One Question.
When you resolve a complaint to the satisfaction of the organisation, you reduce the resolution of every complaint, regardless of its particulars or what the complainant wants, to you answering one question:
Did we do what we promised?
This requires every organisation to be authentic in what it promises to do, because it will be called on that promise.
Compliance.
Most policies, manuals, training programmes and other organisational documentation have only one function:
To appear to be of practical value.
To have the layout and language of how things are done right.
Whether they are usefully good is secondary and a bonus.
As long as they ‘comply’.
Amend or write any of these tools so that they are engaging and practical and readable - and … Oh no!
They don’t look serious.
They don’t appear to be like the manuals that we’re used to seeing in serious organisations.
They don’t comply.
Humbling and Healthy.
It’s humbling and healthy when you think you know a subject well and you read or hear something you’d never considered.
Like Kennedy.
Watching a bad boss being affirmed in their error is like watching film of President Kennedy’s motorcade entering Elm Street and heading towards Dealey Plaza.
Mediocrity.
Note to all faith-based organisations:
Mediocrity is not a virtue.
It is not the same as humility.
Nor kindness, grace, service, or compassion.
Nor Love.
Lukewarm will be spat out.
Buried talents will be cast out.
Salt without taste will be thrown out.
What it Becomes.
What is an irrecoverable tragedy in youth,
Becomes a nostalgic tale to your spouse and sleepy children on a long car trip.
Around the Next Corner.
Behind arrogance is ignorance of what may lie waiting around the next corner.
Even the Lowly.
Even the most lowly, disempowered person in an organisation has a valuable power that they tightly clutch:
Information.
More Data.
It’s remarkable how often that making a less than certain decision about a person triggers a reaction in the person or those around them that provides more certainty about the correctness of the decision.
Big Balloons.
If we truly understood and felt how vulnerable we are in the world -
Moving about in the mundane with bodies, minds and spirits like big balloons in a needle factory -
We would apply that courage to remarkable endeavours.
A Lifetime of Indifference.
Someone is brittle or broken and we say:
‘Let’s help them. Let’s gather around and let them know we care.’
We say:
‘Ring this number or go to this website and someone will help you.’
We say:
‘Let’s raise awareness of the brittle and broken and support them by wearing coloured socks to let them know they’re okay.’
Like there’s a lever or a button or a pill or a message or an intervention that we can pull or push or prescribe or send or implement that will somehow be powerful and persuasive and healing enough.
Where were we over the years before?
Where were our small and authentic and unsolicited acts of generosity and kindness and tough love and delayed gratification and patience and tenderness and the hundreds of other opportunities to be brittle and broken in view of this person so they could be fed and guided and a witness to how life is lived?
How patronising and condescending we are to think that a 1800 number can overcome a lifetime of our indifference.
Perhaps the final insult.
Constructive Knowledge.
Danrae through its personnel who attended the training course knew about the adhesive's dangerous properties and that the heat gun was a potential ignition source, but "failed to incorporate that information into its SWMS and to train its workers on the content of an adequate safe work procedure", the Judge found.
‘Through its personnel who attended the training course’ - the employer knew what the workers knew.
‘Failed to incorporate that information’ into its Safe Work Management System.
What a worker knows - their employer knows.
The employer must tell the other workers.
Definition.
Organisations are defined by who calls meetings, who attends, and who declines and gets away with it.
Communications.
“…The term ‘organisation’ refers to the pattern of communications and relations among a group of human beings, including the processes for making and implementing decisions.” Herbert A. Simon
You’re not part of an organisation if you’re not sharing and comparing information for the purpose of better decision making.
Rule Breaker.
You must break a rule in order to create a new rule.
Breaking rules is very, very dangerous.
The gatekeepers of the status quo do not have to engage with your proposed new rule.
They need only sound the alarm and punishment comes running.
Resolution.
Reframe complaints and their policies away from fault, error, blame, and punishment -
- to bridging information gaps, learning, and continuous improvement.
When is a complaint resolved?
When the respondent has satisfied themselves that they have the best information to make future decisions.
The Real Boss.
Be sure to know who the real boss is.
You think you’re the boss, yet if people know you’re not, they will pay you lip service while keeping their eye on the real boss.
Your test of whether you’re the real boss is if you’ve got nobody to complain to.
