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Business Rule #55:
Cede Some Control
February 18, 2007
(PAGE 2 of 3)
Over at Kinetic, Project Manager Aimee Trottier was having similar trouble. Having learned from her mistakes on the last task, she started off by assigning specific areas of responsibility to each member of her team. Her teammates, however, questioned her choices almost before she made them. “How can Muna handle tasks and contribute to the creative work?” A more savvy manager might have asked the group for volunteers to be responsible for specific assignments. That would have at least allowed the staff some control over the work they had to do. Of course, there are always some tasks that no one wants to do. Letting the people that have to do them know that their contribution is important to the success of the group, and that their efforts will be remembered in the future, helps make the task more palatable.
As it happens, the tasks weren’t identical, just like in real life. Arrow was sent to the Santa Monica Place, four blocks from the beach in a predominately up-scale white community. And Kinetic was assigned a mall that served a community that was fifty percent Hispanic.
Derek Arteta and Jenn Hoffman learned this news early on, when they were looking for a location to set up their kiosk. Did they withhold this from Aimee as an act of sabotage? Probably not. Once they discussed the Hispanic population, it probably seemed so obvious, that they didn’t even think to mention it. Derek, being a Spanish speaker himself, though might have raised the issue with Aimee of how they would accommodate the large Spanish-speaking population.
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Anyone who spends a few weeks in Los Angeles must be aware that there is a large Hispanic community here. Even if you’re isolated in a hilltop mansion, there are billboards and bus advertising en Español all over town. It doesn’t take much to realize that there are a lot of people reading these ads, even if you can’t.
When I lived in Germany, I drove an old European-made car that had a design flaw in the gear system. Periodically, I couldn’t get this manual-transmission vehicle moving in first gear. One of the first times it happened, an American friend of mine who happened to be a mechanical engineer was visiting me. Although John spoke no German, he did understand engines and was gracious enough to go with me to the garage to get my car fixed. My German was good enough for most purposes, but the word for “gear” just hadn’t come up before. Go figure. Of course, the garage mechanic only spoke German. What to do? My engineer friend opened the hood and reached in to point to the gear box, saying one very generic German word, “Sie,” meaning “it.” Suddenly, the German mechanic spoke to us in broken English. What we all wanted was not to appear foolish speaking a foreign language. By being the first one to take the risk, my friend John gave the German mechanic permission to speak imperfect English. We could communicate about the repair, and I was back on the road in no time.
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A more savvy manager might have asked the group for volunteers to be responsible for specific assignments.
