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What shapes the work atmosphere?
What shapes the work atmosphere is whether exchanges about encountered problems are based on pragmatic consideration of the facts and collaboration aimed at finding practical solutions, or whether they are dominated by personal ambitions, resentments, and the primacy of 'best practices' over the facts themselves.
Typology of workgroup operation
The ideal group
All individuals have a positive attitude, respectful of others and the facts. Individuals coordinate in a flexible and informal manner.
The usual group
As soon as the ideal group includes individuals whose social ambitions exceed their technical skills, or who have problematic personalities, the group's functioning tends to deteriorate. Constructive exchanges aimed at effectively addressing on-the-ground problems become obstructed, and individuals who could function harmoniously in an ideal group feel oppressed.The following symptoms appear, in whole or in part:
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Individuals spend their time on the game of alliances, to gain positions of power, or simply to belittle others.
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Ideology (respect for best practices, not proven) takes precedence over on-the-ground realities.Individuals protect themselves, covering behind the application of these rules without taking the on-the-ground reality into account anymore.
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The hierarchical functioning shifts from competence-based authority (those who are listened to are the ones with the most experience or expertise on the topic) to hierarchical double constraint: subordinates are expected to obey blindly ... and deliver results, all while avoiding bringing problems to the surface.
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Operational performance decreases. Functioning becomes bureaucratic. Work dissatisfaction increases. In fact, operational efficiency becomes more and more dependent solely on the pressure exerted by the hierarchy.
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The managed group
The deliberate establishment of a system, which can be called Gemba, Talk, or more simply problem diary, allows exchanges to be directed toward the resolution of on-the-ground problems, thus restoring the group's harmonious functioning and operational efficiency.
This system aims to:
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Make on-the-ground problems visible, and encourage cross-functional communication (being concerned with others’ problems).
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Educate individuals in the methodical technique of problem-solving (observing, analyzing, finding improvement solutions, implementing them).
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Opposed to the implementation of such a system are individuals whose social ambition is too high in relation to their actual skills, and individuals with certain problematic personalities. The proactive system of the problem diary prevents some of these individuals from disrupting the harmonious functioning of the entire group, provided that they remain a minority ... and that the top manager supports the approach.
Evaluation of organizational performance
Good organization of work simply implies that everyone can easily find the information they need when they need it. Easy to say, less easy to do.
Being poorly organized always results in a decrease in the quality of work and productivity, as well as an increase in stress. Let us list the various archetypes of poor work organization.
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In a totally disorganized workgroup, people talk to each other to pass on instructions, that is to say, the necessary information for the good execution of the work, as well as the coordination of its progress.This forces people to switch quickly and regularly between mental contexts to respond to spontaneous questions from colleagues, receive information at any time, and make a significant effort to memorize it in order to use it at the appropriate moment.
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With the widespread use of email, the disorganized group centered around the email inbox has emerged.Dealing with a large number of emails results in a non-value-added workload that plagues productivity. On one hand, useful information in each email tends to be diluted and non-standardized. On the other hand, this encourages each individual to create their own personal organization, often poor because too localized, to sort and eventually retrieve their emails when needed.Finally, this leads in practice to an unnecessarily high number of back-and-forth communications among the various stakeholders of a file, producing the same symptoms as in the absence of organization, namely the obligation for individuals to quickly and regularly switch mental contexts as they go from one email to another.
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Finally, a group that has not thoroughly studied its production process uses overly approximate forms. This results in time being lost in gathering missing information, possibly interrupting colleagues, and producing the same symptoms as in the absence of organization. It also results in lower production quality due to more varied interpretations of instructions.
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In a well-organized group, all the necessary information for the good execution of work, as well as to coordinate its progress, is communicated via specific paper or digital forms for each activity. People still talk, but to perform problem solving, which requires having hierarchical and technical freedom to modify the organization.
Go deeper
Refer to chapter 9 'The problem diary' of the book From Capital to Reason.Also see the questions 'What do best practices represent in the world of work?' and 'What are the conditions to be met to produce a serious reasoning? Problem solving.'