Replying to LO24787 --
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for responding to my inquiry. I agree with your statement about
this job description project:
"It has the advantage of "non-existence of typical large corporation heavy
documentation syndrom with policies, procedures, job descriptions etc.) "
There are really no "pre-formed" ideas among management and employees
about what an HR program is really all about. This leads into a great
opportunity to bring in some current fresh ideas, with little resistance
from management. The employees are a little nervous about any moves which
will make the company more "formal" in its policies. The ones that are
nervous are mostly the ones where there have been performance problems in
the past...but with no real attempt from either management or employee to
resolve these problems.
In one of my MBA change management courses, I had to fill out a lengthy
questionairre about this company; it scored very high in the "autonomy
crisis" category. Each employee does the parts of his/her job that he/she
likes, and many activities which actually support the stated strategies of
the company go un-done. People are not working in systems at all. For
example, needless backordering and "upset customer" situations arise
because the order desk feels that their only objective is to minimize
shipping costs. But those behaviours do not "fit" with the stated
strategy of "focused differentiation" (Porter-style).
Your suggestion about mapping out the key business systems of the company
is a good one (especially because many of the issues are similar to the
example above). Are there specific tools that you use for this type of
project that I may not already have come accross?
Since we are starting with no HR documents, do you feel that job
descriptions are one of the best "first steps" in building a performance
management system?
And thanks for the link to your supermarket project. I will keep an eye
on this site as you progress with this knowledge object system.
http://www.kobjects.homestead.com/
Regards
Claire Hilscher
Shackleton Resources
Vancouver, BC, Canada
--"C. Hilscher" <hilsher@ibm.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.