confrontation with him. So his son was setting a new tone in Sales, and his powerful connections in the company stymied any easy solution.
Betsy had offered to speak with the young man, hoping that her earnest desire to help would overcome any objections. The Sales Manager agreed to this; she didn't want to take the chance herself. In the subsequent meeting, Betsy found the young man to be negative, resistant and blaming. Nothing was his fault or his responsibility. Betsy realized she was in over her head. The Sales Manager had defaulted in her leadership role, the unruly salesperson was not listening to anything Betsy had to say, and suddenly the young man's father loomed large as a potential threat to her own position in the company. She diplomatically ended the conversation and sought consultation.
Assessing the Situation
Betsy observed a small group in the Sales Division acting rudely and abruptly in their telephone conversations. The most problematic employee was the loudest and angriest. He cut off customers, he was critical and negative and he was affecting the success of the company. On the Flow-Of-Work Factors, she noted the following:
Betsy saw how this person's resistances, reflected in low Flow, radiated to others in the department and increased their resistance to Flow. In discussions with us, she concluded that the Sales Department was communicating to the customers that they found them irritating, not worth connecting with, and they felt supported by the supposed cover provided by the Vice President. After all, it was his son that was setting the tone. The Sales Manager had instituted a hands-off policy to see how things played out. So far, the company was moving towards a greater and greater impasse, with no feedback from administration.
Betsy had risked a discussion with the salesperson and she felt it would have gone sour if she pursued it. She would not risk that again. She didn't want to withdraw from this challenge, but she didn't want to be that direct again. She did not have the power to bring about change in that department. She couldn't act with force and speed, but she still had influence at her disposal.
Encouraging Company-Wide Flow-Of-Work
Betsy agreed to look at her influence in the company at large, and work with it under our supervision. There were weekly Department Head meetings, even more frequent contact with the Vice President, and she could find ways to broadcast as many of the 18 Flow-Of-Work Factors as possible as she made her way around the facility.
Together with her we fashioned a set of procedures that gave structure to her influence, and changed to meet the evolving situation. Soon Betsy was doing the following:
1. She waited for any chance to model the proper use of anger with the Sales Manager. This took a while, because the woman was quite pleasant and few things irked her. But when she complained about the food truck that came by in the morning and had used spoiled milk in her coffee, Betsy made what we call a "paradigmatic comment," one that points the way to a new pattern. She berated the vendor as an idiot and worse, perhaps even a serial poisoner. She vented feeling as she pounded her fist into her hand. The Sales Manager was shocked, and told Betsy she shouldn't feel that way. Betsy had her! She replied, "The point is to blow off steam in here, in private. Then I can go on to be even more pleasant to the man. I should feel angry. I just don't have to act on it." Betsy was teaching the Sales Manager how to handle her hot-headed employee, help him have his feelings with her in her office, and act out less with the customers.
2. Betsy purposely brought up employees that did not always catch the full meaning of her instructions, and she asked the Department Heads for help. The intelligence of any group is far larger than the individual, and she got a lot of help that she repeated back to the group. There was advice about making real clear what she wanted from her employees. Thinking about her colleague, the Sales Manager, she would respond, "Okay, so it would be a good idea to meet with my staff and go over the steps for this new procedure, maybe even role-play it, and give everybody feedback until the procedure is second-nature." Then she would report on how things were going, what resistances she faced and how with the help of her peers she overcame them. Others then imitated this request for help, and the Sales Manager asked some good questions about her own staff.
3. Betsy found a good time and place to tell the story about damning the coffee vendor to perdition, and while everyone was still shocked, she told them she'd learned that in a seminar, that "a mental murder a day keeps the doctor away." This seemed the most unnatural and unprofessional comment anyone had ever heard, but she explained that there had to be some mechanism afforded her to be real and have her feelings, without ruining her work relationships. It was about gaining some control over feelings, not stopping them. It was about Flow.
4. Betsy waited for her colleagues to show assertive behavior in solving a problem and she was quick to give feedback. She let people know how great that worked, and how she wanted to do more of it herself. This kept the idea of more direct talk on behalf of the company's fortunes in the air.
5. In her meetings with the Vice President, Betsy differentially reinforced any aspect of limit-setting and constructive criticism she saw. She told the Vice President she learned a lot from him when he acted this way, because so few people really knew how to do it; so few people had had that experience at home growing up. Thank goodness she was finally getting that experience now.
As she went about her work during the week, she demonstrated all the 18 Flow-Of-Work behaviors. She saw that the more she paid attention to her colleagues and supervisors, the more they paid attention to her. It did not take long for her to become a singular influence in the company. She had attained what we call "legitimate authority," that authority that is based less on power and more on one's skills set. Betsy enjoyed her new role in the company. She became the go-to person. People knew that if they talked to Betsy, they would be treated with respect, really listened to, and that they would leave feeling a lot better. Of course they would feel a lot better! Everything she did concentrated on her Flow and the Flow of the other person!
Results
Other employees became a dominating force in the Sales Department, and the impact of the Flow-stopping salesperson diminished. The Sales Manager's voice was less strident and the pressure in Sales eased up. The Flow-Of-Work increased in the company. Betsy concluded that the troubled young man had been pulled along by the Flow and was being more cooperative. She was pretty surprised that all this had been accomplished in just a little over a year. She had worked in places where such situations never got solved, and the companies limped along like the "walking wounded" for years. Betsy had found how adherence to Flow-Of-Work paid off-it radiated throughout a company.
Discussion
Let's say a child is lost, morally and behaviorally. He's getting into a ton of trouble and his mother can't help him. His father can't help him, and he can't help the mother in her attempts to make things better. If you decide you are going to help, what role do you get to play in this scenario? The child needs the parents for some guidance and the parents need their parents for some guidance. In some fashion, you can consider yourself the grandparent. That's the role Betsy took. She didn't try to deal with the lost child anymore; she worked with the parents. And like any good grandparent, she also looked at the environment, and worked with that, too. This is the emotional meaning of layers in a company, and Betsy tuned into it in becoming a change agent. But we can just as easily turn the whole thing around. If the employee is stopping Flow, and the next two levels of the organization are stymied and find their Flow also stopped-up, then the role of the change agent is to get things flowing again. That includes the Head of Logistics, and grandparents, too.
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