I am convinced, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that the world I
once knew will return. But my expectations do nothing more than make me
wistful, they do not cause the warm skies of Texas to spit snow or the
cedars and live oaks to turn red and gold. Likewise, no amount of wishing
for paper turkeys will replace the pizza coupons, high school football
schedules, and project reminders from my refrigerator doors either.
So, what am I to do? "Live with it", my wife tells me every year, "If you
want to see the leaves change color, go visit some place they do". My
wife is a good advisor and I respect the intelligence of her comments.
But no matter how accurate her observations about my silliness are, inside
me something just won't change, no matter how hard I want it to. I want
things to be the way they were.
Expectations are damned poor guides sometimes. As a consultant, I don't
know how many times I have heard managers complain that workers just
aren't meeting the manager's expectations. My first tendency is always to
question the realism of those expectations. That's because it is so easy
to expect from today that which we had yesterday. The nagging feeling
that things should be different from the way they are is not just
annoying, it can paralyze our thought processes and cripple our
productivity.
And that is the real problem that those managers face. Despite what they
see, they are nagged by feelings from a past that has changed. Managers
should expect some things. They should expect a fair trade of their
resources for people's time. They should expect rules to be followed.
They should expect accuracy and promptness, and they should expect a safe,
sane, and legal workplace. These are reasonable expectations that will
encourage reasonable behavior by everyone involved. But there are several
things that are harmful when they become expectations.
For instance, managers should not expect to control the attitudes of
workers. If someone does the required work in the required time with the
required resources to the required standards, what difference does it make
what attitude they have? In paying someone for their work, you are, in
effect, renting their behavior. If they behave according to the
requirements of your contract with them, then you are getting what you
paid for and their attitude is immaterial. Yet the attempt to control and
change the attitudes of workers is a continual source of workplace stress.
Have you ever seen a manager from Industry A who moves to Industry B and
thinks workers should act the same in the new place as they did in the
old? And how about the manager who loses one or more workers and inherits
a whole new group from another area of the same company? Both these
situations traditionally cause problems when the manager expects behavior
which he or she is just not going to see. I once worked with a manager of
an assembly line who, due to promotions, lost several employees who were
great listeners and counselors. Their replacements were just average in
these areas, but remember, their job was to make widgets on an assembly
line, not to be listeners and counselors. He tried unsuccessfully to get
the new people to act like the old ones and only succeeded in making
everyone angry. He forgot two things; that people act the way they do
because of THEIR history, not his; and that personnel skills and abilities
above and beyond the hiring requirements for a particular job are just
benefits of chance, not rights of the employer.
This is an unusually long post for me. I suppose as we move into the
tradition bound holiday season, I am especially sensitive to those
expectations which I have about the past. It is all to easy to move from
reviewing old memories of the past to wishful thinking and even griping
and complaining about a present that doesn't seem to measure up. But I
find that a warm cup of tea and a quick chat with my kids about their
expectations of today goes a long way toward putting change and continuity
in perspective. So, at the risk of sounding wistful, I shall concentrate
on the here and now and honor all the many memories I have of other times
and places with an occasional story or toast. And I promise to appreciate
the occasional colors which come to my trees here in Austin even if they
are not so bright as the colors I remember. However, if any of you have a
box of snow that you could email, well I'm still not above a little
imaginative daydreaming.
Lon Badgett
lonbadgett@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>