Reenchanting the Enterprise – part 3

Frederic Dufour / Apr 05 , 2015

In this third part, we address other avenues of reflection with a view to “reenchanting the company” and invite leaders to embark on the path of reforms that will enable the company to become or become again a place of personal fulfillment.

Thanks to the lessening of the supervision

We believe that supervision of the operators can be lessened, however, several conditions must be met:

1) the experience of the operators must be proven, hence the need to invest in training and to ensure that the skills declared are effective

2) the system should reduce the administrative work for the intermediate levels; so as to reduce the number of intermediate levels accordingly

3) the supervision of the teams will cover technical, logistical, and decision-making assistance if requested by the procedure

Most importantly, throughout this search for greater autonomy and responsibility at the operational level, there is the absence of interruptions, changes, and intrusions, which tend to tire and discourage the actors in the field.

However, these interruptions, changes and intrusions are often caused by higher hierarchical levels. We cannot express this strongly enough but, they are the biggest cause of lost productivity, discouragement, and a feeling of uselessness among operators!

Thanks to the accountability of operational staff

To echo the documentary quoted in the introduction of this article, “Happiness at Work”, the key to success in this process of empowerment and accountability of operational staff is to be found in the quality of strategic and tactical planning and the rigor with which the company’s management and managers will apply the management rules that will also apply to themselves.

This accountability can be further strengthened by setting up working groups (or quality circles) that bring together operators and team leaders.

The latter can be helped by lean management consultants in order to formalize their ideas and remarks, particularly with a view to seeing them integrated into future strategic and tactical plans, thus creating a virtuous circle where the company’s schedules will reflect the desire for improvement generated by operational staff, which will engage and motivate the latter all the more in the execution of these plans.

Reenchanting the Enterprise is the result of a change in mentality.

Reenchanting the Enterprise is less complicated than it sounds. Most of the time, it is enough to (re)create the conditions where each component of the company feels important, as in the early days of the company when the project leaders were involved in sales, R&D, production and administration at the same time.

Reenchanting the Enterprise means giving back an integrated, understandable, and human vision of the organization, despite the complexity and legal
administrative constraints that have made its operation more cumbersome over time.

In order to recreate the buoyant context that prevailed in the early days of a company, when each actor felt that he had real power over things, PlanningForce provides a unique combination of IT tools and a methodology that steers the operations within a company on the basis of rules that have become clear for everyone.

All parts of the company benefit from this new way of organizing work, which in practice translates into:

– better financial results

– elimination of bad stress

– greater involvement from all stakeholders

– greater customer satisfaction

Therefore, yes, “Reenchanting the Enterprise” is feasible and ultimately much simpler than it sounds. But as the documentary “Happiness at Work” illustrates, it is the result of a change of mentality that must first be initiated within the company’s management and then filter, thanks to the tools and methodologies put in place, throughout the entire organization.