Most businesses manage labour inputs with a blunt object wrapped in sugar. The pinata quotient of a workforce ... is the degree to which talent managers lose track of each individual worker's personal motivations and final impact on the group's P&L. This is an issue in both large and small companies.
The absence of quantification ... is of course, the foundational issue in the absence of detailed management. Some companies are successful with a TRIBAL solution ... everything is built on relationships, guanxi, or trust. The tactics for such workforces are well-documented, in literature that predates the discourse on commerce.
In the more quantified approaches ... preferred by STEM folks, a broad plague is poor data-capture for the details of work. Many job descriptions and workflow documents do not fully capture the quality and quantities of "ad hoc", "glue", or otherwise extra work that individuals do on a day to day basis. In addressing this issue, every organisation should have an explicit feedback-loop ... a workflow for capturing undocumented work (before, or after it is done), and consolidating that list in full-view of central strategic decision-makers. Otherwise, you're just using a tribal solution, based on trust and under-rugging.
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