Trimech customers get #1 rated treatment

I'm a BSME with copious design and MFG experience that realized that
technology needs to change the way that we work. Through many
companies, including 3 that I owned and founded, I've learned that the
needs extend far beyond the engineering group.

Once upon a time, there was a company, and in this company was a group.
The leader was a...well he was a bizarre sort, very technical, not
much in the social skills and certainly not great in terms of
management skills. But he was pretty damn good at what he did and he
was in charge of the group. Under his tutelage, the group flourished,
knocking down significant backlogs, increasing the value to the clients
through a variety of initiatives. This group earned kudos from their
clients, admiration from their vendors, and the group was used as a
primary differentiator against competitors.

The upper management of the company then decided that this group
belonged under operations, instead of technical, and moved the group to
another functional silo, another wing of the org chart, and they were
now direct reports to the President. The president did have all of the
management skills (or so we assume) and indeed had managerial
experience, but was in no way technical. The group started on a
downward slide, but still managed to stay afloat.

The upper management intervened again, deciding that it would be more
cost-effective to move this group to another state, to the operations
center (away from the founder of the group). Along with this move, all
of the group members would now become direct reports to a mid-level
manager who was a direct report of the President. The new manager had
little or no management experience, but used to be technical, having
moved to another technical area of the company a few years earlier.

In fairly short order, the group started to slip. Call backlogs raged,
clients raged even louder, vendors became incensed with the volume of
complaints that they were receiving about their "star."

A few of the articles and books that I've been reading have made me
ponder this situation and what went wrong. The mode of operation of
this group in their heyday, was one of self-sufficiency. Since he had
very little management or people skills, the group leader positioned
himself more as a group mentor, allowing (or even insisting that) the
team members make their own decisions. When they couldn't make their
own decisions, or ran into a technical problem that they couldn't
solve, they would go back to the team leader who would walk them
through the logic to help them understand the answer, the logic leading
up to it, and the reasoning behind it. When the group was thrown
across silos, they still remained in the same physical location, and
they still relied on that same mentor, even though he was no longer a
part of their group. So while the group did start to falter, even more
when the President insist that the leave the mentor alone so he can
work on other initiatives, they still had that crutch to lean on to
keep them out of a jam. Once they moved away from the mentor and
received a middle-manager, they made the move from being empowered team
members to being "direct reports" and the bureaucracy of hierarchy hit
them hard. They lost the freedom to act in the best interest of the
client or the company and had to start waiting on management to develop
"corporate lines" to address every situation.

There certainly were a lot of other factors involved, personality
clashes ensued (these seemed more difficult and cumbersome once the
bureaucratic process was imposed on them), some of the technical
management tools used to keep the group together fell by the wayside,
and so on. Upper management decided to add yet another layer of
managers and now the direct reports were buffered from the owners by
two brick walls of management. And the owners were now three levels
away from their clients.

A lot of talk these days centers around hierarchical structures getting
so obscene that the upper management is so far removed from their
clients that they have no idea of what's going on out there. I've seen
three layers of management introduced in companies of less than forty
employees. As I said in an earlier entry, ye olde one manager to six
direct reports theorem is only still valid if you hire people that
cannot be trusted to make decisions.

The Opinion section of the May 2005 HBR by Frank Furedi entitled "Treat
Employees Like Adults" addresses the dumbing down of organizations that
is fueled by paranoia and an aversion to risk. Furedi goes on to point
out that overly restrictive employee codes are formulated by lawyers to
"protect the company", but the net effect that they have is that every
comment and action that occurs between two employees, is immediately
put under the microscope to determine if (based on the code) they
should be offended or if they should initiate sub-management
notification process 14? The net result is that people censor
themselves and simply aim to fly below the radar and not make waves,
lest they get crucified as described in the handbook or as they've seen
the fate of others in the past.

These robots that have been created will strive to keep their jobs, and
that's it. While management shields them from information about what's
really going on in the company ("that's strictly on a
need-to-know-basis, now get back to work"), the employees soon realize
that they are not allowed to make their own decisions and the primary
source of the truth becomes the rumor mill. They have severe
demotivators preventing expression of free thought, developing any kind
of working relationships amongst colleagues, and certainly against
innovation or questioning any of the company's assumptions.

Hierarchy are a great way to run a 1912 Ford Assembly line, but they
just don't hold up in today's innovate or die eConomy. Companies focus
on hiring the best and the brightest, you need to let them shine.

 

Funny, this is a great read.

I started as a consultant at Firm A and did quite well and had all the
freedom in the world. At one point Firm A received a huge contract from
Firm B and decided to higher me on full time for less money but
guaranteed work for years to come. I said yes unfortunately but at the
same point it looked good to not have to look for more clients or
dealing with the crappy bill collections, so I for a percent of profits
returned from my other clients thrown into Firm A's pool, it seemed an
ok deal. Anyhow things seemed ok for a bit but slowly our team leader
was pulled into Firm B's way of thinking. The downward slide began....

Firm B in the bigger fish swallows smaller fish scenario (I am the
minnow swallowed earlier) Buys out Firm A under the same pretense Firm A
took me in so I in the period of 6 Months have gone from being a
consultant to employee of Firm A and then Firm B and more bureaucracy is
brought in.... Sliding faster. At this point I have gone from being
looked at as a peer and enjoying the shared respect for each other, to
being an employee and "do what I say and dont ask questions" feeling
belittled and quite frankly pissed off at the situation.

Now today they have taken my previous clients I gave to Firm A and
dumped them to another company without asking me and of course not
giving me the Percentage Firm A promised me. The excuse is that We are
Firm B and we did not promise you that Firm A did so go talk to them and
sort it out...Maybe they missed something here Firm A NO F%&$^ LONGER
EXISTS! Ghaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!

Next the upper management after implementing a new command structure
cannot understand why there is a total loss of productivity and why it
takes longer and more money to do what was done before with the same
people.... They decide to give me a full project to do on my own again,
that should improve things right a little empowerment for the masses....
At first deemed to be a good move. But after trying to get help from the
once peers but now bosses, well they just dont have time to help the
little people like me, but were kind enough to put up red tape and other
obstacles for me to deal with instead.

Well there are others now looking like they want to jump ship, besides
myself. Word to the wise. IF IT AINT BROKE DONT FIX IT! But funny how
greed and more money delusions make people forget this one thing.

Very similar to what you have here in your article. The only add in is
my DumbAssidness of leaving my consultancy has put me at do not pass go
do not collect $200 and start again. Wish me luck! Now I just have to
poise myself for the leave cause my wife and I are going to have our
first baby in 6 months...

Sorry to vent like this, I initially intended to say "good article"
thanks. And then the flood gates opened. But for what it is worth I do
feel better now. Kinda hope someone in the company reads this.


Ben

 

That, very accurately, describes what my previous company "grew" into over
the course of the ten years I was there. During that time, we went from a 2M
a year company, to nearly 40M.

In the beginning it was fun. We all worked together, and we could design,
build, and debug, a whole automated production line amazingly fast. About
year 5 or 6, the walls started going up. Groups were compartmentalized,
managers (unbelievably stupid ones) were hired, and the turf wars began.
What a total waste. They went belly up a year after I left.


Mark





----- Original Message -----
From: <>
Newsgroups: comp.cad.solidworks
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2005 12:36 PM
Subject: Trimech customers get #1 rated treatment

 

Ben feels validated thank you... Gahhh! Ben is doing the third person
thingy like BobZ now. Ben has to stop...

Thanks Mark, I am not alone in the world...

 

They went belly up a year after I left.

See what happens when you leave?

The last two companies I left closed 3 months and 3 weeks
(respectively) after _I_ left.

Sad but true.

S.M.-"The Closer"-Adams

 

To summarize this:

1. People can work together efficiently. Any people, even those without
"people skills".
2. Products can be designed efficiently and rapidly, even complex
products.
3. To do 2 requires 1.
4. Management's job is to recognize what causes 1 to occur and at the
least allow it and at the most encourage it.
4a. Management's job is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of
the managed and direct the managed in a way that utilizes the strengths
and avoids the weaknesses.
5. Management's job is to understand 2 or leave it to those that do.