The follow-through contagion

Well it’s another day of turmoil on Wall Street, and you can’t help but wonder who’s in charge here? The way that we’ve seen investment banks and related entities crash and burn in recent days tells us that something is fundamentally wrong with the American financial system. I tend to think the problem is spread not only throughout this one sector, but exists in a large number of other corporations. At least if my company is any indication.

As I’ve written before, I work for a financial services firm whose clients include (included?) the likes of Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. I guess that explains in part why I’m now working a four-day week with no overtime. Though we still seemed to be afloat as of 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon – at least those of us who have yet to be “workforce-reduced” – you have to wonder exactly how we’ve managed to survive with the irresponsibility and lack of follow-through that we see on a daily basis. If this micro-view is any reflection of the macro-view, I can see why government bailouts have replaced synergy as the new strategy du jour.

We’ve had I don’t know how many initiatives begun in the last few years that have been abandoned faster than you can ask “what does that acronym stand for again?” Teamwork and quality and efficiency and problem-solving and cost-containment have all been embraced and deserted like so many Jessica Simpsons. “This is not just the latest corporate trend,” we’re told at each new roll-out, “but it’s a whole new way that we’re running our business.” You mean, like, into the ground?

My manager has done a heck of a job of “walking the talk”, as they say. (Or is it “talking the walk”? I always get those confused). Anyway, she’s made more unkept promises than I can list with a bandolier of bullet points. When our training department was re-engineered into non-existence, we were told there’d be a dinner to celebrate our accomplishments – never happened. When I was asked to help several other departments with projects that would increase my value to the company – never happened. When I found an error that saved a client significant embarrassment, I was told I’d get a Starbucks gift card – never happened. (OK, maybe I presumed too much on that last one. She asked if I would use a Starbucks gift card if I were given one, so maybe I read too much into it).

This is sounding more and more like the bitter screed that I didn’t really intend. There’s actually a good side to this corporate amnesia, at least for me if not for our clients and shareholders. If you’re asked to pursue a distasteful project, you can usually avoid it entirely if you just wait it out long enough. Another manager asked me a few months ago to conduct some assessments on people I’ve trained to see if they actually learned anything. I printed out the paperwork, organized it into nice neat piles and fully intended to follow-through with my ex-students but, you know, stuff happens, and I never quite got around to it. Another trick is to do the assignment, but just do it poorly. “You wanted it done AND you wanted it done correctly? Nobody spelled that out for me.” As you can see, I respond well to leadership.

Occasionally, though, this technique can backfire, even in those rare cases where it’s pursued with honest intentions. I was asked by a supervisor to maintain a display board showing examples of our errors so that people could see these and be uplifted to do better as they headed to the bathroom. (Just like my cat is uplifted not to chew into the bread bag when I tap him on the snoot). I kept up the board for several months, despite the fact that I never once saw anyone reading it even though my desk was positioned so I had to stare at it all day. I sent the supervisor several e-mails with ideas on how to make it more interesting, none of which were responded to. I took this as an indication that the project had slipped into the sleep mode that everything else seems to eventually arrive at, and dropped the project. Imagine my pretend shock when I was later confronted with this neglect of duty. It’s like there was still a municipal code on the books from 1913 that banned snakes from carrying parasols in the presence of children of a tender age -- “Are we still doing that?”

There’s also this remnant of collective decision-making called the “Quality Task Force” that shows a different perspective of our reluctance to make definitive decisions. The QTF has been renamed twice, published a self-promoting newsletter and even had a logo designed and still it doesn’t seem to be able to get even the simplest of tasks forced. In place of the malaise of a single individual, the force relies on the indecision that comes when you put a group of people together and give them equal voice but no direction and no authority and no impetus to act definitively. This leads to cases like the question e-mailed last week to the team. Everyone offered their different opinion for several days until interest petered out and the original questioner was left to wonder “huh?”

I guess in a way it all boils down to what’s motivating people to do what they do in the corporate environment. We like to say things like “the customer comes first” and “everything for the shareholders” but in reality we do things for only about three different reasons: our boss told us to do it, it was fun to do, or it made time pass more quickly. If instead it’s some sort of perverse obligation we feel toward the well-being of our stakeholders, there always seems to be a good reason to get distracted by some shinier object.

Of course, with the economy in the shape it is right now, I couldn’t provide customer service if I wanted to. You have to have actual work from actual paying clients to do that. The most service I could provide right now would be to graciously direct the brothers Lehman to the nearest building ledge.