The down side of management

When I was a management consultant, it was abundantly clear that managers frequently lose all control by attempting to micro-manage every process. They gave so many directives and so many requirements that it was not possible for their teams to follow all of the directions all the time.

Functionally, every employee had to decide for themselves what priority to give to each assignment – which items to follow closely and which could be ignored. As a result, every employee was making management decisions and the managers, by default, were shirking all responsibility.

I’ve recently become aware of a further extension of this problem. My wife recently started working in a large urban hospital and in her manager’s attempt to control employee scheduling, she has created a situation where employees cannot schedule their own vacation time –it is assigned.

The problem comes because she, and presumably most other employees, already knows that there is a weekend, months from now, when she will not be available to work. Because there is no system to request that time off, she has been advised by everyone working there to simply to call in sick when the weekend arrives.

As a result, the hospital will need to manage an emergency staffing situation, pay excess overtime or temporary staffing costs, and worse, likely be under-staffed. All of this could be avoided if management understood that the cost or pain in providing employees some input up front would avoid more costly “emergency” coverage and related problems in the future.

The ironic part s that the founding mission of this hospital is to provide appropriate preventive care across the community so that more costly emergency care can be avoided!

If only they would apply the same logic internally.

Blogging as Marketing

I've come across two items recently that struck me as the eventual downfall of blogging. 1) Seth Godin (whom I think writes an interesting blog and interesting books) suggests that all CEOs write a blog to communicate with customers and give actual feedback on how things work at their companies. 2) A marketing group that was presenting to us about increasing awareness for a community in which we build homes suggested that we utilize blogs to reach potential clients.

These both seem, in abstract, like reasonable ideas -- but they seem to be heading down the same slope that has rendered product reviews all over the web useless.

To be fair, the marekting group was very clear that all posts to blogs should be clearly identified as a person who was representing the community and Godin wasn't really suggesting that CEOs will write their own blogs, just musing that it would be brilliant if they would do it.

It would be nice if true openness and honesty existed throughout the web and you could/would trust what you read there. It was believed that the annonymity of the web would provide the perfect environment for people to be open and honest, but instead it has created an environment that permits liars to make all sorts of claims hidden behind a mask of pretend honesty.

Perheaps the next generation of the web will be different.

helpless & fortunate

I recently learned that a good friend from my childhood (who coincidentally now lives near us) was just diagnosed with lymphoma. The cancer has progressed far and has spread through her entire body. She began chemo yesterday and I can't even begin to imagine what she and her husband are going through. She and her husband (who is a wonderful writter) are keeping a blog that is chronicalling their experience and emotions as they move through this horrible episode. Quite by accident, they began their blog at just about the same time that I started posting here. Reading their entries makes me realize how trivial the concerns in my life seem -- and make me so very thankful that I have the luxury to think and write about politics, or whimsy or a myriad of stupid topics that will never really matter - not the way things matter when you face serious issues like cancer and children and family. I'm sending all the positive energy out that I can to help them cope with this reality and I am hopeful that there will be a good outcome. If you are interested in reading about their experience, you can find their blog at http://luchalee.wordpress.com but be prepared for a very sobering, paifully sad, but hopeful column.

Med Students

It was pointed out to me that a guy that I know put together a few spoofs on the Real Men of Genius commercials. They are all about Med School and they are pretty funny - not the best production values, but not too bad all things considered. You can check one of them out at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2792206638207066274&q=med+student+asker&hl=en

The other ones should be available from the side bar on the right.

The National Western

So I attended the PBR bull riding at the National Western Stock Show a couple of days ago... First of all, the riders (and bull fighters that protect the riders) are pretty impressive in person. But I was far more struk by the crowd which seemed like a pretty good representation of middle America. Its has been a while since I've been so acutely aware that I am an East Coast Liberal. I felt as though the experience should have been fairly insightful, but as of yet I have not found the deeper meaning. Perhaps more on that later.

Taking the Plunge

Okay so I finally decided that I ought to starg blogging... Not that I have any particular objective, but since I've detached myself from the more recent digital revolutions -- and terms like RSS or Firefox meant nothing to me, I figure that it's time I get plugged back in. So look for further ramblings and thoughts comming soon.