The construction company of treason
I was called to help a company struggling with monitoring the output of its workforce.
THE PROBLEM:
The company worked in construction and they took on very large projects.
The average size team on site was 100 to 300 staff.
There were “managers” but within smaller teams there wasn’t enough control and it was
difficult to monitor the quality of work.
The owner was really committed to getting the job done to perfection but he knew that
unfortunately some of his staff was slack and he struggled to keep everyone in line.
He picked the most “responsible” employees and proposed each of them (5 in total) a small
pay rise to become the “quality controllers or QC’s” of their working groups (of 20 people
each). The new QC’s would need to ensure each team member arrived on time, fulfilled the
daily goals, respected the break times and behaved responsibly. If anything didn’t go as
planned, the QC would need to report directly to the owner.
Things went apparently fine for a few weeks.
The second month one of the new QC’s asked to leave his position and get back to normal.
Within 3 months 3 of the 5 new QC’s had done the same.
I was asked to figure out what was happening and fix it.
The owner (let’s call him John) was sad about the whole affair.
He told me “I don’t understand how someone could resign from a position that puts them
and their family in a better place. I’m willing to pay more money to ensure the quality is high
and I’m giving chances to my own internal team. What more could they want?”
WHAT WAS GOING WRONG?
Treason.
When I used this term John was clearly uncomfortable. He looked at me as though I was
accusing him.
I asked him to allow me to explain. This is more or less what I said:
“You did an incredibly noble thing by allowing your own staff to manage themselves.
In an environment where everybody understands the reason and the shared advantage it
would have probably worked.
But instead it badly backfired.
Why?
Because you didn’t consider the potential issue of treason.
If your best friend works with you and from the next day he becomes your boss what will you
think?
That you can no longer trust your friend.
Your friend goes “on the other side” and now becomes a potential threat.
Your friend could dob you in and you could be worse off as a result.
So you’ll reconsider your friendship and you’ll tell the other work mates to stay away from
the “new boss”.
If your best friend has enough of a reason to maintain his/her position he/she will have to put
his/her friendship against his/her economic advantage.
So the value traded is a small pay rise against (in this hypothetical case) a life time’s worth of
friendship.
If I were asked to dob my friends in (with whom my children go to school and with whom I
spend my weekends) in exchange for a 10% pay rise I’d probably decline.
If I was asked the same for a pay rise which drastically changed my family’s social positioning
I would probably consider it, but it would come with a high cost (losing friends).
So by giving a small incentive to internal staff you actually put them against their own
colleagues. They thus had to choose between friendship and money, and it sounds like the
money wasn’t enough to put their working environment at stake.
John asked me what I proposed to do.
I suggested thanking all of those who tried, telling the entire workforce that there would be a
financial bonus for all if the project respected the agreement and timelines of the buyer, but
on top of this there would also be new external controllers who would be coming in to check
everything worked as planned.
I then advised him to get at least 2 external contractors who were not known by any of the
current staff, whose job would strictly be to keep everyone in line.
I also predicted that these 2 people would be disliked for a while but in the long run this
would have probably resulted in a more performant team.
That’s exactly what happened.
I called John back after 6 months to know how things were going. He confirmed he’d hired 2
2.
external contractors with specific experience in team management and work safety.
All the internal QC’s had gone back to their normal jobs.
There were 2 months of adjustment (a fancy term for poo which hits a fan) where he had to
intervene to calm the spirits and all staff focused of the shared goals.
In the end things had gotten much better and the project was going as planned.
I had a last call with John after the project was finished. He was satisfied with the overall
result, the staff had gotten a bonus and he’d even saved money on the whole.
FINAL THOUGHTS
John’s idea was great in principle, but unfortunately it backfired.
When you turn people against one another you’re unlikely to gain out of it.
Controllers with no affiliation to internal staff can more easily enforce changes and be less
affected by internal turmoil.
John’s approach is possible, but it takes time to allow for the changes to happen smoothly,
modelling a new working culture so that everybody respects the added value of working
together for a shared goal. If you do not have the time or resources to go through this
process, then the above solution is a functional alternative.