Efficiencies

[SwordsMaster]

Hi Orgahs,

I need your help in a little poll about workplace frustrations:

Would you be able to state your position in your company/institution (I don't need the actual institution name if you prefer it was anonymous, and obviously people working for sensitive organisations are free not to reply to whatever parts of this would go against your employers' interests. This is an information gathering exercise to prove a point to a friend who is a business consultant. I just need some real world data...)

Next, could you please explain what processes are the most frustrating ones for you in dealing with your employer/school/other, and which ones are the most inefficient (efficiency here is something that takes up a lot of your time or is not an efficient use of your skill to no real gain to your employer or yourself - an example would be reports who nobody ever reads, a boring course would not be one, as there is gain for yourself at the end of it -. Please include as much detail in items that are inefficient or frustrating.

So, for example:

SwordsMaster (moi), Program manager (position), Progress reports creation (frustrating activity), creating reports quantifying costs which have been avoided (inefficient activity) as it is impossible to quantify how much money you would have spent if you were doing things differently.

Thanks!

[rory_20_uk]

Rory, Medical Advisor, Pharmaceutical Industry. Biggest inefficiencies are related to the Compliance we are forced to jump through for the smallest activitiy. All materials need signing off which is fine. Changing one spelling mistake means it needs to go right throught the process again. Massively time consuming.

[SwordsMaster]

Excellent, thanks!

For the rest of you who are not rory: please share, I would like to get a bit of a sample size. Even you students or not currently employed!

[Vladimir]

Vladimir, Impaler, office monkey, writes TPS reports (sans cover sheet).

The largest problem at my workplace is the familiar relationships between management and a select few staff. Management often forms close friendships with their subordinates and favor compliance over proficiency or innovation. Completely inappropriate and unprofessional; stifles creativity and creates a poor work environment. Employees are often overpaid due to management requiring tasks easily (best?) performed by people who make much less. Professional development and increased job-related skills don't improve performance due to the type of metrics used to quantify success.

Also: Simple and verifiable errors committed by field offices must go through a non-standardized process for change. Errors that could be fixed by referencing standards headquarters is more aware of than the field offices are. Standardization is still an issue.

[Lemur]

Lemur, project manager and copywriter, media production company. Anything related to budgeting, esp. on tight projects. Inevitably I have to cut corners and shave hours, and just as inevitably it turns out the account manager held back hours, which means I put the teams under stress for no damn reason at all.

(Worst is when an account manager comes back and says, "This website/video/newsletter looks cheap," to which we say, "The client paid for cheap," to which they say, "Oh, I only told you about a part of the budget," to which I very much want to say, "Sit on this and spin.")

[Fragony]

I would have every person in the company write down what they do and why they are absolutely necesary. You know how the company works without having to do much research, and you can easily find out where to improve.

[Kadagar_AV]

Kad, Teacher, meetings where very little concern me or the work that I do. Quite often a very small part of the meetings have anything to do with my subjects or my students. This often make my mind drift, so that I find myself missing information I could have had use of.

I know what the meetings are about ahead of time, but I am ordered to go even if little concern me. However, as so very little concern my subjects or my students, it is mainly a big waste of my time.

Also, at many of the meetings about social issues with the students, I have found myself wanting to point out on many an occasion that the problem might lay with the teacher, not the student. Doing that would have the other teachers hate me though. So instead I sit there and listen to unskilled people trying to come up with an external solution to a problem they themselves are the cause of.

[SwordsMaster]

Too true, Frags. And perhaps it should be done periodically as part of the board of directors reports. I feel in general, when the question can't be answered 'How much money do we spend on blah?' where blah is an item that is directly related to what makes that company money, and the company spends too much money on things not directly related to making money, but rather policing its people, then you know change is required. If I had an employee which costs me 40k per year, and had to spend another 40k or more on policing that employee, I would be thinking something isn't working.

Thanks for the answers, gents! It is illuminating to realist most frustration comes management - the people who should be most interested in helping deliver efficiently! You'd think that was their job description!

Edit:

Kad, Is the agenda communicated ahead of time? Do you know you'll be wasting your time before you go?

What is it that makes you go?
Is it force majeure? (You must go because more senior people tell me to regardless of whether my time is used efficiently)
Or is it because you need to contribute to a small part of it and end up wasting a large chunk of your time?
Or because the agenda is unclear on what parts of the meeting will have information valuable to you?

Thanks for the answers! Keep them coming!

[Lemur]

It is illuminating to realist most frustration comes management - the people who should be most interested in helping deliver efficiently! You'd think that was their job description!

Maybe a more accurate description would be that most enduring frustration comes from management. If, say, a Drupal programmer is messing up, I can (a) help, (b) reassign, or (c) fire him. Basically, if there's a hang-up or problem at my level or lower, I can address it.

Problems that roll downhill from upper management are different; by definition, you can't deal with them directly. Hence the frustration. Hence everybody mentioning it.

I have probably dealt with more serious issues with people I manage, but because I can deal with them, they don't bother me so much. Whereas a minor tic from management can turn into a throbbing headache.

[Fragony]

Sometimes it seems that managers make things as confusing as possible with the sole purpose of being the only one who understands it. Worst about them is manager-lingo though

[SwordsMaster]

Sometimes it seems that managers make things as confusing as possible with the sole purpose of being the only one who understands it. Worst about them is manager-lingo though

Sometimes you might be right, Frags, In my experience such insecurities usually are spotted by (competent) senior management once the manager himself loses the connection between what his team is doing and what he is trying to explain to snr management.

Lemur: Larger corporations sometimes have feedback loops evaluating areas of improvement for managers. If something like this happens at yours, do you ever see any actual changes implemented after? Do processes get better? Management try to fix some of these items that cause frustration?

[Lemur]

Lemur: Larger corporations sometimes have feedback loops evaluating areas of improvement for managers. If something like this happens at yours, do you ever see any actual changes implemented after? Do processes get better? Management try to fix some of these items that cause frustration?

Hmm, my company is more medium-sized than big. The next step up from me is the Account Managers, of whom there are three, two of whom are also founders and Presidents. So ... when I kick upstairs, there's only one layer above me. Maybe this is my particular problem because I'm fairly high-up within my organization?

Thinking back to when I was in a much larger corporation, there was still a very strict sort of hierarchy past which it was very hard to get heard. Part of why I kept accepting promotions was that I wanted to protect my teammates, and the best way to do it was to step up and take charge. I'm not sure that was a great example either, since the ultimate head of our department was slightly insane. Okay, very insane. We finally got rid of him when he was promoted to work with senior management, and they said, "Oh, this man is insane."

-edit-

Do processes get better? Management try to fix some of these items that cause frustration?

Yeah, the problem—as I saw it in a large corporation—was that the senior managers usually had a very specific reason for having someone in a post, so if your problem was with that someone, you were out of luck. We could improve processes, and we did, but that did not address the madness of King George. Again, it took him being promoted to get him fired.

[Sir Moody]

Sir Moody - Senior Developer (ie glorified code monkey)

biggest gripe? I am the head of a team of one... that's right I am the Senior Programmer in a team made up of just me...

There used to be 3 of us with me the Senior, a "journeyman" and our Junior - as it is with most development teams in small/mid sized companies we operate under "dead man's shoes" - you only get promoted if the guy above leaves

Since I am quite settled that means in order to become a Senior our standard developer left - due to "budget cut backs" it was decided our Junior would be promoted and then we would abolish the junior role

That's all fine and dandy but the workload remained the same with a developer down - the now promoted Junior realised this wasn't going to change and that technically he had the experience to go "Senior", so he did.

This leaves me with 3 peoples jobs and worse rather than cutting back on work we are actually getting even more than before...

Somehow I am staying on top of it but I have some BLINDINGLY bad mood days from time to time - and with all the new work I am rushing from one job to the next and errors are starting to creep in, I don't really have time to test properly any-more so I am getting quite cavalier with the whole thing...

are we looking for a new developer? no... not even a Junior - it seems the Directors don't see the need since I am keeping up...

[Vladimir]

are we looking for a new developer? no... not even a Junior - it seems the Directors don't see the need since I am keeping up...

Squeak wheel, squeak!