Making the most of key resources in collaboration

September 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : tomorrow’s organization will be connected and communicative. This is the only way to success in the knowledge economy. But communication and exchange, which are essential foundations for collaboration, need a sender and a receiver who mobilize their attention. But attention, more than time, is the scarce productive ressource which use has to be optimized. In the end, if everyone makes the most of the system in one’s own interest, the whole organization may become paralyzed. Solutions exist and suppose more accessible business tools, information filtering based on context and better education and training.

Whatever the organizational structure is, top-down, networked, push, pull etc… there’s always a constant concern : optimizing the use of resources. Said in other words : “get the maximum by spending the minimum”, “prevent productive potential wasting”.

In this productivity driven view, people see time as being the limiting factor. That’s, right…at least in a system based on repetitive tasks and involving few knowledge if any. But this assumption becomes wrong in a knowledge economy where time is not a relevant productivity indicator at all because individual production is not linear or constant anymore. And not individual either by the way. In this context, the limiting factor is attention, which could be defined as qualified time, a subdivision of time. That’s the time dedicated to do/deal with/process something, being focused on it (by the way it would be interesting to start a discussion on what attention at work is….to find a less shoddy definition than this one).

So attention is the scarce resource which use has to be optimized.

But we know than nobody can be focused, attentive, 8 hours a day. A least not 8 hours in a row. That’s, in fact, a reason why the barrier between personal and professional time is blurring.

One of the best way to avoid productive time wasting is not to make sure everyone is checking in the office at the right time but to make work tools available when and where attention is maximal. Note that attention is not always the result of a voluntary action. Who did never have a brilliant idea about a business concerns at night, on vacation or during a week end…and lost it because he was not empowered to work or share it at the very moment when it came ? Moment when one’s mind shifted to a business focus unpurposely on a non dedicated time ?

Another way is to avoid disruptive elements that come and interrupt employees in an “attention phase”. These elements are well known : untimely email reception as well as any incoming signal that grab attention and force to refocus after : instant messaging, phone calls or social media. There’s an easy solution being used by many people : disconnecting from everything. But disconnection has risks : not being able to communicate with people who can help, not receiving the information that would help to solve a problem. The notion of context that helps filtering the available information and, most of all, the information being pushed at a given moment is essential and will play a key role in tomorrow’s business applications.

Then after, there’s the need to master the human factor. As a matter of fact, these signals don’t fall from the sky : they’re sent by people. That’s the paradox of the new coming forms of organizations. If each person makes the most of his ability to share, alert and mobilize others, the situation will look like a tragedy of the commons applied to attention. If each person makes the most of other’s attention in his own interest, the collective result will be horrendous because no one will have enough attention left to do his own work. This issue is fare from being the easier to solve.

Of course, specific education and training will be needed to make people aware of the attention paradigm and what a wise use of people’s attention means (using any communication channel is using others’ attention by the way). But is this a risk for weak signals and serendipity which are essential in agile, networked and “pull” organization ?

The result will surely be a mix of all these solutions…but is still unclear…and far.

Anyway, if organizations need to become (over ?) connected and communicative, they’ll need mechanisms that will prevent these skills from backfiring and avoid the paradoxical trap according to which when everyone makes the most of the system, the organization as a whole will suffer from it.

 

 

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cost reduction : a false good idea for organizations in tough times ?

February 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : In tough times, businesses have one major concern : reduce costs. A saving attitude provided it’s not mixed up with its far relative : the reduction of spending and investment. Spending reduction may be the logical consequence of a cost reduction program but does not replace it. Reducing costs means pondering one’s operational efficiency and the organization of work. Spending less does not always mean producing better and when this issue is overlooked the only result of cost reduction is that the enterprise is thrown in a negative spiral

It’s been the motto of nearly since the economy collapsed : costs have to be reduced. Any possible solution is leveraged : people are laid-off, projects prozen, the smallest expense questioned… Nothing but logic (except for the concerned people).

At the beginning it inspired me some very basic thoughts : after all, if these people and spending were useless why having keep them for so long ? Then I tried to digg a little further : for what I can remember, costs and spending have never been synonymous, either in the common or financial vocabulary.

So I reminded of a years old anecdote, that dates from the time when I was a student. We had to work on the case of a company that was loosing money again and again. Basic reflex : I started to examine all items of expenditure and start to cut all unnecessary ones before having a deeper look. By luck, the company started to make money again. The miracle happened and I did not need to go further. All the other students, of course, did the same.

Then came the debriefing session with the professor. It can be summed-up in one sentence. “Sirs, while you had to focus on costs you cut many expenditure items to make the bottom line become “green” again. Let me tell you that you could have followed you logic till the end : sell machines, stocks, all the assets and then close the business. You would have achieved what seemed to be you goal : a zero expenditure company. Let me tell you that this kind of organization won’t create any kind of value but, at least, won’t lose any money !”.

In fact the production tool, the organization and the business model well so irrelevant that the enterprise could not make money. So short-term cheating was possible by cutting expenditure but the situation could not last and cuts had to happen again and again until there was nothing left. Not even mentioning the fact that at each expenditure reduction phase, the potential that would have helped the organization to recover in the future was destroyed.

“Of course, rethinking organization, strategy and production takes a long time and it’s a tough work so you did what was the simplest. In the “real life” you would even have been rewarded for that and got a bonus. But if such a situation happens in your future, take the bonus and run because it would mean that you have put your organization on a path that will lead it to its end.”

Reduce costs does not mean expenditure reduction. It’s reducing the cost of obtention of the product of service that’s sold to the customer. It means organizing resources differently to get the same with a lower cost. In the case in question, it would have meant investing in more modern machines, increase the budget of R&D and rethink work organization to increase collective efficiency.

But I have to admit that this reasoning has limits : it only works in a growing economy. In a stable or collapsing market, producing “smarter” means than less resources are needed what leads to expenditure reduction.

Hence my first conclusion : reducing expenditures is relevant if it’s the consequence of a more efficient organization of work. If reducing expenditures means “avoid a global approach to the way we work”, that’s the beginning of the end because it starts a trend that leads to the “zero spending company” that has no resource to reinvent itself or create any value.

But it’s also possible to reduce costs without impacting expenditure. It implies that new markets are found. Impossible in times of crisis ? No, if the interactions between the organization and its ecosystem are more dynamic, if there’s a focus on value co-creation, on internal agility that allow ongoing business models design and refinement. Have a look at Cisco’s numbers these last years ? Isn’t it the result of Chamber’s obsession that turned Cisco into a “market transition focused organization ?”. In a different style, could we think that the success of Apple at the same period is the consequence of its capacity to create new markets ? Anyway none of these companies reduced anything during these hard times while some others were becoming fossilized, waiting for better days to come. Operational efficiency + ability to understand the market and anticipate are key for success…provided all the people that make it people have not been laid-off (in fact they are often those who are forced to leave first because they’re impact is more on middle/long term than short term).

By the way…what about cost reduction ? It’s relevant and even essential when it’s not confused with spending reduction. The solution is not in a local approach to production factors but in a systemic understanding of value creation. Kind of “work smarter”…

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Better collaboration does not mean better results for the organization

February 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : when we try to explain the new way of collaborating that’s expected in the workplace, it often looks like a lot of flows and interactions that has to form around every employee. But that’s overlooking one essential point : context. If interactions flows around employees, employees are organized around a production flow that aims at turning a request into a solution or answer. That’s the difference between collaboration to meet one’s goals and collaborating to create value. That’s essential because it makes us put individual actions into perspective and measure their usefulness and added value not in relation to the person performing them but to their contribution to the production flow, even if intangible and made of information. Conclusion : the value of any collaborative system does not rely on generic approaches but has to target the weakest link of the chain. The latter is not only weak because of the lack of collaboration tools but also because of organizational constraints that are peculiar to him.

Let’s take a few minutes to wonder about the sense, the goal of one’s activity in the workplace. We collaborate, exchange, solve problems (more or less efficiently)…but it’s only the micro part of a wider system. We tend to focus on individuals who “should” and “need to” without paying attention to their context.

At the beginning there’s an input, a request. It cames in the form of a simple question, a request to get a deliverable, a problem to solve. This input needs an output in return, that may be an answer, an operating model, a methodology to apply. If we have a closer look it appears that the whole organization is working this way, the input being either ‘can our product do such thing”, “how to fix this machine”, “what communication plan for our new product”, “designing our new intranet” or “how to hire someone with such or such skills”. It comes from someone who can be called customer, who can be either internal or external.

What does happen when this input is sent ? There are two possible situations : either it exists a methodology/process/procedure to manage the input or not.

In the first case we have a linear intangible flow with defined steps (creation, problem solving, design, validation etc…). Each of these tasks needs specific actions that themselves need information, knowledge, experience, expertise that that the owner of the task seldom have. If he can identify the right information/resource, he’ll use it to create/design/decide as fast and good as possible. If not he’ll do with what he has and push the work to the next person in the chain and so on until the final deliverable is issued, what is the output. Behind something that looks linear we have, in fact, a something that quite different and looks like a network even if, officially, things are supposed to be linear.

In the second case, the person that receives the input has to manage to find the way to process the input before starting to work. So he immediately falls into a network logic that, in the end, looks like the result of the previous case with on difference : there was no predifined role.

Let’s call “flow” the processus that ensures the transformation of the input into output (solution, answer), should it be linear or not. What is the major and most legitimate concern for any business ? (note that even if the matter that is transformed and the role of humain being has evolved, the problem has been the same for ages).

Improve both the output (that impacts created value and revenue) and its pace (productivity). Not more not less. But that’s already a lot.

Now, let’s find what’s needed to meet this goal. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Employees are not middleware

October 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Summary : the reason why employees balk at using many of the tools they’re provided with is because they are asked to articulate different ways of working and type of informations together and bridge the gaps between application silos. Not only all of them don’t have the required skills to do that, to understand how and why they should articulate things together but, moreover, they don’t have the time to bridge between tool. For a long time they’ve been asked to do a kind of middleware job. In the future, organizations won’t avoid the cost of a deeper tool integration in order to replace people’s time that’s not scalable by a technological layer that is. That’s also true for enterprise social software.

The less we can say is that organizations have been investing a lot to make employees more productive by making their tasks easier to perform but employees really balk at using the tools that are supposed to make their life easier. At the beginning many thought that it will be different with enterprise social software because it’s made of tool that people use and appreciate in their personal lives. But, at the end, the conclusion is still the same : an incredible portfolio that can help to face nearly all situations…but very few adoption.

Let’s try to think as the average employee. In front of him, on his screen : an email client, a portal, a document management system, one or two activity specific application (ERP, CRM…), a social network, an instant messaging client… Enough to do everything and solve all his needs and channels for every kind of interaction : structured, unstructured, synchronous, asynchronous, within a defined project group, within open topic-centric communities…

The truth is that organization made a bet. They bet people intuitively know how to articulate these logics and tools and behave as information smugglers.

- articulate logics : work with structured activity centric tools and go to find relevant information to make decisions in a social network for instance.

- articulate tools : use a CRM, then find some information in the social network, then in the ECM, come back to the CRM then use the portal… Aggregate all the informations about someone from the official directory, his activities on the social network, his contribution to wikis etc…to be sure this is the right person to contact to solve a business problem.

- being information smugglers : a discussion in a tool may help to generate an information in another, an information here may be the cause of a conversation there.. To make the system work, information has to move from one tool to another. A report from the CRM to share in a group space, a discussion inside a community to link to an action in the CRM… In the best case people copy and past, in the worse they make screen shots…and end doing nothing because it makes them waste too much time. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Does your enterprise social network really make you more productive ?

August 24, 2010 By 1 Comment

Summary : one of the most frequent arguments used in favor of the implementation of an internal social network is productivity improvement through the ability to access and mobilize resources more easily. While that’s an undisputable truth at the individual level (and provided the tool is used by enough people), it does not mean that the company is made more productive : optimizing tasks and optimizing the chain of tasks that lead to the final deliverable, what is the only thing that counts, are not the same thing. So, companies will have to consider their whole production processus and identify their bottlenecks that prevent the chain from taking the most of local improvements.

One of the promises that usually come with a social network (and even with “anything 2.0″) is that some time will be saved. Since, in order to deliver the expected results, people and knowledges have to be put together in order to make progress along a processus, the more these resources are available and accessible, the faster problems are solved, solutions are found and the better decisions are.

So, here’s a very usual indicator : if any employee losts 38 minutes a day to find information, documents or people, if he can save 5, 10 or 15 minutes a day, it means x minutes a week, y minutes a year, what can easily be turned into money. By saving 5 minutes a day, your employees will make you save billions every year.

Hearing such a thing, and even if the promise is seducing and the logics credible, many managers feel there’s something wrong and they’re often right : 5 minutes saved every day, or even 30 may equal to…no saving for the company. But we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater : it’s possible to deliver the promise provided we focus on the right thing.

5 minutes saved at the employee level are…saved at the employee level

So imagine that an employee can save these much-touted 5 minutes a day ? Does it mean that he’ll be productive 1/2h more a week ? 5 minutes is the time for a coffee  break and there are many chances he will use the time he saved for his own purpose. He may also use it to cool off, knowing that even unconsciously he’ll adapt his pace to deliver at the due date. So if he realizes he can save time on some tasks there are many chances that he’ll take advantage of that to slow down or start later. I don’t even mention the case when these five minutes are 20 times 15 seconds…

Of course that’s a positive thing for the organization if employees can cool off, take the time to discuss etc… But that’s not what they were expecting at the beginning..

Optimizing tasks is useless

In fact, the whole value proposal relies on the optimization of a given task : search (whatever people are looking for). Yet, search is only one task, even a sub-task, in a more global processus.

Finding the right information or the right person helps to achieve any assigned task faster. So they can start the next earlier and so on and, at the end of the week, they would be more productive. That’s good for their individual evaluation and they’ll even be rewarded. But what’s the benefit for the organization ? None. The organization may even lose by rewarding people for something that did not change anything.

Generally, people are a link in a much longer chain. The task one achieves is necessary for another to start his part of the work and so on. If the first does things faster but the one who have to carry on or the manager that has to validate are not able to react as fast, some time will be saved for one employee but nothing will change for the company because the overall performance of the whole processus won’t be improved and, at the end, the client (internal or external) won’t be served faster. The only consequence of one employee being more productive is more files, emails and to dos for the others. That increases the pressure on the othere, brings more confusion, make things more complicated because they have to re-priorize things continuoulsy and disperse. In the worst case they’ll try to increase theyr own pace to keep up the with other’s and make more mistakes.

Optimizing people’s work at an individual scale seldom brings the expected results if the processus is not rethought and limiting factors, bottlenecks are not dealed with. It implies individual needs and actions are seen as understood as a part of a longer process that is sometimes formalized, sometimes informal (so to be identified).

It reminds me of a situation I had to deal with a few years ago. A manager was complaining that, despite of all the many undertaken efforts, the productivity of his team was not improving. Of course, he was thinking that employees had to be blamed on for that while the whole staff was close to explode due to the impressive amount of work they had to do and the high level of pressure. At the end, it was made clear that, since the manager had to validate all the files his staff has worked on before pushing it to another team…he didn’t have enough time to deal with all his team was producing. All the efforts the make the team more productive were dashed because he didn’t paid attention to his own role in the processus.

Understanding the whole processus is mandatory

So, it’s easy to understand that, once people’s day to day work has been explored with them and that some new practices that may make them more efficient, productive, have been identified, it’s important to think it as a part of a more global chain, to understand what one’s job serves (and whom), and look for bottlenecks. These bottlecks limit the overall performance of the chain and are often people at the center of a network (even informal), those most of the information has to go through. So they may be managers.

Then, each case has its own story, context and solution. Maybe the decision making process is not relevant, maybe an “a priori” validation is not necessary since corrections can be made afterwards when needed, maybe this part of the job can be handle by other people, maybe the only fact he can access his business tools while away from the office would be enough, maybe the “innovation board” does not meet often enough to deal with all the ideas that are submitted….

“Anything 2.0″ can make many things more fluid but won’t solve the bottlneck question that bridle “anyhting 2.0″ and prevent it from bringing significant performance improvements. Now it’s up to HR and managers to deal with that.

Finally it’s a very old debate that is much older than enterprise 2.0, it’s all about the pursuit of a local maximum vs. a global optimum.

Anyway, measuring any link of the chain is often misleading : what has to be optimized and measured is the whole chain.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Is Quality the 2.0 word for quantity ?

February 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Before starting anything in any context, knowing what one want to achieve is essential. Some say that the answer is obvisous : sell. The famous “Nothing happens until something is sold” by Thomas Waston is still unconsciously embebbed in many things we do and we have to admit that being the best at anything is useless if the company doesn’t sell anything. But there comes the second pitfall : selling is nothing if the organization is unable to deliver what’s been promised. We often hear that being “sales oriented” is the only way to success. That’s true provided the organization doesn’t put all its eneergy on sales operations and there are production and servirces team that keep the sales people promise.

In an industrial system, when strict norms and the use of machines  garantee a given level of quality (or make people think so), people have to focus on quantity. And, since optimizing the use of resources if a common concern, everything ends in productivity measurement, what is quite logical. Would organizations overlook this, they would the criticized for that.

In a system where production is more about intangibles, productivity is more complex. Everybody agrees that it matters, that the formula is still the same…but measuring its components is everyday more confusing and complex, what makes is a very touchy field.  The purpose is still to deliver what’s asked without waste. The resource factor being very hard to adjust for activities that are defined by their instantaneousness, the whole pressure is put on quantity and “always more” just to be sure nothing is wasted.

That’s when things get complicated.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is workload measurement the problem of the century ?

January 14, 2010 By 10 Comments

Optimizing workload has always been a key concern for businesses and managers. A too heavy workload regarding to the capacity leads to explosion, a too low workload means resources are wasted. I don’t even mention last minute assignments to face imponderables. In brief, bad adjustments have an heavy price.

In a manufacturing economy things are more or less easy to manage. The capacity of a machine or the impact of bottlenecks on an assembly line are known facts. As for people accomplishing standardized tasks in such a context, the time needed to execute a precise task at a given level of quality is known too. When imponderables come, it’s easy to identify if an added production capacity is available since the maximal and actual workload are known facts too for machines. As for people, a glance at their work-in-progress is sometimes enough to evaluate the sitation. In short, in a tangible production system, it’s easy to know the sitation at a given moment and what’s the safety margin (if any). More, the situation can even sometimes be assessed by having a look around.

The move toward an intangible economy makes things more complicated. First because things are less and less linear and setting an optimized production planning that matches reality is a very difficult task, if not impossible. Tasks become problems to solve, solutions to find and if average durations can be calculated afterwards, making it a priori as a forecast looks like accomplishing a miracle. More, talking about knowledge work, notions like quantity and quality are closer than ever. That’s for what’s foreseeable (or looks like) and it’s even worse for unforseeable things.

This is a problem that’s both about production performance and management. In this problematic, our modern tools, even if they are a part of the solution are also the cause of new issues that are far from being trivial. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your knowledge helps you more than your productivity

September 9, 2009 By 3 Comments

I’ve always had an ambiguous feeling about productivity. In the one hand, doing more or faster with the same amount of resources is a significant improvement. In the other hand, with hindsight, we have to admit that productivity continuously increased these last decades, that whenever a hard time everything is done to increase it even more, but despite of that, companies don’t seem to have improved their overhall financial performance. We also have to add to this the fact that, a time when enterprises rely not on machines or peopeale repeating endlessly the same tasks but on people managing information and solving problems, thinking that any business can run a 100m run in zero seconds is hare-brained.

Months ago, the idea came to me that productivity has to be rethought in order to shift from a mechanical concept to a human one, an from something that could be improved at the individual scale to something that has to be improved at a collective, systemic scale.

I’ve been neglecting this issue untill I came across this article that remembered me of it. Please have a look at this meaninful chart stolen from it :

Image 2

Despite an ongoing improvement in productivity, ROA collapsed on the same period. Why dit it happen ?

According to the article, it’s due to a total disconnect between enterprises et their current environment. Till now, businesses used to increase their size to create more value. Today, in an interconnected economy, value is not created anymore by increasing size but by multiplying information flows. The difference between the most and the less performant companies can be found in their participation to knowledge flows, both internally and externally, dynamics relying on social software. Focusing on “traditional” productivity only benefits to clients, not to the enterprise that doesn’t create more value.

In brief, the good old scalable efficiency is not enough anymore and companies should now focus on scalable learning.

The gap between the potential of any company and the benefit drawn from it is doomed to increase unless companies decide to take the most of their digital infrastructure supporting  knowledge flows and actively participate to these flows, both internally and externally with other businesses, and implement a voluntarist innovation policy.

Performance improvement will require the adoption of a logic of exchanges and innovation within ecosystems which is the only way to significantly improve things. It will make possible for anyone to improve one’s own performance through a creative problem solving process which implies the ability to connect among peers inside and outisde the organization. Contrary to the previous century when things used to come from the top, these new dynamics will be driven by people.

All that takes us back to a well known topic. The only way to bring a real and perenial improvement is to take the most of both knowledge capital and digital infrastructure. If not, the gap between investment and results will become wider every day.

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Knowledge & Information management, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stop saying nonsenses about Facebook and productivity

September 3, 2009 By 1 Comment

One day we can read that using Facebook at work increases productivity by 9%. The day after we ear that it decreases by 1,5%. Depending on people’s interest, sometimes a liberal attitude is promoted, sometimes a total ban, sometimes an internal placebo made of home-mades facebook-likes intranet. This is only my own opinion but I’d like to share it : the best way to use such surveys is to…throw them into the trask and never listen to any (disinterested) conclusion that can be drawn from them.

First I’d like to know how Facebokk’s users productivity is measured against those who don’t use it in the workplace. This means two things : those who use it at home can get benefits they’ll use once in the workplace. And vice-versa. And conversely. The second is how we know some use it and when ? Of course the IT dept can track such things, but what about mobile use on iPhone or BlackBerry ? Last, I’d like to understand what “productivity” exactly means. It’s easy to undersand what it mean on an assembly line, less in office work. Ok, the final result may be measured, but what about intermediate indicators ? Admitting that productivity is the right word, it does not take into account something that is key in the modern economy : the accumulation of knowledge at a M moment that makes someone more productive at a M’ moment. Unlike M. Taylor’s time, productivity is not an instant measurement and being less productive at a given moment helps being more productive later. For some people, Facebook may contribute to the accumulation of knwoledge.

I’d also like to point at another issue : numbers only say what you want them to say. If any service or department is underutilized, employees are obviously unproductive. Maybe that’s the reason way they use facebook in the workplace. There are many things to see about how to deal with such causality chains.

To end, we have to consider two situations : when Facebook is a work tool and when it’s not.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

I’m a bottleneck…but I try to improve

May 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I wrote “I”…as I could I written “us”, “you”… a little story that’s, of course, imaginary. Any similarity whith any existing situation or people is accidental.

Finally, I did it well. Slowly, step by step, I climbed up the company’s hierarchy and took more and more responsabilities.

Today, I’m managing a large team. I’m responsible for my team’s results so I take care of everyhting and do my best to keep everything under control. Nothing is done without my approval. And nothing can happen if I’m not informed. As time went by I become a little less directive, more mature. I know that giving orders and setting objectives is not enough. So I’m trying to do make myself avaible to help my staff, to help them to carry on.

I also have many internal responsabilities. On many strategic fields, nothing is done without consulting me. I’m involved in many internal think tanks, advisory groups. The company does nothing until such a group has spent a long time thinking about what has to be done and how.

I don’t even mention the relations with key clients and partners, which is my exclusive domain.

That’s not easy everyday. The people I’m in contact with are as busy as me. It’s very hard to find a moment to discuss together, to make the decisions that break deadlocks. And this can’t be done by email. It’s even worth with internal meetings, because we have to deal with the schedules of sometimes ten or fifteen very busy people. What a pity : most of times, only five are really active, the other being a part of the decorum. Sometimes I’m one of the five. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing there. A short report would be enough, just to let me know what has been said and decided.

In short : I’m responsible and essential. Nothing can be done without me. So you can imagine how much money my company makes thanks to me.

Humm… I have to admit that sometimes I’m doubtful.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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