Organizational design (OD) hinges upon a caveat posed by Myron Tribus, “what does the business organization [leaders] desire?” Business organizations can be designed in a myriad of ways and possess a plethora of leadership styles. Tribus remains correct; the entire design can be simplified into a single decision about the organization’s makeup and summed as the business is either a money tap or a socially involved mechanism trying to improve society and culture. If money taps, there is not much left to say. The organizational design, culture, and climate will reflect the owner’s desire to collect as much money as possible until the tap runs dry and the business is cast off by industry. If socially involved, the decisions are obvious, and further delineation is superfluous.
For several years now, I have researched corporate training; from the start of recorded history, corporate training has protected business knowledge as much as it is screening people out for not being the “right fit” for a business and as a means of controlling behavior. Originally an untrained youth would be indentured to a master, who agreed to do work in exchange for knowledge and ultimately be trained to become a journeyman, then master of a trade, craft, or business. Your options were controlled long before interest was gaged and contracts for services were purchased.
Schools sprang up, and indentured servitude was expected to fall away. Instead, only the indenturing of people went slowly away, but the servitude remains and is as healthy today as it was in the 1600s. Currently, servitude is cloaked in terms of culture, competitive stance, and corporate knowledge, and the corporate trainer remains the arbiter of entry into a business, trade, craft, etc. The trainer does not impart knowledge but exemplifies behaviors, attitudes, and mannerisms that the business leaders consider tenets of competition.
Finally, let’s name the 800# gorilla in the room, servitude is captivity, and captivity is how a person is described who changes into what the company desires of its long-term employees. Thus the phrase “Captured by the system” indicates this phenomenon. What does it mean to “Play the game?” the same thing, change your attitude, behaviors, and ideals, and become one of us, doing what we tell you to do.
By naming this phenomenon, I am not being cynical. Multiple researchers of peer-reviewed research have discussed this phenomenon in their research and called it key to business success, placing the onus onto trainers and training to expound and exhort compliance of the human element. Trainers are considered mentors, managers, job coaches, HR representatives, supervisors, etc.; if you fill a leadership position and trust, it is because you exemplify the business’s manners, attitudes, behaviors, and culture. Understand compliance is neither good nor bad. Non-compliance leads to ostracization and eventual unemployment. However, submission does not guarantee long-term employment either, as those businesses relying most heavily upon human compliance tend to burn out fast and bankrupt themselves.
All operational processes and procedures rely upon changing behaviors, not necessarily upon gaining new knowledge. In making this statement, I am not discounting gaining new knowledge, as new knowledge can arrive in many shapes, sizes, and encounters, but the primary role of a trainer in corporate offices is not new knowledge imparting but behavioral controls. The indentured servant model of a Master training Journeymen and Journeymen training Novices has not changed these many centuries and remains firmly set in the “modern” principles of organizational learning.
Why is this important to know?
Not understanding the model and putting into place a person who does not comply is as dangerous to the health of a business as a thief, a liar, or a con man. ENRON did not fail only because of the action of the leadership team. ENRON failed because the model of behaviors exemplified by the leadership team and taught to employees poisoned the organizational body. Hence the corporate trainers led the failure of ENRON, for the corporate training model follows GIGO (Garbage In equals Garbage Out!). Understanding that the trainers were responsible for ENRON’s collapse does not excuse any person’s conduct. Instead, it more fully places the blame on the leadership team who exemplified behaviors anathema to good organizational health.
Take any business, successful or collapsed, military organization, or non-profit; these distinctions do not matter. Review them closely, and you will find Tribus’s choice personified in the employees’ actions, cultures, desired attitudes, behaviors, dress styles, mannerisms, etc. Suppose a learner is preparing to train others, and doesn’t understand these fundamental aspects of corporate training and organizational design. In that case, that trainer will teach poorly, and those employees will have short careers in the business.
Hence the most extraordinary aspect of controlling costs does not arrive in cutting people but in training them for compliance, improving the understanding of the role of behavioral adaptation, and improving the incentives to adopt the culture of the business. A client of mine is facing this exact scenario; the economic downturns have hit them hard. Instead of focusing on improving costs through behavioral adaptation, they have begun cutting people, leaving in place the trainers that are fundamental to the problems the company is facing. Proving the maxim, “You cannot correct the problems with the same thinking that spawned the problems.”
What is needed?
Unfortunately, what is needed is not what is currently wanted, but the path forward will require pieces of the following solution. What is needed is a new model for corporate training, and the model has been historically proven to be successful. Joseph Smith Jr., an early American religious leader, founded several highly successful communities and launched a leadership revolution and a religious organization. His leadership style was based upon the following principle, “Teach them (people) correct principles and let them govern themselves.”
Technology has removed the brick stick to beat compliance into employees. Technology has also leveled a lot of playing fields, putting employees into a position where they must act for themselves, guided more by self-interest and self-preservation than any generation of workers previously. Add in COVID lockdowns that spurred the rise in remote workers, and technology has released a lot of employees to work outside the accepted strictures of an office. The release of employees has done two things, changed the behaviors compliance spectrum and removed the front-line supervisor as a primary trainer in monitoring and controlling cultural acceptance.
Several years ago, a researcher was told by front-line supervisors, job coaches, and mentors of a company that communication and training were not in the specific job roles of these people. Thus, they could not be held accountable for poor communication on their teams. Remote working has eliminated these aspects on the part of the front-line supervisor. Therefore, if the supervisor is not teaching independence, allowing for self-preservation, and promoting the freedom of thought and action in employees, those employees are now acting outside the company culture and operations, and disaster is looming. To their horror, the New York Times just discovered that company-forced cultures are being called into question when employees are not in the office, and demanding employees return hurts bottom lines.
Thus, the front-line supervisors must adapt. Adaptation in managers nullifies a manager’s power and authority, sparking fear of downsizing into these mid-level managers. Fear mixed with self-preservation leads to more problems for a company’s leadership (C-Level Suite) to consider. The self-interested but not free mid-level manager will crave their benefits, perks, and powers, like any drug, and the withdrawal process is never pretty. Again as recently exhibited by the New York Times, their trainers are proving that they do not understand people and technology and do not know the role of the trainer in corporate training.
Since the mid-1990s, technology has risen, coinciding with the need to provide front-line employees more freedom to make decisions and take rapid action. Mostly, this freedom has clashed with “traditional” models of behavior demanded of by what is considered novice servants. Yet, technological growth was not considered a fundamental threat to tradition until the COVID-lockdowns. Regardless of the politics in the lockdowns, the truth remains, the traditional roles have fundamentally shifted, and the businesses that embrace this new role for the trainer, including a new model for operation, will reap success in the whirlwind.
Hence, while not wanted, the model suggested is what is needed. Employees must be taught correct business principles and fully granted the freedom to govern themselves. Thus, the role of the trainer shifts from behavioral compliance to knowledge instruction and behavioral exemplar. More to the point, all levels of a business need to conduct themselves differently. Relying less upon behavioral and attitude adoption and more upon individuality, expression, and thinking to complete business tasks.
Front-line and mid-level managers are, by necessity, going to have to decrease in the new model. Relying upon layers of managerial oversight is not going to work, and honestly has never worked, and the costs of this oversight have proven too expensive. The gap between C-Suite Level decision-makers and the front line has grown too large and too expensive, and until this is acknowledged, the role of the trainer will continue to be hindered by old-model thinking. The 1960-1980s saw the exponential rise of middle managers, coinciding with significant cost increases and a tripling in government influence, all in the name of controlling behaviors, dictating attitudes, and demanding compliance.
The growth of the middle manager was considered “new thinking,” and history has proven this idea is as false as fools’ gold and as worthwhile. Middle management restricted freedoms, and while employment laws have granted, since the 1940s, employers the ability to take these controlling actions, these actions remain fundamentally unfair. The employees have slowly gotten more freedom back from their employers. Each business will find a balance between the extremes of absolute liberty and the oppressive regime of stolen freedom. The proposed model helps strike a balance as nothing else will, but caution is needed here; there is no one-size-fits-most solution in this balancing act.
Since the industrial revolution began, businesses have competed upon their employees’ skills and influence to serve customers, which is the fundamental truth that cannot be ignored any longer. By the C-Level Suite, the skills, freedoms, liberties, behaviors, attitudes, and investment of the employee dictates the company’s ability to compete for market share. While much lip service has been undertaken to this fundamental truth, action has lagged considerably, and this trend can no longer survive in the global markets. The front-line employee must be taught to understand this truth that they currently grasp like a fish in a stream, and they must become empowered more to act in this role. Requiring the trainers to know, prepare, and teach these principles to power action by the front-line employee.
Teaching correct principles and allowing employees to govern themselves is cyclical. The employee will rely more heavily upon trainers to teach the correct principles. Increasing the need for value-added, timely trainers who support individual liberty and freedom in employees to generate customer-centric solutions. These trainers will need to be taught so that they can teach more perfectly, and the cyclical process will continue. Needs for training will drive new training, producing more freedom to act and driving more demand for training.
Returning to the decision posed by Tribus, regardless of whether to be a money tap or a community-building organization, embracing a new model for the role of the trainer will prove beneficial. Reducing mid-level managers will produce direct bottom-line cost reduction. Increasing the freedom of front-line employees while also training them to generate customer-centric solutions will open new lines of business and new opportunities. There are no downside consequences to adopting these changes earlier than your competition and proving the concept. As a business leader, are you brave enough to embrace these truths, or will you watch what you have built be destroyed by those who are? The choice, as always, is yours, and if you would like help, please feel free to reach out.
© Copyright 2023 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
I have several titles, want my business, know and use my titles. Pick one, and use it! How can a company claim they “know their customers” when that company cannot use the customer’s preferred name or title in addressing that customer? I have worked hard to earn a Ph.D.; I do not expect everyone to call me “Dr.,” but it sure as anything beats being called “mister” all the bloody time. Worse, I still hold several ranks and positions that come with titles. I could be addressed using them, but even with a preferred name on many company customer profiles, I get that lazy customer service representative that calls me Mr. Salisbury! Guess what company I am going to ditch at the first opportunity?
Business processes matter; honoring your word matters, displaying trust, integrity, and fulfilling a promise made all matters in the customer relationship long before the product or service is discussed. Yet, how often are these issues on shaky ground, before the ink is dry on the service contract or the receipt for goods? I have a cell phone provider I detest; I long for the day I can finally walk free of this provider and never look back. Because their customer attention is deplorable, I feel used and abused every time I interact with this company. I have the same problem with my current Internet provider. When your customer service is so deplorable, you have to climb to become terrible; there is a problem that colors, signage, marketing, and gimmicks cannot fix!
Please note, I am not the best person to be around when my “cherub-like demeanor” dissipates. I continue to invest time and energy in preparation and in unhooking emotion from knee-jerk responses to provide a better customer experience for those I connect with. I am not perfect; I am not trying to give advice that I am not trying to implement every day, in every situation. I have read story after story about “how to handle difficult customers,” “how to provide excellence in difficult customer situations,” and I have read the nightmarish tales of agents not allowed to control a call.
Back in the 1990s, when I started at a call center on Friday, there were no locks, no badges, no traffic control, and minimal security presence. Monday morning, we had badges, electronic key cards, traffic control security points, and a host of new security measures. Why; because a customer showed up at an agent’s cubicle, he had stalked this employee for months, and the only thing saving this person’s life was that she went into labor that morning. Her stalker showed up with a shotgun and a dozen roses. While not perfect at controlling my responses, I can clarify and support customer service agents against abuse.
While some may add or subtract to this list of agent abuses, I prefer simplicity. Thus, I repeat, only for emphasis, if the behavior is not tolerated in front of a police officer, that is customer agent abuse, and should not be accepted. Is speaking loudly customer agent abuse; probably not. However, the situationality of defining customer agent abuse is such that professionals will need clear and specific directions. Let us clarify a few topics.
A customer agent is anyone able to provide the assistance being sought. Will you be the one today to provide the service needed? Do you realize this is a choice made every time you engage another person?
A business owner once told me that this method of thinking was as valuable as arguing about what came first, the chicken or the egg. Yet, before you can grow into a small business, you must provide a service or good for purchase. Hence the most essential customer is your fellow employees, and failing to understand this simple fact, breeds an Us vs. Them mentality in employee and customer relations. Worse, this aggressive attitude only grows as the business grows and is heard by your customers in every transaction!
What is driving business leaders to excuse irrational and detestably unprofessional behavior by customers? Honest question, if we would not tolerate behavior in person, why is it allowed over the phone? Why is the customer agent taking the brunt of the abuse when we all know the problem originates much higher than the agent you are talking to. Customer service, customer appreciation, customer attentiveness, customer relations, customer retention, etc., all circle around the customer culture bred into the business from its days as a small business. Worse, the leader’s approach to customer service is felt and observed by agents all over the company and soon will imitate that leader’s attitude and behaviors.
Some of what I am proposing will be anathema to your organization; I realize this. I understand that some of what I propose will be hard to implement, face tremendous pushback, and might cause some organizational design changes. All of what I am about to suggest is achievable through leadership and customer service.
On 10 May 2021, I was informed that my financing was finally clear, and I was set to close on a home on 14 May 2021. On 11 May 2021, while conducting a search online, I came across an advertisement for Alliance Van Lines Inc. from Palm Beach Florida. The company offered a reasonable rate to move my household goods from Phoenix, AZ., to Las Cruces, NM., and I paid a deposit. The verbal agreement was, “We have a driver in Northern AZ., he has to come through Phoenix on Saturday and can deliver in Las Cruces Sunday, as he heads to his final destination for a Monday delivery.” The phone representative went so far as to place me on hold, and “check” with dispatch for space availability and to double check times for picking up my household goods (15 May 2021) and delivering them (16 May 2021), without hindering his driver’s final destination.
Joe, the employee who called me, represented in the initial proposal that his driver was available with the needed deck space to haul my load of household goods on 15 May, deliver on 16 May, and continue on his way to his final destination, and that my load of household goods was a perfect fit to finish out his load from Northern AZ; thus, the first criterion of a legal bait and switch was met.
Alliance Van Lines Inc. you have brought shame upon yourself and I wish you the best with the consequences! A bait and switch are never allowed, never acceptable, and always unethical and immoral. May you be happy with your choices and their inherent consequences!
For a long time, I have deeply respected QuickTrip (QT). Their customer service is of such outstanding quality; even when their fuel is more expensive, I still prefer shopping at QT. The people go out of their way to help you have a fantastic customer experience. I have never had a rude employee, a poor customer interaction, or left with an unresolved problem. I struggle with a cane and neurological issues and have had doors held open for me; cashiers have brought me my change, always a good experience at QT. Thank you!
7-10 days later, I receive a call to reschedule an appointment spending more than 2 hours talking to the representative, who finally schedules me an appointment with another non-LHI provider in Phoenix for 10 May 2021. I received a call from that provider confirming I have an appointment. Yet, a bait and switch occurred, and my appointment was then rescheduled for the same provider, same LHI facility, and I attended this appointment.
destroyed in customer service. Face-to-face providers need to be looking for solutions, not actively looking to inconvenience the customer. 100% of the medical profession IS customer service. How the provider approaches the customer (patient) is the number one factor in how that patient will respond to treatment.
As a 
My local Post Office here in Phoenix was visited yesterday (03 March 2021). The Post Office does not deliver packages to the apartment complex we live in, so the standard procedure is for the USPS delivery person (mailman) to place a card notifying the customer of a package on a 10-day hold in the customer’s mailbox. Since we moved in, we have not gotten these indicators, and Monday, my wife was notified a package she needs was returned by USPS. It was delivered Monday to the Post Office and returned to sender as “customer refused delivery” the same day.
Ask yourself the following question, if you had upwards of 100 customers complaining about your work, how long would you remain employed? Frankly, I am still stunned 24+ hours after the interaction with this supervisor. My visit was the sixth time I had been to the Post Office complaining about not getting package notifications and having trouble with packages sitting around the post office taking up space. One of these visits included speaking to the Post Office’s head, general, whatever, the top person in charge of a local post office is titled. Still, the employee has maintained their job, kept the same route, and the customers continue to be abused.
But hey, the Post Office is only one of the government agencies exhibiting a race to the bottom where customer abuse and customer disservice are concerned. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), a state-run agency, is always in this race, and they take hostile customer service to new heights, or depths, depending upon how you look at their performance. The last visit to the DMV ended with screaming for several minutes in my car before possessing the proper mindset to drive away safely. The DMV is comparable to a dentist drilling before anesthesia starts and doing a poor job on an infected tooth; you just know you will have a bad day when a visit to the DMV is scheduled!
The VA is to be congratulated, the colonoscope, which is used on multiple patients for a colonoscopy, is being cleaned properly and to standard, which means that infections from one patient are less likely to occur in another patient transferred from the colonoscope. However, the training program, certification program, and training documentation remain under considerable scrutiny for continual failure, as discovered by a VA-OIG investigation of 10 different clinics! Training, certification of training, and documenting and tracking training are internal customer service actions that the entire VA continues to fail. Whoever is in charge of adult education and training at the VA is not performing their jobs, and this is witnessed every couple of weeks in the VA-OIG investigation results across the entire VA. Designed incompetence leading to customer service failures, absolutely ridiculous!
The VA-OIG conducted a lengthy investigation at the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) Chicago VA Regional Benefits office in Illinois.
Consider the following analogy. A 100% disabled veteran gets paid once a month and budgets those monies very carefully to last the entire month. A claims decision is made, and without any communication for why, the amount the veteran is expecting to live is cut in half. The veteran is then responsible for wading through the various call centers to find why, how the decisions were made, and what to do, which takes time, lots, and lots of time on the phone. While bills go unpaid, food goes unpurchased, financial difficulties mount, and correcting the situation takes more time. Sure, the VA will pay back pay, but that is never sufficient to cover all the accruing costs and losses experienced.
By this time, I had worked with four separate agents who were confused or refused the call by hanging up. I had been sworn at, I had been told I was a liar, and I was told my office could not handle your request. Each call required anywhere between 30 and 50 minutes of hold time waiting for an agent. As the supervisor reviewed the problem, they discovered that their agents could not have handled the situation, and a specialist was required. But, I never got an apology from the supervisor for the waste of my time, the issues experienced with previous agents, nor the loss of my time and resources it took to handle the problem.
Government employees beware; how you treat customers is a problem, and you need to be held to task for your insolence, depravity, ineptitude, inertia, and uncaring attitudes! When discussing the BS of government, the customer service issue is the most egregious. I will call you out publicly every time you abuse a customer. I am done being abused!
Essentially, the NM Government call centers, at the city and state levels of government are as emasculated as a spring-born calf! Let that sink in for a moment. No tools, no authority, no support, and only their verbal wits to make the customer go away. If you think this problem is only apparent in government call centers; well, you are wrong.
Appreciative inquiry is a growth mechanism that states that what a business organization needs, they already have enough of, provided they listen to their employees. Appreciative inquiry and common sense tells leaders who want to know and change their organization, how, and where to go to begin. Appreciative inquiry-based leadership is 6-continuous steps that start small, and cycle to larger problems as momentum for excellence permeates through an organization. But the first step, just like in defeating a disabling addiction, is admitting there is a problem.
Appreciative inquiry is exactly like the plane, by having a destination, defined according to positive desires, through the process of discovery, dreaming of the possible future, while designing the future, the appreciative inquiry leader can make the small changes today that move the destination from ruination to success.
A key aspect of Tiger Teams is their ability to stress test, beta test, and routinely check how operations are performing and recommend changes from the position of the customer. Recently the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) – Office of Inspector General (VA_OIG) investigated a critical piece of the Mission Act of 2018, the health information exchanges. While the VA-OIG received useful and valuable information from the VA and the community provider side, the customer/patient side was not included. From experience, I can affirm this is broken!
Tiger Teams are also helpful in another way, that of “bird-dogging,” or acting as the researchers, and developers of ideas towards making improvements. The VA-OIG recently brought to light that the VA needs to expand retail pharmacy drug discounts. With the number of prescriptions filled by the VA hourly, the fact that the VA does not have volume discounts was surprising, but unfortunately, not unexpected. The VA-OIG estimated that of the $181 million spent on retail drugs in fiscal year (FY) 2018, $69 Million would have been saved. From the VA-OIG report:
Finally, the power of Tiger Teams is also manifested to the VA in another way, returning to a situation after the VA-OIG has made recommendations to ensure compliance occurs. Another recent VA-OIG report shows that after a scathing VA-OIG inspection, the Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), was still out of compliance in their internal quality control procedures, systems, and processes. While some improvement had been made to spot errors, the procedures and processes that allowed those errors to occur were receiving zero attention by the internal quality inspectors. Which is akin to noticing the horse is out of the barn, but not shutting and locking the door to keep the horse in the barn. There is no valid excuse for the VBA quality controllers to not have been doing their jobs since the last VA-OIG Inspection.
Never has the axiom, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” been less true. The VA is broken and desperately needs fixing. With the help of those dedicated VA Employees, the proper leadership, and a Tiger Team to aid, the VA can be fixed and fixed quickly!
DNC-Consulting 