"It's Not Allowed!" ??????♂?

This is a common response that I often hear in Dubai. It usually happens when I'm interacting with people who are in positions to deliver a service: retail shops, call centers, cafés, hotels, theme parks, clinics, you name it. Although in Dubai the sentence is “It’s not allowed”, similar responses exist in other parts of the world, but just using different words.

?

I trust you to trust me when I say that each time I was told "Sorry Sir. It's not allowed", it wasn't because I was asking anybody to do something illegal. I was merely asking them to either adapt the service, or make a small extra effort to enhance the service, and there were even times when I was simply asking them to give me the service that they failed to deliver in the first place.

After being subjected to this inharmonious symphony of words (and let's not forget the body language and tone of voice that usually come with it), I would like to share, what I believe, are some of the sources of this dreaded response:

1?? EMPOWERMENT: ????????

What I mean here is the LACK OF empowerment. I came across very few employees who were able to think quickly on the spot and take a decision, by themselves, based on the circumstances they had in front of them. It becomes very apparent that employees are told to do 1 job, and 1 job only; that they've been hired to follow orders, and never to dare steer away from those orders.

?

2?? POLICY & PROCEDURE: ????

When will come the day, when businesses realize by themselves, that when they set SOPs, these procedures are mainly put in place to benefit themselves alone, not their customers. You don't believe me!? Just think of all the times you dealt with a service provider who refused to deliver something because: "It's our policy" - "It's in the T&Cs" bla bla bla. A typical smokescreen instead of honestly telling you: “I can’t be bothered”. Many service industries fail to create SOPs that are geared towards a 'Win-Win' approach. This is in fact a global issue, and I could write a whole new post just talking about this …

3?? FEAR: ??

This is the kind of fear which makes an employee think that even a minor mistake can cost them their job! These employees will obviously prefer to play it safe, and not attempt to take a step outside of what they were told to do. How their managers might react once they find out that the employee has dared to take a decision without asking for permission, drives fear into their hearts. When faced with a decision that doesn’t have an SOP, it’s 50-50. It’s very likely that the employees could make the customer happy, just as much likely that the customer can remain unhappy. But at least the customer will know they he’s being acknowledged, heard and respected, because people never forget how you made them feel. Every employee is allowed to make some mistakes when faced with low-risk decisions. It’s part of learning life lessons.

4?? CULTURAL NORMS: ??

This is probably the saddest part to write about. Service employees around the world are commonly seen as the low end of careers. When I was living in the UK, I once saw a newspaper article talking about how the country had a gap to fill in "low skilled jobs", and the image the newspaper used was a hand holding a tray of drinks. So go figure .... Over here, service employees tend to come from backgrounds X, Y & Z; in many of their cases, following orders and respecting social hierarchies is the norm. This is something that businesses clearly take advantage of. After all, who wouldn’t want to employ naturally subservient people? They tend to follow your orders and you could easily distil fear into them.

5?? PULL RANK : ???

Whenever I hear "It's not allowed" I could always sense a foreign presence in the room. It feels like the ghost of the hierarchy is looming over the employee's head, lurking in the shadows waiting for the employee to take a step out of order, and then they will pounce!: "Who told you to do that?", "Who authorized this?", "Did you speak with me first?" etc. To the people in positions of authority, all you're attempting to do here is pull rank on your employees. If that's your only way to justify your job, then good luck to your company for having you.

6?? STARVATION: ??????

Stephen Covey’s Habit 1 is: “Be Proactive”. This is about taking responsibility for your own actions because proactive people are ‘response-able’ people. Well in this case, we have service employees who have been starved of their ability to feel like they can be responsible people. They get hired, then get TOLD what to do, just like marching orders (it’s scandalous that some consider this as a form of “training”). Starving people who work in the service sector of having wider aspirations and creativity; starving them of knowledge, of learning, of having emotional intelligence, of acting responsibly, might just be a deliberate act to ensure that these employees never grow their careers and come for your job. Whether managers do this consciously or unconsciously, none of us will ever know, until somebody admits it.

Why would people who are employed in the service industry choose to give up on customers, rather than try a different approach to make them satisfied? Why don’t more service employees attempt to take responsibility for their own actions? Why do many feel like SOPs take priority over small exceptional situations? I’m sure there are plenty of reasons for that, especially when we factor in the context of each situation independently. As for me, just like an ancient philosopher, I’ll carry on with my quest to try and understand some of the un-understandable things in life. However, the one thing that I’m now fully convinced of is, the next time somebody tells me "Sir. It's not allowed", I’ll correct them and say: “I think what you mean to tell me is: “Sir, I'm not allowed".