We always had our share of complicated and unnecessary procedures within our work, but they seem to be piling up lately. Who designs them and decides on the implementation. I doubt that lower management has any impact here, given that I saw many of the lower managers “rolling their eyes” when it comes to these procedures.
8 replies (most recent on top)
Probably the new training system thing called HOS or whatever it is will train you.
Or ask HR
Or IT
You’ll need to go through an unnecessary and complicated procedure to get that contact.
Engineers that have never been on shop floor or operated a mill.... maybe even in a foreign country
@1nku+1gpfpIAP That's part of it. It's also blindness to unintended consequences. Take outsourcing and in-sourcing. You could make a career out of showing savings and efficiency to outsource a bunch of work. Then a few years later your could show savings by bringing that same work back in house. Then rinse and repeat. It's just a matter of how your spin the proposal and the metrics you choose to use and ignore. Most cost savings measures don't actually cut costs they just move the expense elsewhere.
It’s been my impression that the proliferation of procedures is, at least in part, driven by a desire to replace the institutional knowledge held by older employees. Once they thoroughly document what they do and how, we can either turn it over to a low paid drone or automate it.
I would argue that a lot of unnecessary procedures come from folks in management who are looking for ways to justify their paychecks and bonuses. It's far too easy to tack on an additional procedure and claim it as an improvement because people now do an extra "XYZ". The resulting impact in productivity can be positive, zero, or even negative however you can make anything look like an improvement if you squeeze people hard enough in the end.
An organization with an excessive and unjustifiable amount of management is a terrible thing...
I always said, the best managers at Honeywell are those who know how to navigate around the barriers that corporate and upper management puts in front if you. These are skills that are learned, a newcomer to a department will not be able to work the system like someone who was mentored.
Depends on the business unit.
Business policies and procedures are driven by two things … the law, and preventing spending of Honeywell money ( customer money.. no problem).
Examples —
“thou shalt not email documents or IP to customers” … why? Legal fallout from export control violations.
“All capital must pass through eight levels of approval and then be blessed by the high priest of IT and Cyber security” … see rule number two.. the purpose of corporate to is prevent spending.
Who can help?
Policies are the law.
Call a business President. Good luck
Processes not tied to a contract or regulatory clause can be changed by someone who controls the budget that is at risk. So … if you want to deploy something to a vendor with no pedigree and no history go ahead .. as long as your budget authority/signature can pay for the consequences in the event of a failure. Skip the design review on that fire alarm.. or the cyber review on the hvac controller. Just be ready to pay damages to the skyscraper that burns in Dubai or Target corp if that hvac is used to steal credit card transactions.. we know that never happens of course.
My experience is that when people complain about “process”. They are ALWAYS talking about business and program mgt.