Dear Phil, to act human is an expensive perk. We live in a world where automation has jumped from the factory line to the office environment. Rules and procedures are to humans what conveyor belts are to mass produced goods. Think about this: can you imagine a world where your peanut butter jar has been handled manually from the peanut factory to the retail store? If it would the be case, a jar of Jiffy would cost you over $120 and it would take weeks to produce. This is simply not possible.
The 21st century is about human automation, we are now so skilled with optimizing supply chain and six-sigma crap that the next logical step is to apply this vast knowledge to office management. Sure, it is great when you know all your employees by their first name, you might even know their family, you may do 2 hours lunch with your staff in order to really get to know them just for the pleasure of building human relationship. But this is like manufacturing a $120 peanut butter jar, this is not going anywhere and you definitely cannot build profitable growth on such expensive and heavy relations.
We've done a very good job in the past several years to deploy PeopleSoft and enforce strict rules everywhere inside our company. Grey zones are mostly a thing of the past, and a result middle managers don't have to decide for anything. There are procedures for everything, and believe it or not people actually like this. They can focus on bringing revenues, which has a direct impact on our bottom line, rather than spread their precious energy on team building and other frivolous activities. By trimming unneeded human relations, we've actually simplified greatly the life of a managers and IT workers. For instance, you meet your superior once a year for your work appraisal and the standard 2% raise, there's no need for smoozing with VPs hoping for get a better visibility and bonus. It's all standard.
What lies ahead? Plenty, my dear member. I plan to remove the need for members to meet anyone internally unless it's for business development purpose. Last week I saw a menber who dropped by the office on a Friday afternoon just to chitchat with other CGI members. They were laughing about something trivial. I was furious, this loss of productivity was simply unacceptable. All those precious minutes were not billable to a customer. I keep Rolaids always at hand.
Bench time will also be reduced to 5 days, after which you'll be shown the garbage chute. If you can't find a project within a week, this means you're expandable. Out. Inventory is like bench time, it needs to tend toward zero. If your expertise is not needed, maybe you should enter the carousel, a bright future awaits you.
I also plan to cut vacation time accross the board, having so much time off serves no purpose. The French have 30 days of vacation time a year, no wonder their country has so little influence in the IT world. 2 weeks should be the gold standard, and promotions should only be given to those who are disciplined enough to go through a year without taking a day off.
I strongly believe that by streamlining human relations and keeping only what is necessary that we can move this company from "good" to "great". IT workers are no different than peanut butter jars, once you start accepting this concept you start to envision a new productive world where profitable growth can bloom.
If you have other ideas on how we could improve productivity, please send your insights at fake mike roach at gmail dot com.
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