Company size and tenure

In smaller companies managers generally have longer tenure than in larger ones: an operational manager in a small production facility typically has little opportunity for horizontal diversification but joining another employer. Her colleague in a multinational corporation often will be pushed by HR or by career ambitions to ‘move around’. The added safety cushion of same employer, so no probation period, more fallback possibilities and not loosing pension benefits, certainly help in that.

City size and tenure

A similar distinction is evident between employees in smaller towns versus those in larger ones. It is well-known that it is easier to attract young, eager employees in bigger – preferably university – cities, just as it is equally well-known that for these employees higher attrition rates are expected. It is obvious what the effects on tenure will be on small companies in a small town compared to larger companies in the big city. So far, nothing that will surprise the average reader.

In/out-house

Another aspect of the same phenomenon is the in-house versus the out-sourcing experience gained: whereas an in-house department generally is ‘long tenured’ on the analog industry characteristics (which could also entail numeric performance indicators), the outsourcer would bring less deep industry knowledge to the table but more generic ‘market’ expertise gained in performing the same service but in a different industry.

Sorts of challenges

Even though there are only a few people in the world who come even close to the level of professionalism of the average reader of course, we have to admit that we are better in solving some category challenges better than other sorts of problems. And some are even outside our considerable skills! If the average manager is capable of dealing with 80% of the challenges on hand, this means that after five years there is a whole annual workload package not properly resolved yet. Let’s take a very good manager with 90%, that would still leave a halfyearly workload.

Since every manager also needs a certain time to get up to speed in a new position, be aware of taking over a position from a long-tenured predecessor if you are completely new in the field. Even though from a corporate perspective that might be exactly the right move to get some fresh initiatives into a department with ‘tenure-inertia’.

Effects on expertise

The effects of the longer tenure as I have observed is a deeper knowledge of procedures: many local managers are personally also capable of working as one of the regular production workers. This deep knowledge facilates them to pragmatically react to short term interruptions of processes and find immediate solutions to a crisis. Managers with a shorter tenure, on the other hand, of course often lack this deep analog knowledge and need to rely more on process level interventions, a more digital and abstract experience. Just as numbers are nothing but an abstraction of reality. On the other hand, this lack of analog experiences facilitates delegation of procedural tasks, assuming those skills are at hand in the organization.

Effects on change

When a relatively smaller change needs to be implemented, deep analog knowledge of a field of expertise and procedures is necessary: a manager needs to be capable and estimate the effect of the change on every day procedures. However, when large changes are to be undertaken, this knowledge is not sufficient and a more digital process knowledge is needed to analyse and predict the effects of this change.

Symptom: forecast and planning

A forecast is an overview of the expected workload, or the ‘demand’-side. By nature, it needs to be complete, and partial forecasts of e.g. only e-mail traffic are the safest way to disaster because other factors that may/will have a significant impact, like telephone calls or chats, are left out of consideration. The planning is the equivalent of the ‘supply’ side, which could be worker hours, but also machine hours or system capacity.

In a ‘long tenure’-environment, the forecast usually does not change from one day to the other. Sometimes forecasts are not even made, sometimes they are made only because it is mandatory by some ‘ivory tower’ regulation and they are not used in practice, and only in professional management environments they are a regular part of business. Often long tenure-environments run their operation by experience and the ‘seat of their pants’. Professional management tools are only time consumers, totally superfluous. There are two risks to this approach: first, when a major change – like a system upgrade – comes up, a calculation needs to be made on the (expected) effect of this change on productivity, and the lack of a solid forecasting process is felt because nobody is capable of making the educated guesses that are necessary. Second, this way management is unaware of any structural changes that gradually take place. In the numbers you see an ever decreasing contact ratio, but when workers leave they are still replaced 1-on-1 until it is too late and you are stuck with too many workers that have been straining the organization with their education and onboarding superfluously. Another example of that same risk: gradually the Average Handling Time for a certain process changes due to the market. This increase might cause you to need more staff to do the work, and somebody needs to initiate that (and possibly another one needs to pay for it).

Conclusion

Forecasting and planning is only one area where the long-tenured are enticed to cut corners for convenience sake. The same often happens in the documentation of decisions, the challenging of (and by) employees, updates on technology and the market, and so on. This mechanism applies to all levels of employees, both management and the operational workforce. So there are only two more questions to pose: How long tenured are you? And how many corners are you currently cutting yourself or allowing to be cut by your staff?

(Originally posted on September 14, 2014)