A donkey-opinion !
An old man, a young boy and a donkey were going to town. The boy was riding on the donkey and the old man walked. As they went along, they passed some bystanders who remarked “it is a shame the old man is walking and the boy is riding the donkey” The man and the boy thought that these bystanding critics were right, so they changed positions.
As they passed by they were remarked again by another group of bystanders who remarked “what a shame, he makes the little boy walk and he is happily riding the donkey” The boy and man figured that they were probably right, so they decided to carry the donkey. As they crossed the bridge carrying the donkey, they lost their grip on the animal and it fell into the river and drowned.
The story's moral: if you try to please everyone, you might well kiss your donkey goodbye. And even this will not please everyone.
Our workplace with a donkey outlook
?Old Man - the workplace manager / boss
A manager / boss who is very bossy decides to follow the organizational rules & processes. This manager is only worried of safe guarding the position & job. He/she enjoys the executive privileges and sits protecting the position & job and the opportunities that favor him/her at the workplace.
These managers / boss treat their subordinates’ / teams members only seeing their comfort and benefit. They have very little or no respect for their subordinates’ / teams members. They are not accessible when required and they believe that hierarchy & organizational levels decides the quantum of respect to be given and, the way they must treat their subordinates’ / team members. They are happily riding on the donkey enjoying the comfort of bosshood.
These manager / boss assumes and try to project an image of sharing a friendly relationship with the subordinates’ / teams members. To support this assumption they make themselves accessible at all times and cuts across organizational levels & hierarchy to allocate tasks directly to the last level employee in their team. This actually results in a lot of wastage of strategic thinking time as this kind of manager / boss becomes very transactional in their approach and less strategic functionally.
领英推荐
Young Boy - subordinates' / teams members.
These subordinates'/ team members are well aware of the fact about the managers / boss over dependency on them to deliver, perform and save the manager's job from his superiors by showing performance. These employees are often seen around with the manager / boss's work areas and are helping them out on reports, projects and presentations that the managers / boss has to make to his / her superiors. They often ignore their immediate supervisor and use names as excuse of not completing the tasks assigned in the department. They enjoy the ride on the donkey knowing its only for a short duration.
These subordinates feel as sense of power due to the over-dependence of the managers / boss on them, who also cut across hierarchical protocols and levels to get things done and overlooks internal processes & procedures. These subordinates are a demi-boss in the department and are mostly assigned tasks and projects directly by the manager / boss without keeping their immediate supervisor in the loop. Neither these subordinates or the manager / boss realize and feel the need to inform the functional supervisor on these tasks assigned.
The good side of the boy's donkey ride.
These subordinates realizes the manager / boss’s ignorance, incapability and over dependence on them and thereby play it to their advantage in earning a good name & some brownie points. The actual supervisors of these team members tend to lose respect & importance due to this skipping of levels in assigning tasks & getting it done. These subordinates also feel indispensable and often starts to give less importance to their respective supervisors and is seen playing boss with their peers and team-mates. These subordinates' / team members are often rated high during performance appraisals, gain acutely high levels of increments & promotions and this, mostly against the approval & recommendation of their immediate supervisor.?
The Donkey - the work place
The result of performance delivery is non-performance or under performance since the subordinates were the people who executed these tasks, projects or assignment actually given to the manager / boss. Now this pressure is passed on to the direct reporting supervisor and their subordinates without any filtering of information. They jointly try to pull up performance and mostly end up in a cover-up, redo and make good deliveries. This turns out to be a bigger disaster because of the manager allocates these tasks and leaves it to the supervisor and their teams to re-do or complete the task. Due to difference in executive maturity, experience and being non-contextual during executions, they jointly carrying the donkey and it falls off the bridge and drowns.
We can see that the manager / boss makes & changes and decisions based on opinions of others rather than facts and requirement of the management. This is most often a knee-jerk reaction. This results in further transferring the pressure directly on his team and this, for no fault of theirs.
Learnings from the story & the truth in our workplaces
Preventing all of the above can save the death of the donkey and keep it alive and can avoid having to kiss a good-bye.
Founder Nisus Direct
1 年Pretty relevant