I love my work, traveling to often remote parts of the world, meeting interesting people and hearing – and seeing- their stories.
The stories are about ordinary people just working out how to navigate their day/week/year – whether a CEO, GM, Supervisor, Truck Driver, Teacher or Nurse.
I have plenty of stories about planning, most include a disconnect between plans and reality – for example:
* supply of materials * availability of equipment * absenteeism *
conflicting purposes and schedules.
I often find disconnects between the top management, those in the middle and the people going underground every day.
At one underground mine I kept hearing about the planning system. Some were saying how good they were at planning and others were saying it was overly complex and there were too many different systems, that didn’t really talk to each other.
As always, I talked to people across all levels and all disciplines. I also attended key meetings, including daily and weekly planning discussions, operating meetings and shift start sessions.
I give you “Piss Poor Planning” an act in 3 parts, and with a catastrophic ending
The grand show:
The large room focused on 3 giant screens with graphs and figures. Maintenance, Production, Development & Safety were discussed. There were about 30 people there. The GM, Managers, Superintendents, Planners etc. As I watched I saw it was important to be seen, to be seated near the right people and most of all, to tell a good story – possibly at the expense of someone else in the room.
I saw people questioning the validity of the charts and referring to their own figures (from an older system still running in parallel and secretly preferred by some)
After talking through various figures, excuses – with the GM interrogating some and allowing a few tiffs on others. The meeting ended.
One got a sense from people I met with that this was fairly standard and nothing really changed. It provided a facade: management had integrated all the complex issues into a plan that all agreed with.
It was where careers were managed rather than where management work was done.
The shift change:
Bustling with people in high viz clothing, busy adjusting lamps and chatting idly. This was punctuated by various Supervisors and Superintendents telling people about the work for the shift and things to look out for. There are a few questions:
“We have 2 people on a course and another two off sick. Not enough in the crew to get the planned work done” “Oh well, just do the best you can”
Muttering, all started moving towards the cages to go underground.
The following sums up what these supervisors, operators and maintainers experienced:
“Planning? Ha what a joke, it’s piss-poor here!
The plan changes 3 times before we get out the cage at the bottom”
The interference of power:
The control room is becoming more hi-tech. A lot of information is available and it is even viewable on mobile phones.
Relatively “low” in the hierarchy, although highly capable and doing important work, those who run the control room regularly get calls late at night from an ex GM, now in a wholly unnecessary role –overriding plans because he does not like what he sees in the shift production figures. In doing so he jumps down 3 levels of management, makes a mockery of the planning and of the authority in the roles below him.
In this mine people at 4 levels in the structure, are doing their best in most cases. This can mean they need to make decisions about what that is, who they can and cannot afford to annoy, whether it is worthwhile raising a concern, to stick to the rules, or to come to work at all.
They are all “in the middle”. They are all at risk.
We warned of a significant safety risk in the noise created by all of this.
This was ignored, people were hurt.
This is summary to be expanded in “the book”. There are lots of interconnected strands. My work is to help managers see the strands and manage them effectively. Just some of these are:
The integration of systems * The purpose of systems * Structure, authority and power
How conflicts and noise between all of these impact culture, decisions, behaviour, employee engagement, safety and production.
You see, this is what really working on culture is actually about. Understanding what is really happening, how it is being experienced and the impact it has on the business.
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