Page 211 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

196 Just Promoted!

A human resources department in an aerospace company had been teach-
ing a technical course for three years. Three trainers taught the course peri-
odically. All three complained about the same problems with the course. They
didn’t like some of the activities, didn’t think the instructor’s guide was ade-
quate, and felt the participant’s manual was too sketchy. Yet in three years not
one of them had made any changes. Nor had one even asked management for
some time to improve the materials. They simply complained and continued
to live with the problems. People need to stop complaining, identify the solu-
tion, and take responsibility for selling the improvement to others in the
organization and for getting it done.

3. Escape from accountability. Given their choice, many people in low or
moderately performing organizations would choose not to be held account-
able for their work or for efforts to improve the organization. A small device
manufacturing company had a serious problem with product reliability. Users
blamed the manufacturer. Within the manufacturing company, the product
designers, quality assurance and quality control technicians, project managers,
and those who tested the product in the field each blamed someone else for
the product failure. No one wanted the responsibility for creating solutions.
To solve these problems required people to get involved and to take the ini-
tiative. They need to get work done and find even better ways to do the job
next time.

4. Not using positive peer support and peer pressure adequately. Organiza-
tional change requires developing a culture that supports change from within.
This means that the workforce must be convinced that its best interests coin-
cide with what is best for the organization. Some of the most convincing argu-
ments come from colleagues and peers who understand the positive
implications in strengthening an organization. Unions are slowly recognizing
this as they see jobs flee to Mexico and other countries. Managers need to see
this as well.
Management too often keeps the organizational improvement process to
itself, often reinforcing a we-they dichotomy that embodies the worst in labor-
management relations. Management’s authoritarianism and control led to the
adversarial conflicts between labor and management in the period of the 1930s
to the 1970s, especially in the autoworkers, steelworkers, and garment work-
ers unions.