What is right?

Fish was sitting in his office with a whole pile of paper in front of him. Information which had to be distributed to the various notice boards dotted around the production area. KPI's, production planning, status reports. It was all part of the new philosophy which Philippe was pushing through, it was all about transparency. Continuous improvement was the buzz word. After years of secretive hoarding of information and news everything was open and transparent and everybody had now access to all the information. It was made to be relevant and geared to make the workers feel to be part of the process, to accept responsibility for their actions. The change had been relatively sudden and as in all these approaches, badly explained and rolled out.

All of a sudden, people had to feel passionate about their work.

“Passion and work do not go together,” said one worker, “I cannot imagine that everybody sees a passion in his daily routines”.

“But it is in our core values,” said Fish

“Ha”, came a response, “another one of those empty phrases. Passion is about love and people, not about processes and systems. It is the wrong word. I am satisfied when I do a good job. I am happy when people buy our fishing equipment. But passion? Do we have to love each other now as well?”

“But then, if you don't love your work, why are you here?” replied Fish

“Look”, I have been here for over 10 years, “it's not the company, it's my colleagues here. I have known them all this time. I know the good times, the bad times, and they know me. We do our work because we are happy with each other. Not more, not less. We don't care about all the management hot air coming from the offices”

“Exactly”, somebody else said, “I don't spend 5 minutes looking at the information boards. I don't need them. I need work, not some paper on the wall. It is important for me to know what I have to do and when the deadline is.”

Fish was in a difficult situation. On the one side he could see their point of view. A lot of it was not necessary. But he did also see some benefit from the greater transparency. It was difficult to articulate it however.

“Look guys”, said Fish, “it's all about communication and integrity. We have to talk to each other, be informed and communicate all the problems and the status of our production. You know..”

“Fish”, said one of them, “when was the last time Philippe came down to us on the shop floor, eh? When was the last time he came down, shook our hands, listened to us, spent time with us. I suspect he was told that at some leadership training program. Has he done it?”

“He is a busy man, with meetings to go to. He needs to figure the future strategy, develop his mission and fulfil his vision,” replied Fish, sensing the emptiness of those words.

“Sure he has to do that. And he has to inspire us too, does he? If he wants to inspire us, he has to communicate with us, but that might be too uncomfortable. He is not interested in us, not really. And to be honest, we're not really interested in what he has to say because it only helps him.”

“But doesn't this information, this transparency inspire you?” replied Fish, “Look, inspiration is also about giving people a feeling of a good job. It gives you the possibility to have good ideas for product improvements and production improvements.”

“Aren't you being a little idealistic here Fish?” came a question?