Page 314 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Introduction

John and me. I felt that John was suffering from the dilemma of having problems in his
department which he was unable to solve, particularly those that required some degree
of interpersonal skills. In the long term I think that John needs training to help him
improve his interpersonal skills but in the short term I thought that it would be helpful
if I were to try to alleviate some problem areas for him.
Improving the performance of John’s production managers in dealing with discipli-
nary problems seemed to be the most obviously profitable area. I therefore asked him if
he would be happy with me trying to sort out some ongoing personnel problems by
direct contact with his staff. As I am personnel director, and closely involved in general
management, this could be done in a reasonably natural way. For somewhile there had
clearly been disciplinary problems with the shop-floor and these had not been properly
addressed by management. Absenteeism was running at a very high rate and a number
of people were taking 20–40 days off per annum on a regular basis; there were com-
plaints from the production managers that some people, notably on the nightshift, were
very difficult to supervise.
Somehow, the production managers had been unable to get to grips with discipline
on the shop-floor. A fair amount of aggression had been used by them but no improve-
ment had been seen and shop floor morale was low. There had been claims from them
in the past that these problems would be sorted out ‘if the managers got enough sup-
port from the directors’. It was never entirely clear what was meant by this statement.
However, I agreed with John that I would try to sort out whatever personnel problems
there were and keep him generally informed about what I was doing. We agreed that
he would let me know if he thought that I was interfering over much. I determined to
talk to each relevant manager and to discuss their problems with them.
Initially their reaction was as it had been in the past. They said that if they were left to
get on with their jobs, take whatever decisions were necessary and dismiss whichever peo-
ple they felt fit, there would be no problems. They said that the personnel department had
restricted management action on discipline in the past. I said that what I wanted to do was
to examine each individual case and follow it through to its conclusion – hopefully an
improved performance on the part of the employee.
My initial approach was to examine each employee file to see who had been issued
with written warnings that could be followed up. When I produced a list of which
employees needed to be spoken or written to again, two of the production managers

admitted that they had each had a number of written warnings for their department on
such things as unexplained absence, excessive sickness and bad discipline and that they
had failed to hand them out. They each said that they had forgotten to do so. This
seemed extremely unlikely and on further discussion it transpired that none of the pro-
duction managers was sure what to do in any given disciplinary situation.
One of them had developed an extremely aggressive personal style over the years and
tended to shout at people when they did something wrong. He did not really know how
to follow up this approach, especially when the employee concerned seemed willing to
enter into a reasoned discussion. The other two confessed that they found it very difficult
to enforce discipline and were not sure how to go about it. With these admissions in the
open, it was a relatively straightforward business from then on to tackle the situation.
We decided to start from scratch. I saw each of the worst offenders personally with
one of the production managers present and explained the situation stating that their
performance had to improve. Some employees said that a large contributory factor was
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