'nother book
I just finished reading "Joy at Work" by Dennis Bakke. Bakke is a Christian but is writing to everybody - he is honest about his faith but allows for people to not hold the same ideas but still appreciate his ideas about work.
I love his ideas. Decentralized decision making: rather than 95% of decisions being made by management, 99% are made by the ones closest to the problem/area. As few managers as possible. Employees given the right to spend and implement ideas, as long as they seek an advice process. All information is shared with employees, and all employees are allowed to speak for the company. Everyone gets a salary. Union members negotiate their contracts with union leaders.
And disconnection of the motive for doing this from profit. Do this because it's right, not because it will help your company make more money. You probably will make more money, but that's not the reason to do this.
It is so refreshing. I work in a bureacratic world and as much as I enjoy what I do, some of the rules (be they written or the ones no one writes down but you're just supposed to know) drive me insane. There are so many layers, and so little ability to act with autonomy.
These are radical ideas. The board of his company, though, tended to ignore the disconnection above and really, really liked the values when stock prices were going up and quickly wanted to return to hierarchy when the stock prices fell (even though the two had nothing to do with each other).
I wish my area of work was more this way, but I have no power to make it so. Where I do have power is in my home. How often do I let my children make their own decisions, and how often do I override them even though it's not a life/health/safety/moral issue?
And how much do we in the church (universal) share power and authority, and how much is centralized at the staff/elder level?
The author repeatedly makes the point that when adults are not allowed to make decisions that affect their own work, we are treating them like children. He also pointed out that the average American worker has about the same level of control over work as workers did in the former Soviet Union. Land of the Free it is not, not when it comes to economics.
Oh that we could get off this economics is king bandwagon and actually build a society where people matter for more than what they produce.
I love his ideas. Decentralized decision making: rather than 95% of decisions being made by management, 99% are made by the ones closest to the problem/area. As few managers as possible. Employees given the right to spend and implement ideas, as long as they seek an advice process. All information is shared with employees, and all employees are allowed to speak for the company. Everyone gets a salary. Union members negotiate their contracts with union leaders.
And disconnection of the motive for doing this from profit. Do this because it's right, not because it will help your company make more money. You probably will make more money, but that's not the reason to do this.
It is so refreshing. I work in a bureacratic world and as much as I enjoy what I do, some of the rules (be they written or the ones no one writes down but you're just supposed to know) drive me insane. There are so many layers, and so little ability to act with autonomy.
These are radical ideas. The board of his company, though, tended to ignore the disconnection above and really, really liked the values when stock prices were going up and quickly wanted to return to hierarchy when the stock prices fell (even though the two had nothing to do with each other).
I wish my area of work was more this way, but I have no power to make it so. Where I do have power is in my home. How often do I let my children make their own decisions, and how often do I override them even though it's not a life/health/safety/moral issue?
And how much do we in the church (universal) share power and authority, and how much is centralized at the staff/elder level?
The author repeatedly makes the point that when adults are not allowed to make decisions that affect their own work, we are treating them like children. He also pointed out that the average American worker has about the same level of control over work as workers did in the former Soviet Union. Land of the Free it is not, not when it comes to economics.
Oh that we could get off this economics is king bandwagon and actually build a society where people matter for more than what they produce.
posted by Jude | 8:10 PM
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