Do be careful that you don't throw the baby out with the bath water,
and find yourself with too many people who lack experience.
[1979 J. P. Young Art of Learning to Manage 91]

In the quote above, Young was concerned with the short-sighted approaches of decision makers in organisations who were getting rid of ageing (and more costly) staff because the young were cheap and plentiful.

Today we face similarly difficult times. Unemployment is rising as organisations trim their staff in the teeth of the recession and its aftermath.  We at Maier offer a range of strategies to help our clients manage the often heartbreaking but unavoidable business of restructuring and getting more from less.  You can read about this elsewhere on our site.  But a scenario which has revealed itself to our top consultants recently is well worth exploring.

As Executives struggle to establish criteria regarding who might continue in employment in their company and who they might let go, they find themselves in several minds over a particular type of individual. 

Let us offer a profile of his or her core attributes!

• This person can be more of a maverick
  than a rule follower
• This person has poor interpersonal skills
• This person is brilliant in solving complex problems
• This person cannot manage effectively

In other words this person is a paradox. 

 

Very often he or she is the first individual to be shown the door because, despite being creative and enriching the company’s culture and operations, he or she will have truly ‘got up the nose’ of many senior staff owing to a propensity for not following company procedures, for their straight talking candour and their apparent disregard for organisational niceties!

Yet, in more enlightened organisations with whom we work, they are almost the last to be shown the door! Instead, organisations seek ways to bend themselves around such people, reducing their capacity to irritate but releasing their capacity to bring new ideas to the table and establishing left field answers to intractable issues bringing a re-sharpening of the culture’s cutting edge. 

We see them in a hybrid mix of Meredith Belbin’s ‘Specialist’ and ‘Plant’, people who have exceptional attributes, even if they would be the last you might ask to manage a team of staff for any length of time.  Such individuals become internal consultants, moving around a company or public service organisation to deal innovatively with ‘hot spots’, those bottle-necked areas that can create real conflict and tension.

 

 

Are you faced with issues of restructuring?  Have you looked at the profile of your staff to discover whether you are throwing the company Plant away with the vase-water of staff redundancy? We’ve been working with clients on just these issues, solving immediate problems and issues through coaching and research whilst bringing about longer term change through responsive programmes focused around team dynamics and leadership qualities (more on that to follow!)

(NB  Check out Belbin’s ideal team types if you haven’t come across them before.  His Plant is the source of creativity in a team.  His Specialist exists in organisations because of a particular, much needed expertise.)

If you want to hear about any of our ideas or the work we’ve been doing recently in more detail please give us a call on 01603 507236 or drop me a line at jo.smallwood@maier.co.uk