November 24, 2017 at 2:01 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A well-earned break from the database
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
November 27, 2017 at 4:15 am
Interesting article, thanks. I think there is a huge difference between small, medium and large organisations in terms of the "dispensability" of "indispensable" people. If you are a big company then you can and should be able afford not to have indispensable people. Large and medium sized companies should have good processes and documentation and the capacity to prevent people from becoming indispensable. Small companies cannot necessarily do this as easily. I think people can become indispensable in a small company all too easily. There may not be the time to maintain good processes and documentation in a smaller company perhaps because resources may be more limited.
On the other hand it seems like indispensability might be inevitable if you look at the Pareto distribution. In a small company, 20 percent of your workforce might be 1 person, and that 1 person might be responsible for 80 percent of your productivity. It certainly does seem like it might be difficult for businesses not to be reliant on a relatively small number of staff.
A solution to this might be to modularise components of your business. These can then be put out to tender as discrete functions of the business. I suppose outsourcing works in this way. I guess that still opens you up to the possibility of having an indispensable outsourced component of your business though!
December 1, 2017 at 2:32 pm
In a small company, 20 percent of your workforce might be 1 person, and that 1 person might be responsible for 80 percent of your productivity. It certainly does seem like it might be difficult for businesses not to be reliant on a relatively small number of staff.
In this situation, managers have to be conscious of how much that 1 person is doing and be proactive about standardizing their work and then moving that work to other people. It's easy to let someone accumulate responsibilities or quietly ignore the person doing 80hrs a week. Making them give up routine responsibilities frees them up to bring their innovation & capacity for hard work to new areas of the business, whilst simultaneously making the business more resilient to their absence.
Leonard
Madison, WI
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