Another blind spot of many staff specialists is to the strengths as well as to the weaknesses of firsthand production experience. They do not recognize that the production foreman and the production operator are in their own way specialists themselves—specialists in actual experience with production problems. This point should be obvious, but it is amazing how many staff specialists fail to appreciate the fact that even though they themselves may have a superior knowledge of the technology of the production process involved, the foreman or the operators may have a more practical understanding of how to get daily production out of a group of workers and machines.
The experience of the operating people frequently equips them to be of real help to staff specialists on at least two counts: (1) The operating people are often able to spot practical production difficulties in the ideas of the specialists—and iron out those difficulties before it is too late; (2) the operating people are often able to take advantage of their intimate acquaintance with the existing social arrangements for getting work done. If given a chance, they can use this kind of knowledge to help detect those parts of the change that will have undesirable social consequences. The staff experts can then go to work on ways to avoid the trouble area without materially affecting the technical worth of the change.
Further, some staff specialists have yet to learn the truth that, even after the plans for a change have been carefully made, it takes time to put the change successfully into production use. Time is necessary even though there may be no resistance to the change itself. The operators must develop the skill needed to use new methods and new equipment efficiently; there are always bugs to be taken out of a new method or piece of equipment even with the best of engineering. When staff people begin to lose patience with the amount of time that these steps take, the workers will begin to feel that they are being pushed; this amounts to a change in their customary work relationships, and resistance will start building up where there was none before.
The situation is aggravated if the staff specialist mistakenly accuses the operators of resisting the idea of the change, for there are few things that irritate people more than to be blamed for resisting change when actually they are doing their best to learn a difficult new procedure.
Management action
Many of the problems of resistance to change arise around certain kinds of attitudes that staff people are liable to develop about their jobs and their own ideas for introducing change. Fortunately, management can influence these attitudes and thus deal with the problems at their source.
Broadening staff interests:
It is fairly common for staff members to work so hard on an idea for change that they come to identify themselves with it. This is fine for the organization when the staff person is working on the idea alone or with close colleagues; the idea becomes “his baby,” and the company benefits from this complete devotion to work.
But when, for example, a staff member goes to some group of operating people to introduce a change, his very identification with his ideas tends to make him unreceptive to any suggestions for modification. He just does not feel like letting anyone else tamper with his pet ideas. It is easy to see, of course, how this attitude is interpreted by the operating people as a lack of respect for their suggestions.
This problem of staff peoples’ extreme identification with their work is one which, to some extent, can only be cured by time. But here are four suggestions for speeding up the process:
- Managers can often, with wise timing, encourage the staff’s interest in a different project that is just starting.
- Managers can also, by “coaching” as well as by example, prod the staff people to develop a healthier respect for the contributions they can receive from operating people; success in this area would, of course, virtually solve the problem.
- It also helps if staff people can be guided to recognize that the satisfaction they derive from being productive and creative is the same satisfaction they deny the operating people by resisting them. Experience shows that staff people can sometimes be stimulated by the thought of finding satisfaction in sharing with others in the organization the pleasures of being creative.
- Sometimes, too, staff people can be led to see that winning acceptance of their ideas through better understanding and handling of human beings is just as challenging and rewarding as giving birth to an idea.
Using understandable terms:
One of the problems that must be overcome arises from the fact that most staff people are likely to have the attitude that the reasons why they are recommending any given change may be so complicated and specialized that it is impossible to explain them to operating people. It may be true that the operating people would find it next to impossible to understand some of the staff specialists’ analytical techniques, but this does not keep them from coming to the conclusion that the staff specialists are trying to razzle-dazzle them with tricky figures and formulas—insulting their intelligence—if they do not strive to their utmost to translate their ideas into terms understandable to the operators. The following case illustrates the importance of this point:
- A staff specialist was temporarily successful in “selling” a change based on a complicated mathematical formula to a foreman who really did not understand it. The whole thing backfired, . however, when the foreman tried to sell it to his operating people. They asked him a couple of sharp questions that he could not answer. His embarrassment about this led him to resent and resist the change so much that eventually the whole proposition fell through. This was unfortunate in terms not only of human relations but also of technological progress in the plant.
There are some very good reasons, both technical and social, why staff people should be interested in working with the operating people until their recommendations make “sense.” (This does not mean that the operating people need to understand the recommendations in quite the same way or in the same detail that the staff people do, but that they should be able to visualize the recommendations in terms of their job experiences.) Failure of the staff person to provide an adequate explanation is likely to mean that a job the operators had formerly performed with understanding and satisfaction will now be performed without understanding and with less satisfaction.
This loss of satisfaction not only concerns the individual involved but also is significant from the standpoint of the company that is trying to get maximum productivity from the operating people. People who do not have a feeling of comprehension of what they are doing are denied the opportunity to exercise that uniquely human ability—the ability to use informed and intelligent judgment on what they do. If the staff person leaves the operating people with a sense of confusion, they will also be left unhappy and less productive.
Top line and staff executives responsible for the operation should make it a point, therefore, to know how the staff person goes about installing a change. They can do this by asking discerning questions about staff reports, listening closely to reports of employee reaction, and, if they have the opportunity, actually watching the staff specialist at work. At times they may have to take such drastic action as insisting that the time of installation of a proposed change be postponed until the operators are ready for it. But, for the most part, straight forward discussions with the staff specialist evaluating that person’s approach should help the staffer over a period of time, to learn what is expected in relationships with operating personnel.