Friday 21 August 2009

Make sure the staff toilets work before you ask for excellence

"How dare you ask for excellence when the staff toilets are filthy!". This is in a Tom Peters book – Liberation Management, I think. Before he went new age on us in the late 90’s, Tom was more of a Good Guy in the same spirit as Robert (Up The Organisation) Townsend than all that big-company ass-kissing in Pursuit of Excellence suggested.

I have worked for a company (an FTSE-100 household name) that asked for excellence from its staff and gave them a building where the toilets backed up regularly. I saw the cisterns once when the maintenance door was open – you and I have better equipment at home.

How can the company ask for excellence from you and me and let the landlord get away with toilets that don’t work? Well, if they think they really are providing an environment where you and I can be excellent, then they are a) self-satisfied or b) not very well travelled. If they know they are not providing that environment, then they are either c) going through some PR motions or d) just trying it on, e) so dumb they don’t know what "excellent" means. How dare they be a) complaisant, b) provincial, c) devious, d) taking the Mickey or e) dumb and then ask you to be self-critical, experienced, honest, straightforward and smart?
That’s why the toilets have to work before you can ask your people for excellence.

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