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Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Can a process fix the broken trust ?

image The last weekend, I approached concierge of our apartment complex to get permission to use the functional hall. The concierge pulled out a print out and asked me to sign it.  I have used the functional hall many times before and haven’t seen this new process of signing a form. 

The new form had things like  “The furniture if broken has to be replaced by the tenant”, “ Ensure to throw the trash in the bin”, “No smoking allowed in the functional hall”  and stuff like that. These rules makes sense but was curious why now ?   

I asked the concierge about the rationale of this process, and it seems the previous week some users of the functional hall created a bit of raucous. To avoid those issues in the future, they have brought this new process into place.

I had an aha moment when I heard this.  Is this not the same way our organizations and countries work by creating new rules and processes reacting to a problem ?    In the case of our apartment, Initially the body corporate  trusted the tenants and gave the freedom to use the functional hall but some where in between the trust was broken.  I am wondering now,  does this new process build the broken trust in any way ?   Does this process stop any such problems from happening again ?   Is this the right way to handle such issues or is there a better way ?

5 comments:

Ben Linders said...

I think of a process as the way we work around here. You can describe your process in a document, and change the document or add new documents as much as you like, but that doesn't change the way people behave.

Ben Linders said...

I think of a process as the way we work around here. You can describe your process in a document, and change the document or add new documents as much as you like, but that doesn't change the way people behave.

Venkatesh Krishnamurthy said...

Absolutely Ben. In the situation I have described in the post, how do you suggest we change the behavior of people ?

vatan said...

Yes, If a process / system is defined as a fool proof system. For example, If a bank leaves the ATM machine without any security then what will happen?

Venkatesh Krishnamurthy said...

Hi Vatan,
A system could be a fool proof system and am sure it would reduce the thefts. What is the root cause of the issue bank is trying to address here ? Can the new process eliminate the root cause ?