I recently blundered into the corporate world for awhile. I had never worked for a big corporation before. It was quite an experience.
Most of the way it works isn’t all that different from what I’m used to from running our own small businesses – paperwork needs to be dealt with, you need to keep track of income and expenses, it’s good to be nice to the customers.
There was, however, one aspect of it that still has me scratching my head, and that was the corporate world’s love of systems.
There’s the Just in Time delivery system, the 5S organizational system. Lean Management. And on and on and on it goes.
All of these systems are aimed at the goal of getting the most good work done in the least amount of time possible. Which makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how much time is wasted learning, implementing and following them. There are meetings, PowerPoint presentations, monthly follow-up reports and the time it takes contorting yourself to follow specific, systemic steps trying to get through your daily tasks.
I’m obviously not a corporate player, because i just couldn’t see the sense of any of it.
The system we were following required that my desk be cleaned right off at the end of the day, which was great for me – it’s how I like to do my office work anyway. But there were others on staff who just feel, and therefore work, better with a bit of clutter around them. Trying to fit to the system wasted time and was demoralizing for them.
I kept thinking “Why don’t we just let everybody just do their job the best way they know how?” If the goal is to get the work done, does it really matter how we get there?
Of course, the opinion of a disgruntled temp is of no interest to anyone, so I kept my thoughts to myself. But it did make me wonder why we’re so excited about systems.
Because it’s not just silly corporations that get sucked in. Individuals do, too. Time management systems, weight loss systems, etc. They all require time to learn and time to work, time which could be so much better used just actually doing whatever it is you think the system will help you to do.
I once had a friend who had this elaborate time-management system. She seemed to spend all of her time entering things into three different calendars and not much time actually doing the things she said she wanted to do.
It’s not that all these systems are inherently bad. I’ve used one or two myself through the years. They’re especially handy when you’re trying to do something new, times when a bit of structure really does help.
But they do have a way of taking over. And it’s often just a short step from implementing a system to having it become a huge time-sucking energy-waster. The exact thing you were hoping to avoid when you bought into it in the first place.
Or is that just me? Let me know, please. Do you just do what you need to do or do you use (and love) a system?
