Velocity by Ajaz Ahmed & Stefan Olander

Author:Ajaz Ahmed & Stefan Olander [Ahmed, Ajaz & Olander, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780091947569
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2012-05-02T22:00:00+00:00

Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

Stefan: I have to say, the company-wide memo sounds suspiciously like the analogue ancestor of ‘cc all’.

Ajaz: These weren’t about a meaningless cc culture. They were about patrolling the border between convenience and counterproductive laziness. Greenberg would exhort his employees to reuse paperclips, share fax machines, return clients’ phone calls promptly and otherwise be considerate to people and conservative with resources with a mixture of humour and appeals to the staff’s self-respect.

When Greenberg heard how his bankers were driving the company’s receptionists crazy by constantly calling the front desk to be connected to colleagues – even though they each had a directory on their desk – he sent this memo:

To : Sr Managing Directors, Managing Directors, Associate Directors

From: Alan C. Greenberg

The in-house telephone operators are being swamped by our own associates dialing the Bear Stearns operator and asking to be connected to another Bear Stearns employee. All of us have been given Bear Stearns directories … There are two reasons these directories are not being used:

Laziness

Not being able to read.

He also explained that any employees having the second problem could turn to a new kind of expert, one of which he would situate on every floor: an ‘H.I.’ or ‘helper of illiterates’, whom employees could call across to them by title if they needed their assistance.

Meanwhile, Greenberg explained, the phone operators would log the names of those who persistently called to ask for colleagues’ numbers, adding, ‘If those people are literate, they will meet with me’. He just left that thought hanging there for persistent offenders.

Stefan: Brilliant. Sounds a bit like being sent to the naughty corner at school.

Ajaz: Except because it went to everybody, nobody could feel picked on and those who were innocent could just laugh at the gentle mocking. We all need the occasional hint to stop and think about how we interact.

The way I saw it, he didn’t want to demoralise, ridicule or chastise his staff. He wanted to remind them why it was in their interest to up their game. It’s not about telling people ‘You’re rubbish’, but rather about reminding them ‘You’re better than that’.

Stefan: I think we all need a dose of that every now and then.

Ajaz: Anyway, today software should make the whole process redundant. But that only happens when someone has put the effort in of making it easier than a previous method.

So that my team knew what was important to me I felt obliged to give my own gentle reminders in the early days. They weren’t funny like Greenberg’s were, but years later people still remind me of some of the emails I sent. One particular email I wrote over ten years ago had the subject ‘The Courage to Care’.

It did go on a bit, I admit, so I’ll just read a paragraph from the beginning and the end:

‘It takes more courage to care about a client and a project than it does not to care. We all have days that don’t go too well.

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