Guess the Procedure, Win a Prize

A job site requested some crucial items from head office but wasn't getting a timely response. Repeated phone and email inquiries got no action, and work at the site ground to a halt waiting for these items. It turned out that the coordinator at head office was waiting for her superior to tell her it was OK before releasing the items to the site. She "couldn't send that without authorization, the site manager should know that."

Digging further, there was no procedure at this company for how the site was supposed to request this kind of item from head office. A previous supervisor had yelled at the coordinator when she had sent items to site that he hadn't approved of. So, to protect herself, the coordinator had, within her own mind, made up a procedure that required her direct supervisor to tell her, in person, to go ahead with such shipments.

Creating a spontaneous procedure is a great initiative, it helps get the job done more easily the next time. But people have to know about a procedure in order to follow it. And, since fear had made the coordinator more concerned with protecting herself than with serving her (internal) customer, she never bothered to tell the site what she was waiting for.

So, lot's of learning points:

1. People will make up procedures, where the company has none. They have to in order to survive. We need to tap into this initiative and have some way to capture, document, and spread the use of these procedures.
2. Procedures need to be known to all parties invovled.
3. People should work for their customers, not for their boss. The coordinator was focused on how to stay on the boss's good side, rather than on how to help the site move the job forward. This is management's responsibility to drive fear out of the workplace.
4. Communication helps, lack of communication hurts. The coordinator didn't tell the site what the next step in "her procedure" was, she just put things on hold until she heard from her boss.

Procedures can be beautiful. But they have to be documented, understood by all involved, and focused on adding value to the customer.