The Areas of Support….. That do not Support.

Imagine John, a very nice guy, a great person and a responsible employee belonging to any area of support. Whether it's accounting, human resources, corporate communications, legal section; or any area that in your case is of support in your organization, the situation is the same.

We can also think of it as the most basic employee in your area or his vice president, yet they all share something in common: all “Johns” in our history rarely receive variable pay according to their specific work and aligned to the success of the core business of the company. They rarely receive public recognition when overcome the main objectives and challenges in his work. They only appear at the very end of the “event”, in a collective applause; when everyone is about to leave. It is stated something like this from a senior manager: "Ahhh ...... and not forgetting areas such as…. applause also for them, without their support this would not have been possible".

Nor am I talking about when John received a year-end bonus or an extra payment by the generosity of directors or shareholders. That's fine, but has a big problem: it's a benefit for everyone, regardless if they did a good work. The ability of this scheme to stimulate, to make the team members give their best; is quite low. This clearly doesn’t state anything to John at all, despite the great responsibility with that wants to act, not provide to him clear indications about what you should do and what not.

Intuitively any John knows, sometimes consciously, but others times not, is that no matter what do, how ambitious he is, it will never be recognized his work in money or prestige. So why bother? While John is in the average results, he is working by keeping your team in the "average" results zone; all will be more or less okay.

The most disappointing situation is here: under this scenario, the areas 100% committed to the business are actually just a "nuisance" to the support areas. These areas not have anything to gain and everything to lose. Direct business areas can request more work, faster response, asking them for effective support, a support that will be in accordance with the effort they are making for the business of the company, the business of “all”.

Despite how good John is, he knows that this situation will represent for him more stress, fewer hours of rest, more risk and corporate exposure; everything for virtually nothing additional. All the Johns in this story are so intelligent and capable or even more than us. In this situation usually they do (let's face it), just what maybe we'd be compelled to do: as little as possible and just on the edge of that someone can penalize us or recriminate.

And so we arrive just where most of us are today: support areas do not give support, specialize in creating regulations, forms, rules, schedules; sometimes bordering on the ridiculous, totally removed from what the client needs, what the organization required to be successful in your business.

The economy, the market and the technology changes every second. When business areas are good; constantly make new requirements that are essential, because customers need other things and only survive those organizations who constantly innovates, who evolves. But support areas not support them in that purpose, every new request usually put the organization in a thousand of new problems ("look ... you must wait for us to assess the impact on corporate image", "... please stop while we evaluate if you have a legal problem", "look ... is that the law does not work as you think", "cannot move forward ... if you have not filled the form k-45”. “Our human resource departments established that it since the last week it should meet this requirement"). No matter if your project has been already in development for more than 18 months; the HR department hasn’t understood your requirements and the result will be the same.

The larger the organization; the easier it is survive in a support area, doing many things, but none that are actually aligned with the business, while no one who actually can change this situation, is aware of it. If you add to that a typical hierarchical structure, John specializes in maintain his boss happy and nothing else seems to matter!!!!!

Then comes the most shocking: in response to this situation; almost all areas of the business try not to use these support areas or reduce the interaction to an unavoidable minimum. Similarly the support areas hope not to be used, to an extreme point where it is not be clearly obvious this situation.

Many teammates prefer not to waste their time trying to explain to the people of the support areas about the way everything come from ... "Adam and Eve"; only to start the next step of a project. Among other things; because usually the people in the support areas don’t really care understand or learn. Clearly these employees not are aligned with the core business.

It’s common for some business areas to attempt to escape from this dilemma by means of hiring outside providers; and in this way increase their autonomy (isn’t this situation paradoxical?). It creates new problems: internal support areas don’t want to be seen dispensable and react in ways that typically generate large internal strife. Instead of fixing the problems, they create a lot of new challenges for the management that have to be solved.

In those cases the situation is clear; the business areas are trying to be politically correct with the support areas. His employees speak sarcastically among them about the last event with the support areas, but they are rarely faced with them. It is also very clever: everybody would do it, because it is the place (support areas) where you should go the next day for a current procedure, to make a payment, to perform a new purchase or obtain a legal concept.

Nobody puts it this way, no one would accept it outright, but if we were all honest; we would certainly accept that this is very close to reality in most companies. In other organizational designs, different from those we see typically in the majority of the companies, all this would be avoidable.

Represented in their governing bodies, such as steering committees and the like, in most organizations there are an equal or greater number of support areas included, compared to areas that are responsible for producing revenue. It is quite strange and surreal when you go to committees where decisions are made by a majority comprised of those who do not really know the business. For that reason many wrong decisions are common. What is really surprising is that there are not more errors or more larger mistakes made.

There are very few management teams that have created a true design of the organization according to your business -see this post on my blog: “The great value added by some organizational consulting firms” -. Almost all are a copy of the same basic old model. If you ask someone what is the reason that the steering committee has those members and not others; or why the proportions in the number of resources available per area or the distribution of the decision-making power, it is likely that nobody knows the answer to that. Most mention that it’s always been that way since arriving at the company.

Sounds well known in your head ... right?; which is the reason that we allow to remain in the same situation?

There are some things I will tell you, that probably not to be of liking of the John here characterized. Before that, I can only say that I believe it is not their fault, but rather of who designs the organization and the "leaders" who being in front of it. leaders what not have the character and courage to face this challenge and transform it, to make it really viable in the times we live in, even with the cost of sacrificing our comfort level.

The areas of support, as we know them today, are completely dispensable. Do not believe me? ... Show me a start-up that was born with a legal area, communications area, human resource departments, etc. Only when it becomes large enough that an area of this kind is feasible; and only if it can actually demonstrate value generation to shareholders that justifies his investment.

But faster than you think and maybe by the incompetence of their leaders; and not being really personal incentives aligned with the business, this new area is transformed into a monster that quickly becomes an independent business, never showing value generation and sometimes becoming untouchable.

Rather than demonstrate with concrete numbers the way they support the business, the typical response of people of these areas is something like this: "as we will not have a human resource departments (legal, administrative ... insert name here you want), if all organizations have them; and our employees (the law, the administrative order, ... insert word that creates here) ... are the most important for us"!!!

I have nothing against any support area. They can create incredible value, but not in the ways in which they are always are created. They do not generate value and most times destroying the value generated elsewhere in the organization. I look at him as a shareholder: if one area creates value and could demonstrate concretely, it is maintained, otherwise it must end and the organization must look for any alternative scheme. Similarly to when a new company is started and we see clearly she can grow; which may be effective without some areas of support and operate smoothly in a more basic scheme.

Today the teams of an organization are divided into two types: those that give the customer facing directly and those that do not. The latter are those who only see the euphemistic phrase: "internal customer". ?The "factory" unconscious of our dreams never abandons us! How sad.

Can anyone answer me why we cannot have organizations where everyone will respond directly to the client for their actions, and similarly receive compensation only in relation with that result? An organization that really reaches a level where all are just teammates. If even the employees that manufacture tangible products, can in theory do, why we do not all?.

Most areas of support in business today must be completely redefined, creating a revolution in management with the help of available technology; to enable us to intelligently integrate with the business areas. To do this they must be taken out of their comfortable situation of not respond directly to the customer with their actions and decisions every day. In these support areas schemes should be created to demonstrate, with appropriate indicators, that they can generate value at all times to the organization. In the event that this does not happen, their activities should be given to external parties, reassigned or removed if they are unnecessary.

In my working life I have found that when this challenge is addressed responsibly by the leaders in charge of the transformation of organizations, the tale of "support areas" disappear and these areas can become "business areas", with his original functions cleverly integrated for generate huge value for shareholders and customers.

We are very near to closing this series. In our next installment: "What kind of problems reveal the work schedules"; we will discuss how to use these symptoms as a thermometer to determine the level of "fever" of an organization; to know if you have a serious illness: if it is "one" organization of this time, but what already should be other different, of "other" time.

Dear reader, thank you very much for sharing your time with me. Hopefully we meet next entry in my blog.