EMBRACE STREAMING

Last month we talked about one of the biggest questions the executives are asking:

 “How do we keep people from quitting without paying them more?”

You could argue better workload etc. but those can also be quantified as pay, I want to propose a more creative solution that will please both sides.

The first one was to encourage work from home. This time we will talk about Embrace Streamlining.

There is an archaic idea that the worker must always suffer at work. The owners of this idea will not admit it, but their actions speak louder than words and they will try to hide it behind “Not a good look” or “It doesn’t look professional.”

These people got away with it at a time of abundance when after the loss caused by such bad practices, you still were able to make a profit. It is from simple things, such as not letting cashiers sit while working to making sick leave worse than the disease itself, such as asking for a doctor’s note — from a job that does not provide health insurance.

I have a simple principle as a manager and a teammate. Trust above all else; if I cannot trust you to do your job to the best of your ability, at a pace that you know how to choose, then that is not a thing that can be fixed without a major shake-up and only that person can fix it.

Bosses must be able to fundamentally trust that their workers can do their job after being trained and slowly let go of the leash and let people work to the best of their ability. These “Cruelty is the point” practices are not only deplorable ethically they are also harmful financially. Exponentially so the higher skill and responsibility levels involved.

Effectively, this paradigm shift can let people optimize their work to not only provide better performance but also make it more consistent. Sure, there will be crunch times, but I am yet to meet an artist or developer that would not perform crunch for a project they care for. I think management needs to learn to trust their workers and workers live up to that trust.

The other part of this process is embracing improvements, automation, and comforts. If you find a way to do a job better or more comfortably and the management resists their silly reasoning, then it is time to look elsewhere for the worker and time to understand this potential improvement.

The days of low-efficiency businesses are dying as we are in a more receding tide of the economy.