Okay, so reading through chapter seven was a rollercoaster in its own sense as I genuinely question some managerial decisions made at work which seem like common sense scenarios but aren’t acted out in the same way. I have been a Compliance Officer for the Department of Human Services for 2 years and my role in the big cog is to ensure people are reporting their earnings correctly to receive the right rate of support payments. As an APS4, I don’t have the ability to make decisions for two reasons. One, an APS4 is a senior ‘foot soldier’ which has no bearing weight regarding organizational decisions and two, our decisions are made by none other than ScoMo and his team, my role is to implement the decision made.

“As firms get larger, as their scope and reach and influence gets larger, managers need to delegate more and more decision-making to others.” See, I can see why this happens. Take for instance my work. Morrison is advised that there is $1.2 billion (2018/2019 financial year) in outstanding funds incorrectly paid to both current and non-current welfare recipients, so he decides to recoup this money as it is taxpayer money. Now Morrison has a lot on his plate already, meaning he can’t physically oversee the operations of recouping that money so he delegates to the Secretary who then delegates further down the chain of command until it lands at the hands of us Compliance Officers who must make decisions within the boundaries of the legislation set by the House of Representatives. As you could imagine, this takes a lot of co-ordination as there are many cogs that must work together to get the big wheel to turn.

Alongside co-ordination, Martin touches on communication which is vital to any organisation. I completely agree with this as low and behold, when communication fails (especially in a highly publicised job like mine), it is not a good outcome for the business. Perfect example, without boring you with my job role and how everything is done (I’m sure you’ve seen news articles about ‘Robo-debt’ (which is completely wrong on its own but that’s another story for another day)), in November 2019, someone decided to change the policy regarding how we can conduct compliance reviews. The only problem with this change is it was communicated to us at the same time the media outlets reported on it. As you could imagine, this then caused a massive disruption to business as customers were calling to find out what’s happening, and we had zero information to offer them.

Moving towards the bottom of the chapter, when reading the section about measuring performance, I fell into agreeance with the underlying message that measuring performance and rewarding or punishing based on targets can encourage behaviour inconsistent with the goals of a firm. Like anything, there are pros and cons with everything. When I worked as a car salesman, we received commission from each car as well as bonus incentives. Like any young person who thought money was the most important thing in life, I put exuberant amounts of pressure on myself to sell 10 cars a month (this was the expectation from management) to receive a $500 bonus. After 10 cars, the pressure was to reach 15, to receive a $1000 bonus. After 15, it was 20 cars to get a $1500 bonus as well as a paid day off. I drove myself so hard, put so much pressure on myself that I saw a change in my mental wellbeing. I started to crack due to the amount of pressure put on an 18-year-old to meet business targets of a minimum 10 cars per month.

One thing I noticed however was the amount of strain on workplace relationships because of these targets. See, it was near daily that there would be an argument between workers over who spoke to what customer first, and that’s because everyone has a target to hit and will do anything to reach that goal. This is where people started acting against the goals of the business in order to reach their own performance target just so they don’t get punished. This was a very ineffective practice set out by management and explains the high turnover rate of new car sales employees.

If there is to be a rewarding system, I personally agree with the balanced scorecard system if it is applied correctly. In my current role, we have a derivative of a balanced scorecard where the performance measurement is on productivity rather than outcomes. Every morning we have a team meeting where everyone’s stats are shown on a board and we discuss the previous day. Productivity is the main topic where it is compared to the individual goal set by us which then contributes to the team goal which rolls into the organisational goal. We collectively talk about impacts on productivity which allows staff members to assist others who are struggling and allows management to identify areas of improvement. This system is very rewarding as there’s no ‘punishment’ for having ‘bad stats’, rather a learning opportunity and the ability to gain assistance with areas you are struggling in.