Imagine an
office (urząd) without petitioners (petenci). Imagine a school without pupils.
Imagine a hospital without inpatients, or a health centre without the ill. A
mind-boggling absurdity? From the times I was a student, I recall a conversation
between two student office (dziekanat) workers both claiming their job would
have been much nicer, if only they had not need to deal with students (ta nasza
praca byłaby całkiem fajna, gdyby nie ci studenci). So much nicer would be a
job of a clerk if only those obtrusive people did not come around. A work in a
hospital would be much more rewarding, if personnel did not have to take care
of those horrible patients. A work in school would be marvellous, if only
teachers did not have to deliver classes to rowdy brats.
Smacks of
absurdity? Not really. Each organisation, as it grows, goes through certain
stages of development. With each consecutive one its structures are bigger, so
they require more control, reporting, paperwork, etc. With time a profit-oriented
organisation, i.e. a business no longer allocates all its resources towards
attaining its core goal which should be making money. With time each company
builds ancillary structures, which at first enhance specialisation and support
front-line units, so that everyone can focus on doing their bit. As more time
goes by, in order to keep the business together, companies set up more
reporting / oversight / control functions. As the process carries on, fewer
employees are focused on serving customers (i.e. looking after sources of
revenues) and more employees are focused on dealing with internal affairs of an
organisation. When the company is bigger, internal oversight structure are
vital for keeping it going in line with a certain strategy, yet the question of
proportions between so called front-office, middle-office and back-office is
justified. The more of a company’s resources are directed towards back-office
functions and the less towards front-office, the more mature the company is.
But is it more efficient?
The term
diseconomies of scale has not been coined without a reason. In an
organisation’s development there is a point at which the organisation grows to
unmanageable proportions, i.e. is too big to be run efficiently. This happens
both in the government sector (which is more prone to such distortions) as well
as in private sector, yet there probability of diseconomies of scale is
strongly positively correlated with size. Overgrown bureaucratic structures no
longer need customers to be have something to deal with. At the highest stage
of this “internal focus” middle- and back-office staff can not see the forest
through the trees. They no longer realise serving the customer who feeds them
should be a top priority. The become so pre-occupied with processes,
procedures, reporting and other self-oriented stuff that they forget those are
the customers thanks to who they can earn a livelihood.
Oddly
enough, such self-oriented organisations survive, albeit rarely thrive on the
market. When an organisation reaches the highest stage of development (when it
does not need customers to move on) it already has established a leading market
position (often might be a monopolist) and superior reputation and switching
costs for customers are high. These factors allow such company not to strive
for many new clients and put little effort in retaining the existing ones.
Moreover, front-office functions are never neglected. Employees who bring the
company the bacon are property remunerated for securing revenues essential to cover
costs of the bureaucratic structures. The inertia in such huge organisations
can last years and such wicked corporations do not fall apart. Senior
executives often realise what is wrong and launch initiatives aimed at
reinstating customer focus in organisations they run. The frequent upshot is
that an organisation focuses on pursuing the programme rather than on
customers…
Some time
ago I took part in a series of workshops aimed at streamlining and leaning
process in my company. As the workshops developed and participants came up with
new ideas, the picture which emerged showed clearly the customer is actually
necessary to feed us with documents we could hand over from one to another,
fill in to several systems, create reports, etc. The role of a customer is
boiled down to a creature which sets the bureaucratic machine in motion. Once
it gains momentum, it busy with document circulations, internal analyses and
reports so that the customer drops to the bottom of its list of priorities. One
day when the group of workshop participants was in top form and devised plenty
of ideas how to improve workings of our company, I held back for a moment,
examined what had been put forward and without second thought asked an
inconvenient question “but where’s the room for customers in what we design?”.
I poured cold water on my fellows, the silence came into the room. They all
stared at me. I realised I could have overstepped boundaries, as dissenters are not flattered in corporate capitalism. To my surprise, no one denounced me, my
remark turned out to be quite productive and changed the course of works during
the next workshops.
After over
three years of working in the same place, I am growing weary of my current job.
Or to be precise, I have had enough of my employer and how my company is run. I
do take pleasure in what I do and perform my duties zealously, so the symptoms
do not signify burn-out, but I am frustrated with prospects my employer and I
have, or rather do not have. My employer is a part of a huge corporation with
operations in most countries in the world. My diagnosis of the problem they
have with their Polish recalcitrant subsidiary is that the operating
environment here differs from those in other CEE countries. The corporation
refuses to compromise and adjust its doing-business guidelines to specifics of
the Polish market. They fail to recognise the simple rule “shape up or ship
out”. They neither shape up, as consistently they fail to discern the Polish
market is not malleable and will not alter to meet their expectations, nor have
the courage to divest of the defiant business which totally does not fit the
rest of the corporation. Customers are lost, profits are shrinking and
prospects of turnaround are miniscule, because the organisation is so big that
the decisions as effect of which the company could get up from its knees would
have to be taken by decision makers who could not point Poland at the map, not
to mention basic understanding of peculiarities of the Polish market. Thus my
job is dead-end, but owing to inertia of overgrown corporations I will hold it
down for a while. In the meantime I keep looking for a better one, mindful of
the risk of falling out of a frying pan into the fire. As long as I am not
redundant, the pressure is limited. And if they decide to fire me, there is
golden parachute waiting for me by the end of this year. If it accompanies the
lay-off, putting me out of misery looks like an appealing option.
