If I am a supervisor in between the department head and operators, I am serving the needs of both parties. Typically the problem facing a supervisor is about an issue or conflict which comes from the Ends (operator or department manager). The supervisor feels torn in the middle because he wants to serve both sides as well as he can. The partnership approach calls for the supervisor to get the Ends (say operators and department manager) to take responsibility of the issue or conflict as well and not just leave it to him/her as the supervisor to resolve it. Instead of just relaying messages between the two ends, he/she should find a way to get both Ends to talk directly where he facilitates and provides support to both sides (e.g. coaching the operators).

A Middle can also take take a leadership stand to maintain his independence of thought and action instead of just be the messenger between the Ends. He could act as a Top when he talks to the End. He could also act as a Bottom and say No to the TOp when he knows something is wrong aor won’t work.

In a provider/customer relationship, the reflex action from the customer point of view is the provider is responsible for delivery. But if the provider faces problem in delivery due to certain constraints, the customer can stick to his guns and complain and keep demanding, or he can ask himself what he wants - keep complaining and hope that delivery will get better, OR work with the provider as partners to understand their constraints and with better understanding, jointly find ways to ensure satisfactory delivery.

Here’s an example that can be viewed as and End/Middle/End relationship or provider/customer relationship. Some years back, a multinational organization that I worked with had a major project where many computer servers scattered throughout the various regions had to be replaced or upgraded with newer hardware. The project hit major hiccups in the supplier not delivering new servers on time despite orders being sent out by the procurement department. Procurement was acting as the middle party between project managers and the supplier. The delivery timeframe was improved after programme manager and the supplier organization could spend time together, understand the constraints on both side and work out a suitable process to ensure servers were delivered on time to the required sites.

Here’s another story about Pie Sie’s experience that illustrate a provider/customer relationship – it may have happened to you before or may happen to you next time…. One of the highlights or rather lowlights of Pie Sie’s experience last week can be characterized by feelings of impatience. He felt his tempers starting to flare in a few encounters he had with other people. A couple of incidents happened. He had to make a business trip to India and had to apply through the travel agency for a visa. The visa application took so much time – there were so much to-ing and fro-ing with the travel agents and it really tested Pie Sie’s patience. Another incident involved an encounter with the customer service staff at a mobile phone shop after he had purchased a new mobile phone and was looking for assistance to transfer all his contacts from the old phone to the new phone. The staff at the mobile phone shop said that they do not perform data transfers from the old phone to new phone – this really made Pie Sie angry and he almost lost his temper with the customer service staff because he couldn’t believe that as the customer, they were not willing to help him with something like that.

In the above phone shop scenario, Pie Sie was the customer. He behaved in a controlling taking way when his requests were not met. Pie Sie wanted to dominate and the more others pushed or declined, the harder he pushed back to get his way. After a while, Pie Sie realized what was going on - he

This is a continuation of the piece on Why is there tension between me and others in organizations? A systems view. Please read or refer to it first to appreciate how our entrenched positions come about

Partnership

What does partnership really mean? What does it mean if you establish a partnership with someone to start a business? When you say to your supplier we should work as partners, what are you really saying? What are you going to do to show you mean what you say?

Partnership means mutual responsibility and shared responsibility. If a Top and Bottom commits to a partnership, it means both parties need to agree to take responsibility for the success of the relationship or the system in question. If I am the teacher and you are the student, we need to agree that as the teacher, I am say responsible for ensuring every student who needs help on understanding the material gets help. If you are the student, you are responsible for say, coming to class on time or finishing your homework on time. If I am management and you represent the union, we both need to take on certain responsibilities to ensure the success of the overall plant

realized that pushing harder may not get him what he want, instead it made him more agitated and more frustrated. So, he toned down his words and his body language and tried to reason with the service staff and understand his constraints. He started to work toegether with the service staff instead of just complaining to find an alternative way that could still satisfy what he was looking for.

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