| There's a third solution, Norbert. It goes back to the civil disobedience
principles of Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, and others. Do what you
have to do, being willing to take the consequences, in the hope that what
is good or right will prevail. There is no guarantee that you will avoid
punishment; in fact, the reverse is probably more likely.
To be in a position to do that, you must consider some very important things:
1) Be very, very sure that you are right. Listen to what the other, in this
case your superiors are saying. See if they are including some factors that
you may not have considered. If, at the end of that consideration, you are
still convinced that your idea is better, then you can move ahead with a
clear conscience.
2) Is it worth it? You may be right, absolutely right, but on a point that
is not worth the risk of your job or your well-being. In other NotesFiles
we have talked about forgiveness. Is it possible that we could let this issue
slide without severely damaging our integrity or our higher goals (truth,
beauty, justice, whatever)? Other folks have tolerated our failures and
short-comings; can we offer that tolerance this time?
3) Be prepared to take the consequences. If you willfully disobey your boss,
you're going to get into trouble. The boss has a job to do, too.
None of this suggests that leaving a position isn't sometimes the best solution.
There are sometimes when you have a job that you want to do and someone is
blocking your ability to do it. Related to #2, is this task important enough
that you can't afford to let it slide? If so, then you've got some hard thinking
ahead of you.
Remember, though, that you never have to go through it alone.
kh
-30-
|
| norbert, I have raised that particular issue in Friends. Did you read it?
I got some private mail from *real* friends saying the same: We are humans,
we are intelligent, we can discuss when something is going wrong. That's
exactely why the Open Door policy exists. We are ALL working at DEC FOR DEC
and not for us. If one disagree with his management, the solution is first
of all to evaluate the importance of the difference which opposes these two
persons, then either accept or leave. As the manager will not leave, he has
only one solution: make his will accepted. As the employee has two solutions,
he chooses. To make his manager accept, there is the ODP. Two new solutions:
either the issue is not that important, and he does what "God's judjement"
decides :-) or he feels it IS important, and he is free to leave. We lost
last week a very valuable person in France because of a stupid problem of
management wrongly solved.
One word to finish: Ken Olsen idea of our Corporation is to become VERY GOOD
because employees are happy to work at Digital. If someone is not happy and
doesn't want to become so, he has better leave. For him AND for the Company.
Didier
|
| The best policy to follow is never to get into confrontational situations
where the only options are to back down or leave. If it finally comes down
to a confrontation, it must be remembered that DEC has hired the manager
to make particular decisions and has hired the employee to follow those
decisions. If you choose not to do so, you should get out of that particular
organization.
--PSW
|
| While figuring out how to avoid the confrontation in the first place is always
good advice, the assumption that if a confrontation arises the manager is
always right (and if you don't like it you should leave) is not justifiable.
DEC does not hire managers to make decisions and lower employees to carry them
out. DEC hires managers to coordinate the process of producing products
(including all the ancillary personnel issues), and grunts to produce said
products.
Part of the manager's job IS to ensure that decisions, and the right ones, get
made. But that's also the responsibility of the implementor, and just bailing
out if you don't agree is avoidance of this responsibility.
In sum, both the responsibility and the authority involved in decisions are
shared between you and your manager, and the process of coming to the right
decision is a shared effort. The one unacceptable state of affairs is an
impasse: until it's resolved, you've BOTH failed - and no decision has been
reached.
- Bill
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