Jorge Viñas, the seller, has just been informed that the top managers of Metales Unidos, a company whose orders can allow his company to overcome the crisis it is going through, have just arrived at reception.
In turn, notify the Commercial Director because the quality and importance of the visitors requires the presence of a senior manager to receive them.
When the Commercial Director is going to join Jorge, his secretary advises him that the General Director requires his presence in the workshop. Insistently.
Annoyed, the Commercial Director renounces to attend properly to these important clients to satisfy the unjustified call of his General Director.
In the end they end up losing the sale and the customer.
Time is power
Several of you will have seen this scene in the movie "Who Killed the Sale." This impressive training film, made in the 1960s, highlights the mistakes made by an entire company to lose a sale, without actually making anyone feel more guilty than another.
I have chosen to focus on the aforementioned scene because little has changed since the sixties in this regard: time is power.
Which of the heads of a company or department, when a concern arises, does not immediately summon collaborators who could clarify it, or if a "great idea" comes up, does not immediately improvise a meeting to discuss it.
And collaborators act the same way with their own collaborators, without anyone really worrying about whether it will disrupt the collective work of the organization.
There is an implicit recognition, and therefore never rethought, that the work of a hierarchical superior is always more important than that of his collaborators and, therefore, that his time is more precious.
To freely dispose of your collaborators' time is to clearly affirm your own importance and power.
Although it is not aware, although good justifications are found every time for this cannibalism of the time of others, it is still the symptom of an organization completely turned upward and focused on hierarchical centralization. And we already know that they are not necessarily the most effective.
In the book "General Motors: The Bitter Awakening" Mary Ann Keller explained, referring to parking spaces reserved for managers, that there is no way to tell some employees that they are more important to the company without telling others that they are less so. I wonder if there is a way to tell them that our time is more important without clearly telling them that theirs is not so important.
Power and counter power
Bosses aren't the only ones who can use other people's time. In the name of a policy of permanent availability and open door, some managers are overwhelmed by the interruptions of their collaborators at any time.
Does an employee have a question about how to solve a problem? Go immediately to your boss to get it resolved. And as this one does, the cycle is reproduced and some controls complain that "they have not let me do anything today."
Whether or not to give your time to the organization when it asks for it is also an expression of power.
- Maria, could you stay an hour to help us finish this project today?
- I'm sorry Sir, today I have a date for xyz, You know that the company owes me two days of vacation last year. Today is impossible for me, sorry.
Just as being in a position to demand it is also a manifestation of power.
- I'm sorry, Maria, but you'll have to cancel your engagement. (authoritarianism).
- I'm sorry Maria, you know how important this project is. I know that your sacrifice would not go unnoticed above, I would not like to have to say that you refused. (blackmail).
Horizontal power
The relationship between time and power is also evident at the horizontal level of the organization. The ability of one to get something from a colleague or another department with priority or preference (we understand repeatedly, not exceptionally), is a manifestation of their power: the power of another to renounce, in a habitual way, their priorities to satisfy that of the plaintiff.
It may be a greater indicator of a person's true power than the official hierarchical level. In fact, there are people in the organization who more or less systematically engage in disorganizing the planning of others, in the name of a greater interest, a requirement that "you know, it comes from above", or for any other good reason.
But at the end of the day, consciously or unconsciously, with or without explicit will, having the time of others is an act of POWER.
How to avoid disorganizing others
Although it seems like evidence, the first answer is by organizing yourself. It is very convenient to use others to fill our own planning gaps.
When we have this "great idea" or this "urgent doubt," we must learn to give up using the comfort track. Let's point and reflect; Let's try to find an answer for ourselves; let's put off the urgency, because except perhaps firefighters who can't plan fires, there is always a way to plan responses to emergencies. In fact, organizational outages are rarely emergencies. They are comforts; when you don't show our power over others.
When a Director improvises a meeting of eight middle managers, he is disorganizing the work of eight people, but at the same time, he is giving the model that these eight people can, should they? Disorganize the work of thirty or forty employees by impacting impromptu meetings in your own department to provide the urgent response.
How to avoid time cannibals
If we are that boss with the open door, we should remember that by solving the problems of others ourselves, we make them more dependent (wow, this feeling of power again, right?). If we want to fight against centralization and upward delegation, we must ensure that our collaborators are capable of solving their problems; And doing them for them is not exactly the best way to achieve it.
Imagine for a moment that you are the coach of a tennis player. This one has a failure in the serve, too cut, too slow. What would I do? Take his racket and serve instead? "Hey Coach, I'm behind the scoreboard, could you come out and serve for me?" However, it is what many bosses do in companies.
Where is the power?
It is interesting to ask where the power really is in business. Statutory power, we have no doubt. Natural authority, understood as the ability to have followers, is already more debatable. But what about the power to run the organization? And the power to satisfy customers, to gain efficiency, to achieve objectives, to maintain a cohesive group, where is it? Who has this power?
I leave you with the question. This answer may be common to many other questions as well.
