Exerting power for personal gain

Individuals get angry with organisations when there is an in-built inflexible approach to complying with the "policy".  What tends to happen is that an employee behaves in a rather clumsy, thoughtless manner which has a negative outcome for an individual, who complains, and in doing so is informed that the employee is merely complying with company policy (and they will often but not always make references to 'the law' just for good measure).  The individual is left not only feeling badly treated but to add salt to the wound is being told that the action taken is actually in the interests of everyone, for the greater good.
  

It is a worrying trend and one that I mention in my "Reflections of a driving instructor" ebook that is on Amazon.  Humans are not robotic, and they really should not try to behave in a precise, clinical manner.  Sadly, when they do, and inevitably fail to do it well, it increases the possibility of their role being replaced by an algorithm which WILL be able to complete the task in that clinical manner.  

I'm not advocating this transition, merely observing that the more that humans attempt to act in this way and do it poorly, the more they are likely to be replaced.

Any service dominated business will be or should be in any case, alive to this problem.  Telecoms, healthcare, education, insurance, travel even law enforcement does not get away with it.  There is an interaction of some kind, and due to human nature, the quality of communication between both parties falls until at some point (and this point can be arrived at breathtakingly quickly), the service provider decides enough is enough.  They head on down a path which has negative consequences and manipulates the justification of this decision based around complying with a "policy".

It is the precise actions taken in a short time before the ultimate decision made by the provider that is crucial to outcomes.  It inevitably involves an exchange of communication which breaks down for a variety of reasons: lack of clarity, misinformation, impatience, fatigue, intolerance, abrasiveness, misunderstanding.

What makes this particularly sensitive is when the representative of the organisation concerned in effect goes out on a limb having decided to alter their behaviours for a particular self-elected purpose; in effect, they are abusing the powers that they have merely by being a representative of the organisation.  This is a problem that I see by a tiny minority of representatives in the DVSA who are incapable of behaving with integrity and professionalism because of this self-imposed 'agenda' that they have developed.  Organisations need to do everything they possibly can in their systems to identify and 'weed out' these individuals because they can have devastating effects on many people.

Organisations will also 'hide' behind policy in much the same way; their action or inaction is justified, and they sit in this state of self-perceived smugness thoroughly agitating many people who care about these matters.  

Our political establishment is falling for this one as we speak.  Look how the actions of the leaders who set policy of the main parties, has a detrimental effect on the consequent behaviours of their MP's.  They all sit comfortable in their self-righteousness with the minimal notion of how many people they deeply upset.

   

OFSTED have finally decided to seek change to their processes as they realise that the fact that they are legally unable to reinspect a previously assessed "outstanding" school from several years previous is iniquitous and damages the integrity of the very outcome they attempt to provide.  Professionals within the education system will have been seething for many years about this fact.

This blog reminds me of my Quality Assurance days in an electronics organisation where I was very aware of how the culture of businesses is palpably observed by people who interact with them.  The culture runs through all departments, systems and employees like the air they breathe and at some organisations it can be extremely disheartening to witness.

Many organisations resort to recording the interactions they have with customers as a double lock mechanism for customer service standards.  On the one hand it enables them to weed out the 'going solo' individuals who abuse their power for their own agenda but also, recognising that effective communication is a dual party responsibility, it also provides protection to their employees.  It is why seeing cameras in classrooms and driving school cars will be as commonplace as is currently having telephone conversations recorded.  The sooner video recording happens on standards checks and driving tests, the sooner the DVSA can remove the individuals who have a pernicious influence on the culture.