Interdepartmental Hassle
You will often hear me speak about keeping things small. In Episode 7 I explained why Small is the new Big. There are a lot of reasons why things don’t work so well when they get big. In today’s Blog Post I’d like to focus on one of the negative aspects of Big Businesses, and that is what I call: Interdepartmental Hassle.
We organize most big companies as large chains of activities. The departments within the company are like links in this chain. The chain only functions as well as the weakest link. Still, we tend to control the processes department by department and not as a chain of activities. Although most companies realize that that is not optimal, they have a hard time finding different approaches, and that is understandable.
Because of the magnitude of the chain, it is simply not possible to control the chain as a whole, and that’s where it often ends. But what happens? Every department starts to act like a small business, with its own goals and plans, just as if it can operate without the rest of the chain. That’s where Interdepartmental hassle starts. Because of the extent of the chain, it’s hard to pinpoint where things go wrong, and that’s what departments make good use of.
Don’t break the Chain
When things don’t go as planned, it’s fairly easy to put the blame on a department that precedes you in the chain or that comes after you in the chain. Interdepartmental hassle is a play within the chain that’s built on fear, fear to get the blame. Needless to say that supporting departments are an easy target. That’s why it’s so nice to blame the IT department or the system.
Don’t let interdepartmental hassle distract you from what matters. And that is:
- Your Customer
and - Having fun in doing the best you possibly can
In today’s video, I hand you solutions to prevent interdepartmental hassle.
I hope you will enjoy the video. See you next week!
Make things small (see Episode 7 for more details on that)
Give more attention to People (we’ve just covered that in Episode 20)
Leadership (see Episode 2 and Episode 11)
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