By: Mark Johnson and Paul Tolchinsky.
Published in the March/April Issue of The Journal for Quality & Participation, 1999
It was a gray overcast day in January when we flew into Detroit's Metro Airport. We were making our way to Ann Arbor. Was this miserable day a harbinger of the difficulties we would face in leading the complete transformation of a 100-person-plus department that had long been considered the "sick man" of the Central Intelligence Agency?
The department, which cannot be named for security reasons, was charged with providing customer service to thousands of agency employees. We worked out a plan in which the consultants would take the lead as we involved the entire workforce of the department in a process redesign effort, followed by a complete reorganization based on those new processes. The entire effort was scheduled to take only one year, two years less than a traditional transformational redesign effort. Most important, we agreed to make this intervention a complete partnership between the department's senior managers and the consultants.
A Department Ripe for Change
The department had a terrible reputation for customer service, perhaps the worst reputation in the entire agency. Over the years, department employees had been allowed to develop processes that put their own interests above those of their customers. They routinely used voice mail, appointments, receptionists, and bankers' hours to keep their customers at bay. A department employee could choose not to answer his or her voice mail for days, leaving customers very frustrated. Department employees figured correctly that customers had no where else to turn, so they could just wait.
Equally frustrating for customers was the compartmentalization of the office. The department was organized into seven groups that resembled stovepipes, none of which spoke to each other. A customer seeking service from one group would often have to fill out the same form for another. Rather than cooperate and make it easier for their customers, the groups saw themselves as separate entities unto themselves, only concerned about group issues, not department-wide ones.
Although there were many dedicated, hard-working individuals in the department, it became a haven for folks who wanted to follow a slower pace. Flex time was a way of life. Entire workgroups had only one or two people on duty at 4 p.m., as employees rused to catch their car pools. Many of these same employees would report to work as early as 6 a.m., a full two hours before their customers needed them (anything to avoid having contact).
The single greatest factor leading to inefficiency in the office, however, was an organizational system that resembled a medieval guild. Individuals were allowed to become "experts" in one narrow aspect of the business. When that person was on leave, out sick, or otherwise unavailable, there was nobody to fill in because nobody else knew how to do thatperson's job. The refrain customers often heard was, "Sorry, so-and-so is out today. I'll leaver a message and (fill in the blank) will get back to you."
As a result, the responsiveness of the organization to the customers needs had slowed dramatically. Many customers simply gave up trying to complain and began to find service elsewhere, or even worse, attempted to complete the task themselves.
Our task seemed something on the order of cleaning the Aegean stables. In essence, the department's employees hated their customers, didn't talk to each other, generally didn't know how the products they provided were actually used, came to work during the hours that suited them, didn't really care how long it took to deliver their products, had little interestin changing any of the processes (although many knew things were very wrong), and were bitter about the very poor promotion record of employees in the department. |
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