Оглавление
Александр Высоцкий. Small business. Big game
Introduction
Chapter 1. Team Play
Chapter 2. The Ten Stages in Developing a Company
Chapter 3. Group Goals
Chapter 4. Role in the Game
Chapter 5. Org Board[14]
Chapter 6. Written Communications
Chapter 7. Statistics
Chapter 8. Planning
Chapter 9. Coordination
Chapter 10. Weekly Staff Meetings
Chapter 11. Financial Planning
Chapter 12. Strategic Planning
Chapter 13. Awareness of the Game
Отрывок из книги
The first thing one must do is to understand what administration is. Most people are firmly convinced that administration is something unrelated to work itself, something extraneous. Administration is frequently perceived as a synonym for bureaucracy – a waste of ink and paper that only complicates work and adds nothing of value. It imposes the burden of submitting reports, participating in planning meetings, and filling out standardized report forms and documents that measure and guide the productivity and overall activity of the company. It seems to employees as well as to managers that all these reports have been imposed for the sole purpose of impeding work. And instead of simply selling or producing, people are forced to waste time filling out forms as part of reporting to management. It is not surprising that administration has such a bad reputation, and that administrators seem like bureaucrats of a sort, people who are not interested in the real business of the organization and merely shuffle papers.
Often, when a management consultant – essentially an administration specialist – comes to a company, employees do not greet him with ovations. And when a company manager tries to set up a planning system or implement regular reporting, employees perceive this as an infringement on their freedom and a questioning of their competence and productivity, so they respond to such measures with hostility. Yet everyone, for some reason, forgets the simple truth – that for a game to exist, there must be certain rules.
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Setting goals for a group has to do with administration, not the technology of a company’s activity. Thus in football, the technology is the methods that players use on the field, of which they must have perfect mastery, whereas setting the goal “let’s kick our opponent’s ass” is administration. Without such a goal, even the most sophisticated technological methods lose their meaning.
The next integral component of a game is rules that establish the boundaries of the game and describe the possible actions. Without rules, there can be no game, and if the rules fail, the game collapses. If there were no precise rules in football and every player acted as he saw fit, the game would turn into chaos. A company must also have quite specific rules, which precisely define the rights and obligations of team members. Of course, all rules create restrictions that are necessary for the game to continue. Quite often, when rules such as a fixed work schedule, a dress code, or reporting standards are introduced in a small business, it leads to employee resentment.
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