Now, this will be familiar to everyone who works in an office. A plethora of meetings where the same things are discussed and decisions are taken only to be reversed, and then taken again. Hundreds of hours are spent preparing for these weekly or daily meetings which do not decide on anything new. A series of emails are sent in the night where one is expected to respond immediately. Many readers could have been in such situations, even more so post-Covid where it is assumed that these meetings can be called just anytime of the day. Welcome to The Friction Project by Robert I Sutton and Huggy Rao. These frictions, they describe, exist in every organisation and cannot be avoided. But when they become destructive, then it is a concern for the company as well as employees, and need to be corrected soon. They identify these pain points in all companies and suggest what leaders must do to eschew them.
The book is based on several research projects conducted by the authors in different companies involving interviews with staff at all levels. The narrative is engaging and will make the reader smile as well as feel slightly uneasy. Smile, because it sounds funny, and uneasy, because more often than not such habits demotivate employees and bring down efficiency levels. This happens not just in offices but also medical institutes like hospitals, which have also been surveyed extensively by the authors.
hey point to five friction traps that the ‘friction fixers’ need to fix through effective intervention. The first is what they call ‘oblivious leaders’ who are not aware of what happens at the micro level because they live in a world where they think they know best and are running the institution in the ideal manner. There are long communications which run into thousands of words but fail to convey what the leader wants. Or there is amnesia about decisions already taken, which are discussed over and over again with no one bringing it to the notice of the head. Meeting rooms for the top management which are seldom used are kept out of bounds for the rest of the staff, making the rest struggle to meet customers and vendors. At times there is what the authors call ‘sham participation’ where leaders have taken decisions but give the illusion that they are hearing other views which will never be considered. All this takes time and saps energy and demotivates the rest of the employees.
The second source of friction is the ‘sickness for addition’. Any plan to restructure an organisation will always involve more additions to the existing structures and never subtractions. Further creating long processes erode enthusiasm of employees as the papers or mails go through various channels of approval. This is the familiar red tape which is often justified as having processes and accountability in place and create logjams instead.
The third friction area is something everyone will experience which they call ‘broken connections’. Several departments and layers ensure that coordination becomes complicated thus hindering flow of information and views across the organisation. Hence, while departments are created to address specialisation needs, everyone ends up working in silos where the tendency is not to communicate but also to hide information. This can be seen in companies which start small and then become big where departments do not talk to one another. Such snafu is what consultants capitalise on when they are paid to draw up future plans!
What would the reader understand from the words often used by leaders— “let’s leverage our core competencies to create synergies that move the needle?” Or the Mckinsey use of the term ‘helix organisation’ or ‘squad to squad meetings’ or ‘fit for purpose accountable cells’. This in short is called ‘jargon monoxide’ by the authors, which is the fourth area that needs to be addressed. This needs to stop and the friction fixers have to abandon such crummy talk. Leaders need to reward colleagues who speak straight with useful suggestions rather than those who involve in smart talk. This convoluted crap is what we hear all the time everywhere! Here one can distinguish between subject jargon within the relevant departments and that used to impress or confuse.
Last is the syndrome of ‘fast and frenzied’ which is a potential threat to any company. Organisations normally either plod or push making things slow or are too hurried to meet targets and get things done. This is again something the reader can see in their own organisation. The tryst to go fast often means breaking laws or bypassing regulations that may not quite blow up immediately, but does so with a lag. A study on violation made by corporations like McDonald’s, 7-Eleven, Marriott, etc, showed that 559 franchises fell in this bucket over a period of 10 years. Organisations which follow this path have some common traits that are expounded by the authors. There is burnout in employees, a culture of bullying where the seniors are literally trampling on their subordinates all the time. Incentives that get linked to performance forces short cuts by employees which can contravene regulation. The work culture is toxic and there is a sharp element of selfishness that comes in where everyone strives to get ahead of others and refuse to help out others. All this comes in the way of creativity.
These are the five traits seen in most organisations and if the leader wants to take the organisation ahead in a cohesive way, there is a need to change the way systems work. The authors stress on how leaders should strive to make the right things easier and the wrong things harder. Typically one needs to have what they call ‘grease people’ who are un-bureaucratic and are comfortable taking risks and doing new things. Such persons are also the ones who trust others and avoid monitoring others and downplay errors so that there is creativity all around. This is contrast to the ‘gunk players’ who are just the opposite. The gunk people should be kept where friction needs to be high while the grease people are where friction ought to be low.
This book is for CEOs who should do deep introspection on how they are running their companies and make an effort to get things done the right way.
The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
Robert I Sutton & Huggy Rao
Penguin Random House
Pp 304, Rs 799
No comments:
Post a Comment