Every year we receive from our top management the high level corporate objectives
set by our board, and each of us, as members of the units of our company,
define the different activities to execute in order to achieve them. One by one,
all the levels of the company subdivide and lay down strategic guidelines,
functional objectives, tasks, and concrete deliverables, which according to the
plan, and once completed, will make the global plan a reality.
One of those high level objectives has been around with us for several
years now. It is heard in hallway conversations, at lunch, in the elevators; it
is simply a perfect small talk subject. We are reminded of it at all the
kicks-off events. Most of us find it to be crucial to help the company mature,
grow, and, as our CEO usually says, become a major league corporation. I am
talking about professionalization,
such an abstract concept that we have to always keep in mind, and for which I
have seen different sorts of interpretations.
This article is intended to invite all of you to make a personal
reflection. Many of you might feel touched by its content, but what I like about
this formula is that I can show the message so you can make you own evaluation,
and right from it, if you think you have the chance, take any action to make
this high level objective a reality. Otherwise, if your personality does not
allow criticism, then I suggest to you not to keep reading, because, even
though I will be polite with my words, I do believe that most of us will find
something touching in the message.
Oftentimes I talk with people who say “we have to get a master to be
professionalized”, “the company needs to give us incentives to study in order to
grow in our profession”, or “if we do not study we will be held back”. Believe
me, I totally agree with improving the academic level of employees to help
professionalize the company. Studying definitely helps us be more efficient,
better understand problems we encounter, have a better ability to respond, be
in touch with better professionals, etc.
However, there is a point where all of us, myself included, can give a
lot in the short term. It does not require a lot of effort, time, or
investment. Some people prefer to grow through experience and “brute force”, whereas
others prefer to study and gorge themselves with books. But, regardless of how
they approach increasing their knowledge increased, we all have to interact
with other human beings as we develop our activities; and the manner in which this
interaction is carried out might completely invalidate the academic effort.
At this point I believe we must observe our own behavior, ponder over how
we act every day, and ask ourselves one simple question: “is my behavior in the
company professional?” Please, do not be alarmed; I am neither being
pretentious nor intending to teach you manners. As I have said, this is a
reflection we can individually make. Think about sentences like “I have a
friend who works in such company, and over there everything is different, people
are not treated like this”, and then ask yourselves “How do I treat people
here?”
In order to better illustrate the idea, I am giving this list we can
immediately evaluate and you can choose which one you can help with.
1.- Inappropriate use of email: email is not a chat; it is not a board; it is
not a forum and it surely does not replace the tools to be used to complete
your work. I will not go further on this; I will only list the common problems regarding
email abuse:
- Copying too many people.
- Replying all to say “Thanks”, “Got it” or any other confirmation message.
- Language in emails: you can have a personal relationship with a coworker, but it is rather different to write to that person in relation to a work activity.
- Email is not an excuse: think about how many times you have heard “I sent you an email with the information years ago”. Yes, the email information is binding and we assume that the recipient is in the know; however it does not excuse us from backing documents up, following up and appropriately managing the information. Email is lost when backing up, people change their areas or projects, they take new challenges, etc., and when they leave, basically that information, which is already hard to manage, tends to expire.
2.- Professional treatment: some days ago I told somebody that sometimes
we can forget that ten factor we grew
up with. Sometimes we forget we are over 500 employees. I understand that one
of the greatest assets of the company is the almost familiar bond we have with
each other, however it is convenient to look at each other eventually and think
“OK, right now, we are working”.
3.- Punctuality: it is simple and easy; an appointment at any
particular time is at that time, it is not 15 minutes later. We tend to
underestimate things, and we need to say this, make people wait, apart from
being expensive for the company, is disrespectful for the person who is waiting
for us. We all have cell phones, so if 10 minutes before you know you will be
late, let the other person know; if you know you cannot get to the meeting,
call it off in time.
4.- Meetings in the work areas: It is natural to have sporadic discussions
which take about 5 or 10 minutes. But if the discussion goes further, take into
consideration people around you; voices and noises get them distracted and make
their work harder to complete. There are meeting rooms. This idea applies to things
like listening to music at the desks, using the speaker mode to speak over the
phone, or having loud phone conversations.
5.- Respect for others’ work: this is the most sensitive item, but
unfortunately it is the most frequent one I have seen. We have to acknowledge
the value of the work of each one of us. It is common to hear comments of a
department thinking that other departments “do not understand that I have a
critical work”, which is a sort of minimization of the others’ work.
Although we all have different jobs, I am pretty sure that nobody has a
job which description says something like “Value the work of other people, classify
them as relevant or not, and in case they are not, do not care about their opinion or
assessments”. Ask yourselves the following question: “is there anybody who is
better trained than the person in that unit to make the decision he/she is
making or to ask for what he/she is asking for?” If the company has done a good
recruiting job (and I think they have), then the answer would be: “No”; and like
someone who works here says, we do not argue
with he/she who knows.
I would not like to turn this post into a debate about pertinence or
not; as I said at the beginning, I am only sharing a very personal thought. We
do not need a lot to change the environment to continue seeing
“professionalization” in Smartmatic, it does not depend on a decision made by
the CEO, it depends on us deciding to have a more professional environment.
Heider GarcÃa
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