When Differences Are More Than Semantic

Inspired by the "Intel Inside" sticker on her laptop, mein frau recently suggested that I needed to find a "Powered by Robert Mondavi" sticker for my forehead.  No matter, today's mutterings relate to how painfully some people don't even begin to get what the "people" part of "people, process, technology" is really about.

At the risk of annoying Michael and Rita, and really irking the article's authors, I noted with some dismay the November-December WERCSheet feature on labor managment systems at Sara Lee.  My takeaway, based on the article's apparent focus, was that it's all too easy to use LMS to impose technology and process soutions on people, without doing enough to elevate the potential of the human side of the equation.  And, that's not dealing fairly or effectively with the critical third leg of the performance/productivity stool.

Not that it's bad to have standards (whether carefully engineered or not), and not that it's bad to set performance objectives. And, it's certainly not bad to use comprehensive data collection, reporting, and analysis to support improvements.  It's even okay to compensate based on goal achievement (although it's not my favorite motivator).  But, it all seems uncomfortably reminiscent of the bad old days of efficiency experts and Charlie Chaplin movies, e.g., Modern Times.

But when LMS information is used simply (as implied in the article) to recognize/reward and to coach associates to "get back up to speed," it seems that something's missing from what it takes to create a culture of improvement, accomplishment, collaboration, matching capabilities with needs and requirements, high trust, low fear, and change-seeking.

My own preference might be to work on those comprehensive people elements first, and then add the tool(s) to measure and report once the environment for sustainable continuous improvement had been institutionalized.  But, hey, that's just me and my shaky notion that doing things with people is closer to the intent of "people, process, technology" than doing things  to them.