Personnel decide everything or about the scourge of modern companies

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    I would like to talk a little about those mistakes that are very dangerous to make especially now, especially in countries or cities of the golden billion. I think everyone who works or is faced with the activities of a large or not very company (or government structure), like me, is surprised at how much everything is not effective and is amazed how the machine still works with such gouging and pofigism gears.

    Of course, it is obvious that the division of labor is more efficient than individual labor. Typically, Taylor's theories and paper clips are examples. But on the other hand, what is happening now in large and small companies is striking in its senselessness. It seemed to me before my second trip to this country: some Japanese corporations, as well as their psychology and approach to business, were an exception (and I hope that they still are).

    The second anti-factor is the fact that 95-99% of people in modern society are not doing their own / favorite thing. This is especially true for employees of large companies, but it is also present in small / beginners and tends to increase with the growth of the company. Moreover, they (plankton) also try not to do this, not their business, but to mow and score in every possible way ...

    For the most part, I see Habr as the community of the remaining 1-5%, or at least aware and understand their position and reality.

    It would seem a paradox: in a small company it’s tight and difficult to find application for a narrow but ingenious specialist, and in large opportunities it is an order of magnitude larger and any gear will have a place in one of the complex and addictive mechanisms. But in reality the opposite is true.

    For those who are not familiar yet, there is a wonderful principle of Peter. The question becomes even more relevant if we consider all these facts together. In the principles of building processes and companies in Japan, there is a radically different approach. About him from the end of the article. At first, it seemed to me that all this, including life-long hiring, is specific and works only in Japan and only with their mentality. But it turns out, for example, such a leader as Toyota, managed to successfully implement (transfer) such a model to other countries, such as the United States. Yes, of course it took them 15 years. But if you set a goal then it is possible after all!

    The shortsightedness of planning (lack of strategic planning 5-50 years in advance) is
    very detrimental, as we see in the example of Sony.As soon as they stopped thinking about long-term development innovations and concentrated on today's consumer products, the ship began to sink slowly . This lack of long-term plans and even desires is especially characteristic of today's Russia and its business strategies. Many justify this by the lack of stability on the part of the state and try to disrupt quickly / now and dive far and reliable, which of course works, but very briefly and not effectively in the long term. Duristics and bureaucracy arise just as a result of an increase in the size of a company / organization (without timely compensation measures), when common sense is supplanted by the need to comply with untimely instructions of rules and initiatives.

    After watching the interview of the next CEO, I realized that they still are not catching up.
    Namely, all their attention is turned outside. Despite the fact that the danger just comes from within. In developed countries and cities, more and more work, especially in the field of IT, is being outsourced. What are typical executives trying to do (such as all the same Sony)? They are trying to increase sales and lower costs. Let's take a look at what this can give.

    Sales increase.
    There are many traditional and not so methods, such as advertising, new markets and new products. What happens next.
    Advertising and marketing research is passed on to the shoulders of advertising / marketing agencies (less often departments). This is the same outsourcing that partially removes responsibility for the result from the most (most often hired) manager / director. Or, the lobsters in their advertising / marketing departments simply pass over work to agencies and, in turn, relieve most of the responsibility for the result from themselves (and even having kickbacks from this). Of course, this gives results but is not very effective. This is reminiscent of a children's game when participants stand in a circle and the first lights a match and passes it around in a circle until the loser is burned.

    New markets
    especially in the IT sector it’s almost impossible to find, much less with an office filled with plankton not interested in the result. And do not forget that the concept of the country of Limonia can now be applied to almost any country. Of course, this applies to Russia to a greater extent, but the crisis of liberal capitalism, in turn, has already struck the majority of cap countries.

    New products
    - this is a real field for activity. But we must not forget that it is very difficult to get innovations in a company that is struck by indifference and without initiative. And even if they managed to get them, then introducing them becomes completely unrealistic. The system becomes very inert, and fluctuations in the activity of its individual atoms gradually decay. What can a company really do in this direction? One option is to have a well-developed flywheel and capital to become a monopolist in a particular market. Moreover, it is not necessary 90%, it is enough to have a market share significantly exceeding any nearest competitor. This will allow us to shift the costs of our inefficiency to the wallets of end consumers and customers. This can work long enough, especially if the closest competitors have the same inefficient companies.

    Another option that again requires a certain fat from the company is to buy another company with a new product idea or just working more efficiently. And such a technique will also make it possible to hold afloat for some time. Previously (in the industrial era) they acted in a similar way with patents and often simply put them in a box so as not to excite their marshy structure and customers. This is where we see the ground for today's boom and the demand for startups.

    Startups:
    The top leadership of monsters / dinosaurs understood and, in general, officially recognized that inside their own companies it’s impossible to get anything new, it’s impossible to grow and in order not to bend quickly, you need to urgently look for and buy ready-made seedlings (start-ups) and transplant it on their clay ones the soil. Therefore, this idea is so popular (sometimes even before fanaticism) that a huge market for startups has been created. Of course, such a boom can not do without soap bubbles, swindle and speculation on this mod. You can recall the recent “successful” Facebook IPO. On the other side, Twitter, which everyone knows, but nobody knows how to spread it on bread.

    Cost reduction - Outsourcing.

    Here, of course, the main and most popular idea is direct outsourcing. What has not been transferred (especially in the IT sector) to the shoulders of the long-suffering mainly Indian people. At first it was really very promising and fun, but when everyone did it, then the competitive advantage was again lost. This, combined with myopia and a thirst for momentary profit, after a dozen years had given negative consequences, almost of a demographic order. I mean IT migrant workers from India who have come and crowded with large American (and not only) IT and telecom companies. Their share has already greatly exceeded the Chinese.

    China, of course, also participates, but due to the mentality of its inhabitants, their migration is not so fatal to the companies themselves and the industries in general. Hindus are wonderful and smart people. The point here is that, as a result of globalization, the world is turning into a Babylonian pandemonium. Each nation, nation has its own culture, mentality and customs that have developed over the centuries and the problem is not that everyone should have equal rights, but that it is argued that everyone is the same. Everything is VERY different and the differences in culture between East and West, as well as Africa and the West are huge. This and many other unusual things are interestingly written in Freakonomics .

    If people exist in the context of their culture and customs, everything is wonderful, but when they get into another culture, difficulties begin. Moreover, these difficulties arise on both sides. And to say that "local" is better (smarter, more honest) and those worse, dumber, lazy, etc. is incorrect. It's like comparing which is better than warm or soft. They are just different. The man-stirrer of globalization is trying to mix everyone and bring them under one standard of assessment. A conflict arises when people with one culture, mentality and habits fall into the country of other (sometimes diametrically opposed) foundations and behave as they used to. In turn, the actions of the Indians and Chinese are logical. They receive a good education in their own country and have gained little experience working in local work houses (opened in the wake of the outsourcing heyday, directly or indirectly by Western companies). They are ready to leave their home country and work for a small salary by local standards. They are ready to live in the same apartment for several people / families (we called it a hostel / communal apartment) and work to the best of their abilities but a lot, just so that all this happens in the camp of the golden billion (for example, America). And of course, it is logical that, with such zeal unprecedented by local standards, sooner or later they move up the career ladder and reach the level of decent salaries.

    Further more often than not from some direct greed, conspiracy or fraternity, it turns out that they are pulling more and more of their own. And that begins only with purely technical staff and engineers, which translates into Project Managers (PM) and even multi-million dollar sales and key account managers. Everything would be fine, but then a conflict of mentalities pops up. The bulk of the Chinese are very stigmatized and without much ambition, both in their careers and in their own business. He rose to a well-paid position, doing what you know and know how to do well. He became the owner of a grocery stall, and he is working there as a seller, that's great.

    The Indian mentality is different. Yes, they can work hard and hard, but as soon as the slightest opportunity arises not to do this, they immediately score. Have you ever thought that the population of India (in quantity) is close enough to the Chinese, but they produce crumbs (even when calculating GDP per capita) compared to China? Even the natives of the caste system simply blows the roof when there is a chance to control someone at least somehow. The overwhelming majority of the population came from lower castes, which even representatives of lower castes were absolutely not allowed to command. The ball is very large and books can be written about this phenomenon. The bottom line is that with them it turns out completely on the principle of Peter. In the career ladder, they jump their competence level higher and fall to a level where they are not at all competent and there they hang and thrive, thereby affecting the company's vital functions like cancerous tumors. Asian secrecy (I think one thing, say the other and do the third) and the willingness to lick, which are not used to in the west, also contribute to their advancement. As soon as they get into a warm place they really like to do nothing themselves, but only delegate and kick others. Once again I would like to say: do not get me wrong I am not at all racist. I just describe what I see and it hurts me when very promising companies and projects are bent. As soon as they get into a warm place they really like to do nothing themselves, but only delegate and kick others. Once again I would like to say: do not get me wrong I am not at all racist. I just describe what I see and it hurts me when very promising companies and projects are bent. As soon as they get into a warm place they really like to do nothing themselves, but only delegate and kick others. Once again I would like to say: do not get me wrong I am not at all racist. I just describe what I see and it hurts me when very promising companies and projects are bent.

    As a result, it turns out that completely non-nationalist people who have recently advocated for cost reduction due to outsourcing, who have grown up in an immigrant country, are horrified to talk about this eastern expansion indicating specifically nationality (which is considered not to be watered correctly). They are very worried about maintaining jobs already at all levels in the organization.

    Let's go back to outsourcing and look at the competition of Russian IT development teams with similar ones in India and China. It seems to me not so bad. Rather, one must correctly position oneself and not try to compete with them in that in which the results of labor will be the same and they will turn out to be cheaper. Take programming for example. It is programming and not coding of ready-made algorithms, procedures, and functions. Domestic programmers really have a rich history and fame. There was dominance in this specialty. What happened to this? Where did the past glory go? Why are they no longer valued around the world? Why did they stop chasing them and exporting them from Russia by all available means?

    Of course, many have left and are leaving. But the common advantage remained: when at the dawn and the heyday of programming, it was creativity and really extraordinary talent was needed, ingenuity, etc., ours were on the horse, and as soon as we made the conveyor out of it and turned it into a craft, we painted everything, divided it into roles, functions, blocks, put on stream, here the Indians and, and now even the Chinese, simply took their diligence and number. Well, as a result, quality, optimality, reliability and other characteristics of the product have changed.

    So, we have to take on unique tasks where what is required is what the rest, in principle, can do either cheaper or faster. You can not rely only on new methods of automation and software development. Sometimes it’s fun to deploy in large Agile or XP organizations. Managers hear ringing and try to pretend that they keep up to date and do everything possible to increase efficiency. Also, the organization sometimes makes attempts to introduce some kind of new performance indicator and force employees to innovate.. But the first is very difficult to apply to intellectual work and the second gets stuck. Once again I would like to draw attention to the fact that all this, as well as the attention of top management, is turned outside. Probably, they have already reconciled and are not even trying to create and maintain an effective OWN department of development, advertising, sales, and to establish the normal work of the entire organization as a whole.

    Now we ask ourselves: How is it all that it turns out that such ineffective groups of people are hired?Of course, there are a lot of reasons, as well as scenarios in which only yesterday people who are peppy, active and glad for a common cause turn into an amorphous mass. Life in the swamp is also dangerous for an individual employee. The swamp draws quietly and gently. You don’t have time to look around: I was active, creative and proactive and finally woke up and already a year or two had passed. He became mediocre and lazy, and the world has already gone far (the worst for rapidly changing technologies like IT) is new environments, products, protocols, systems, languages, versions, etc. Here there is a choice either to catch up at an accelerated pace or to go to sleep back. The choice is far from simple and obvious.

    Be that as it may, our fish begins to rot from the head. If top management loses touch with the wards (and often with reality) and ceases to care about non-monetary motivation of employees, a long-suffering team spirit, then the conscious part of the staff loses interest and thinks whether to stay in this beginner to mold the pond or leave. Accordingly, there remain those who, consciously or not, begin to play this game. Then there is a thickening of the mass and the formation of new unspoken rules of the game, a new structure, and now, the structure itself dictates the rules for a set of its new elements. It has two main goals (in no way connected with the commercial goals of the company): strengthening its stability and increasing its size. Outstanding people are not needed here, but the right ones in terms of the new structure are needed. This is just the moment when personality is lost. Further, the omnipotent human resources department comes into force.

    HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT
    As many, I think, were convinced from their own experience, the personnel department is often completely incompetent not in technical details and what is behind the abbreviations in the list of requirements, but even in elementary psychology. Accordingly, even a suitable cog for this system must be very clever in order to pass their control and at least talk to someone who imagines what exactly is the work hiding behind the high slogans of the announcement. It is superimposed on such a lemon feature that everyone lies . They lie brazenly, believably and a lot.

    Applicable to our case, employers lie by overestimating requirements and describing their organization as an ideal place of work and generally white and fluffy. Accordingly, employees are lying to meet the high demands of ads. They lie three times to pass the barrier of HR and the same lying competitors. And what comes of this? In the best case, each side overestimates the bar by about the same value and as a result they find each other in terms of technical requirements and compliance with them. In the worst case, a person is embarrassed and stuffs himself into a certain position without real experience in fulfilling basic duties. This is mainly characteristic and dangerous for managerial and not technical positions. And there, if he is not a completely frank moron and a caretaker, he will somehow fall in love, be patient. Sometimes even direct subordinates who are sometimes involved in the selection for the reception of their immediate superior (funny huh?) Choose from the principle: "The dumber the better." A stupid or unaware boss in your area is easier to manipulate. The lazy boss will not touch and shake employees in warm places with perestroika (this is especially useful in a swamp).

    But with the organizational component, everything is more complicated. Not being in the company at a specific place, even according to insider stories, it is almost impossible to understand in advance which swamp you will fall into.

    Recruitment agencies
    There is also an otherworldly force, namely recruitment agencies and recruiters, intermediaries. Today they are not trying to find for the company - the customer who pays them a round sum, an employee who is ideally suited for this company, department, position, etc. Instead, they attract by the ears of all at least a little bit more like Job Description candidates. For the sake of this, they are even ready to change their resume. Of course, this is done in an unobtrusive way. As soon as they talk, they understand that you don’t have a key skill or experience for a customer (company) in a certain direction and, accordingly, there is no mention of it in the resume, but you basically understand what it is (somewhere from a neighbor you heard that her daughter’s husband deals with exactly this), they offer, “You see, you know what it is! Let’s reflect this in your resume. ”

    Of course, it is clear that you cannot fit all the real skills and experiments in one page. Confused, the candidate thinks that he has found an ally, but in reality they also inflate him. Distort, customize company data for your inquiries. The simplest psychological portrait no longer interests anyone. But these agencies are contacted by companies that themselves are not engaged in the selection of personnel, in the hope of their professionalism. Companies, in assessing the general and including psychological characteristics of a person, rely on the agency, leaving behind only an interview on the technical, technological aspects of the candidate.

    Here, recruiters also took care - they very transparently hint what to read, what to learn before an interview in the company. Also touched by the complete technical illiteracy of all the same recruiters. It is sometimes very difficult to restrain laughter when a special recruiter who deals only with IT vacancies in a large agency reads words such as Quality Assurance and Transact-SQL with difficulty and confusion. No less fun is the interview itself with him. With his complete misunderstanding, even the fundamentals of the processes that the candidate should deal with, he formally reads out abbreviations carefully sent to him from the company and puts the pros or cons opposite each of them.

    Another world


    Could it be otherwise? Yes, of course, there are exceptions to the above, for example, everyone has the notorious Google. But as I understand it, and it has already turned into a quagmire in comparison with the past years and the process does not stop. There are other companies that are not directly related to IT, but which all have a lot to learn, for example Toyota (and many other companies) with their Pull principle instead of Push. I think this is the main thing that is missing today.

    Starting from education, when knowledge is crammed violently and not drawn out by the student with interest. And in management it was believed that the carrot and stick, especially the carrot, is the only way to increase labor productivity, and the gingerbread is the only possible motivation. Yes, it worked before and partially now for primitive types of labor under monopolism. Partially stick and carrot works with plankton. But we need to increase productivity and motivation not by interest, but by several times (compared with the average hospital in the world of the swamp), and we are talking about intellectual work. Here fear only fetters creativity. Such an increase can be achieved only by looking inside yourself, your company and applying radically different methods, and if necessary, for a long time and carefully but still choose a team of “other” people.

    The lack of continuity in management now affects all companies. General and all managers are changing like in a kaleidoscope, and everyone who comes to a new position feels obliged to start a radical reorganization and, having not finished it, having finished reporting the positive effects, he goes down the stairs or to another company. The Japanese can still learn the sequence and succession of leaders. Toyota, when opening a factory in California with 13,000 resumes, hired only 270 people. But in another American plant, where a little more than 1000 employees, 80,000 rats were registered per year. proposals from employees to improve the production process itself (not the final product). Of which 99% was implemented. This is almost 40 on average from each employee in relaxed America, a process that has already been licked in Japan by the Japanese themselves! Can you imagine what is going on in their product development departments?Caution Japan!

    In conclusion:


    In no case do not despair. It makes sense to look around you and clearly understand where exactly you are, where this ship is sailing and what you need.
    Understanding what is happening is already half the solution. If you are at the helm, then you have all the cards in your hands to prevent your company from becoming waterlogged. This is not primarily growth and sales, but your team. The team and each employee individually must be carefully helped to grow in accordance with his desire and the interests of the company. The process is more reminiscent of the painstaking and continuous art of growing Bonsai (the equivalent of ligation - Ligatures is especially interesting) than the annual bamboo (sowed and forgotten, only occasionally watering).

    The bamboo approach worked for some time because in reality there was a monopoly (of the Western classical - industrial management) in the labor market. There are many ways, there is no universal approach, the main thing is awareness, the desire to seek and implement ways to develop an effective organization. If you set a goal, you can find a mountain of useful literature describing both theory and practice. There are more theoreticians, of course, but there are also worthy authors describing non-ephemeral models, for example, you can start with Peter Senge and Jeffrey Liker. Imagine how much individually or in the company as a whole your competitive advantage will increase if the average productivity increases from 20-30% to at least 80%? This is almost 4 times!

    UPD:

    After the publication, I received many thanks. Thanks everyone! I, in turn, was so pleased that it was nice to meet so many philologists and fighters for the purity of the Russian language here.

    Some ask for advice.
    Could you tell me the literature on this issue, in the sense of personnel management in IT companies.
    I wish that the answer could be useful to others.
    I must say right away that I am not a specialist in personnel and personnel management. If they even suggested, I wouldn’t go. Mainly due to the fact that I am not interested in this activity. Often I still don’t want to take on what is good to do honestly and reasonably, in the conditions unfortunately prevailing in most companies, it is impossible to do. Either you play by the rules of the existing system, or you quickly fly out if there is no potential and authority to change everything from top to bottom (such as with the police in Georgia). In part, I do not like this activity for reasons: "Do not judge, but you will not be judged."

    It still really depends on what kind of organization you came across. There is one extreme when this is something similar to a plant where there is a clear, streamlined process leading to a standard and the same output product. The whole process is debugged, standardized, formalized, described, and all intermediate metrics and KPI at each stage and for each employee are obvious and stable. It may be an IT company. Although here, for example, the same Toyota was able to create an atmosphere to increase the efficiency and illusion of the creation of each screw. I honestly don't know other such good examples even on paper.

    The other extreme is creative work, where everything is not only unpredictable, but also more complicated. There are certainly lots of niches between these two extremes.

    I think as a base you need to understand human psychology. This can be very useful and practical not only for the subject under discussion. Here I would advise you to start with the classics. For example Eric Byrne - People who play games. Games People Play. For each person, the path of searching, choosing and gaining knowledge goes its own individual way. The main thing is not to go into the theoretical and sometimes divorced from practical reality wilds (for example, Freud and Jung).

    The second important fact is the development of self-awareness, which will help to clearly understand what kind of game is played around you and what its rules are. This will give a good idea of ​​which organization you are in or where the vessel is moving, the furrows of which are in your hands. If we are talking about large and established structures (companies), and a modest role in it which does not allow changing everything upside down if you wish, then you need to play by the existing rules. You can play in the aisles of these rules mediocre as the same plankton or actively. If you are well and actively act according to the rules, then your business will advance along with you. If you break them, then either make a mini revolution and the structure will elevate you to new favorites, or burp. Here it must be understood that the former is several orders of magnitude less frequent than the latter. Revolutions are very risky bloody and require titanic efforts. Sometimes it’s easier to take like-minded people from there and make your own little one but the way you want. It is also very useful to develop the habit of actively filtering information. This will help you, even within the framework of one author or technique, to make out for yourself exactly what is suitable and close to you. In these two, Zeland will be useful.

    It seems to me that in any company, as soon as transparency disappears from top to bottom and back (for example, the number of employees has become more than fifty), the structure becomes viscous and its unwritten laws begin to operate in it and even having extensive theoretical knowledge and rich experience will struggle with them. And it may happen that this company externally can grow very quickly and successfully, bring fabulous profits, etc. But you will not wish to be inside the enemy either.

    Unfortunately, 99% of the literature on personnel management seems to be written by lunatics from the moon and for lunar gravity conditions. I used to think that in the West at least partially, as in these wonderful books, but we just have a mess. Having worked with them and then ended up in the "West", I realized that here everything is far from being in books. It was the realization that the topic was completely neglected and made me write this article - a cry from the heart.

    I think you need to look right at the root. If it is possible to move from what is simple, how better to manage those who are already, so that they do what they did before and do it the way they always did. Something like a camel driver or a shepherd who does not choose his team does not affect where and what route to go. Unfortunately, usually it all comes down to the fact that the system requires just such drivers. It is difficult for a developed person to fulfill this role without seeing and sincere faith in the big picture.

    Now a little idealism. The whole construction of the organization must be initially correct. Good drovers will only help to squeeze a little more than average, but productivity improvements at times, sincere dedication and dedication of employees and a stream of innovation will not work.

    Many may argue that reality is harsh and there are no ideal organizations. But we are not talking about the happiness of all and the World in the World. I am also against trying to grasp the immensity. You need to find that ONE place that will turn YOUR work into pleasure and celebration at a particular moment in life.

    Returning to your question. Do not forget that the personnel department (HR) is a purely bureaucratic body (like accounting) and its employees have nothing to do with the direct activities of the company and the effectiveness of employees and teams. Start with the general - about the organization and only then about the staff. Take a look at Peter Senge and Jeffrey Liker. Roger Dawson also has awesome audio books about Persuasion and negotiations. Radislav Gandapas has very high-quality programs and has about charisma. I liked the articles by Marine Voskanyan. Unfortunately, she disappeared somewhere.

    Consult about a useful theory with good and successful managers who manage a specific team or project and who sincerely love their job. It is very important to sincerely love your job, and not just do something that is good or just paid for.On Habré there should be such! If you feel that this is really your business, you can go to the apprentice to one of them. The method is as old as the world, but sometimes the most effective in transmitting this kind of knowledge. Books and trainings work but by no means in everything.

    PS
    If you are one of those who know and want to share how to do it right, please throw the necessary names and links into comments, otherwise people either agree or criticize without argument.

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