Categories
Uncategorized

How to Set Your Employees, Customers, and Organization Up for Failure—A Thought on Organizational Management

Is this a strange title?

Who would want aspects of their business or non-profit organization to fail?

No one!

But the irony is poor leadership, poor planning, and incompetent employees engage in the do nots below every day, creating anxiety for employees who need jobs and customers who desire quality services and products.

As a professor of organizational management, I have come to realize that many leaders and managers do not realize how they are creating a poor culture by the things they do or fail to do.  Actions and inactions of management communicate volumes to employees and shape performance.

When an organization grows too fast, when management is more concerned about the dollar than the quality of their business, or when unskilled and misguided people are promoted, in charge, or the favorites and receive unwarranted opportunities these do nots become every day practices.

  • Do not screen your applicants. Open the flood gates and fill those vacant positions.
  • Do not administer an applicable testing instrument to ensure competent skills are present in potential employees. Use any test to simply say we tested the pre-employees.
  • Do not place qualified trainers before your new employees. Promote a friend.  How important is training really?
  • Do not develop a training curriculum that respects the job to be performed. Load the curriculum with history, facts and irrelevant games; 15% of applicable job content is enough.
  • Do not give floor time to new employees before interacting with customers. Throw them to the wolves. That’s how we learned.
  • Do not promote qualified supervisors. Anybody can supervise; no special skills or knowledge required.
  • Do not talk about making money but make sure everything the employee does ensures that the money is coming in, even if the actions are unethical or irresponsible. We are here for the money, right!
  • Do not create a healthy coaching environment to help people improve. If an employee messes up, get him or her out as quick as possible.  It costs money to keep them a part of the team.

If you have been a customer in almost any context and you found the service horrific or the employees rude, disinterested, or ignorant of your needs; avoid blaming the employee too quickly.  Anyone of these do nots may have contributed to your experience and not one of the variables is controlled by the employee who simply applied for a job and was hired.

By Avis Winifred Rupert, Ph.D.

Dr. Rupert has a 20-year teaching/leadership track-record in education. She is a native of Texas but has relocated to the East Coast where she is the Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities at Bristol Community College. Her background includes both teaching and administrative positions in the university and community college, international contexts, and secondary and dual credit experience in both the rural and urban high school setting. Rupert has traveled to 21 countries to-date, partnered with populations from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and achieved an 8-year management career complemented by four levels of management with the largest retailer in the world. Dr. Rupert’s education is complementary to her professional and personal growth and interests. She has a BBA in Business Administration with a minor in Marketing, an MA in Composition Studies, an MA in Organizational Management with an International Focus, a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing, and she is presently working on an MA in Biblical Studies and Theology. Rupert’s profile gives her a unique way of at looking at opportunities in education and beyond that often escape others. She contributes her success to self-awareness, an unparalleled drive to grow and develop in varying ways, and a tenacity for leadership. Finally, her dissertation which required the exploration of ethnography requires mention, for it too has added to her unique perspectives and accomplishments.

Leave a comment