Many moons ago, I was an Operations Manager for a big, global company. My part of the empire was very small, but I was still subject to much of the silliness that comes with being part of a huge organization.
You could have said that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, but that would have been overly-kind. There were departments at global headquarters that out and out competed with each other. The loss-control guys would send out a memo, only to be contradicted by the HR group. Of course, none of them did this knowingly – they were simply so big, that they had no idea what the other support group was doing.
This is what happens when companies face operational issues, and rather than invest in frontline managers to teach them to deal with the complexities of the business, they suck control of everything short of turning the key in the front door back far away from the core business.
The result: total and complete misalignment. Frontline managers and the employees doing the actual work that makes money are being continually pulled in all directions, and end up flying like a moth to the brightest light depending on which support department issued an email directive that day.
I made the decision to leave this organization, about a year before my ultimate departure. I still loved the business, I just didn’t like working for a large, bureaucratic company that had centralized all control and decision-making.
I can honestly say, I was at my most effective in this last year. I still wanted the business to be successful, and I cared deeply about the people I worked with. What made me (and my operation) effective and successful in this last year is that I stopped listening to head office. I did what I thought was in the best interests of the business, and largely ignored my instructions from head office.
The result? They didn’t notice I was not complying with the multiple and competing directives. They did notice our numbers were in the top ten percent in the company.
Remember you heard it here first – the fastest way to aligning your business, and ultimately generating better results is to ignore your head office. Of course, it could also be the most direct route to getting fired, too.
Let’s be careful out there.