Day #58 - Be nice to them, they're in charge!!! (Part 3)

Yesterday I wrote about a cultural malaise manifesting itself within an organisation. I want to turn now to those individuals that whilst - at least to themselves - they are doing their job properly, they still get a little bit "badge happy" so to speak. In the 1960's research was conducted to determine the moral flexibility of persons operating "under orders". The many conclusions that one could draw from study into the results of the research are interesting. It appears that if someone is working in a chain of command they will often become quite zealous about their "work". It is also possible that a sort of sadism can develop in individuals working under orders. They become capable, after a certain measure of self-delusion, that they are doing what they are doing under orders and consequently they absolve themselves of any true moral responsibility owing to the fact that they are acting on behalf of another. I believe that it is owing to the "convenience" of the relationship between superior and subordinate that a degradation of moral integrity occurs and an instinctive desire to exert control over another comes into play.

Often in jobs that are predominately routine and repetitive boredom becomes an unavoidable adjunct to the work being carried out. In order to alleviate boredom primal urges rise to the surface and left unchecked the consequences can be quite dire. Last year in a number of facilities in the UK there were several instances of care workers being cruel and neglectful of clients of care facilities. This is when idle hands began to work in a sinister fashion. It is a potentially very dangerous situation to have an unmanaged routine within a cloistered environment. If one turns their attention to this situation it is almost blindingly obvious - prisons, institutions, schools and other organisations all possess the potential to go wrong if not managed properly. But there is also the potential for an individual to become autonomously rogue in the absence of command and control. It happens frequently in areas of conflict and has done throughout history. Joseph Conrad wrote of just such a situation in his novel "Heart of Darkness". The thing that led me to begin writing about this was something a lot less drastic. It was a call centre operative answering my queries about a very large bill.

Sometimes in a boring job an employee can augment their role in an organisation with new duties that are not, strictly speaking, part of their remit. Sometimes the employee will grant themselves new powers to extend their own perceived responsibilities. This is often a result of boredom and their intellect remaining unchallenged by their actual work. Some folks like to overcomplicate things in order to cultivate enhanced feelings of importance or relevance in ostensibly straightforward situations. I once heard a tyre fitter bang on for nearly half an hour, more or less repeating exactly the same things, about the importance of recognising the polarity of the power supply to a car stereo. He also insisted on referring to the stereo as a "Blue Schpot" but using the definite article when referring to the object so as to accentuate it's importance and uniqueness in the world of car stereos. His job was fitting tyres but owing to the fact that he was a fairly intelligent guy doing a job that didn't really require much skill he deemed it necessary to embellish the situation with the unnecessary. This embellishment satisfied a need that the guy had, a need that wasn't being fulfilled by his actual work.

If we factor in the displacement from the customer that the phone creates, the largely (physically) "absent" management, the mundane environment  - doing and saying the broadly the same things every day, we then have a vacuum that will be filled by the needlessly creative employee. This can lead to a proliferation of "badge happiness" in many cases and this can be to the detriment of the organisation and is potential for a lost customer. It is often the little things that make the biggest difference. So remember, be nice to them - they're in charge!!! ;-)