In a previous Chapter I discussed scaling up and the implications of doing so. Linked to scaling up is size which I believe is an important topic for us to consider.
Generally speaking, the larger an organisation the more likely it is that disconnect will be a feature of it. What I mean by disconnect is simply that the day-to-day concerns of the workers on the ground are not as taken as seriously as the concerns of management.
In my experience, when an organisation grows, it has a higher profile, and the higher a profile an organisation has, the more it has to be managed, (and often defended), and as a consequence image becomes important.
And if it involves very delicate work, high profile will almost always mean that there is a far higher risk of quality being sacrificed for quantity, image, efficiency etc. That does not mean that we should shy away from growing. It does, however, mean that we should be very vigilant in respect of the needs of the Focus Group as we grow.
Growing so that things will change for the better uses energy. And our energy is better expended on important outcomes for the Focus Group, than on image and other unnecessary things.
Also, the bigger the organisation the more likely it is that the centre of decision making will be distanced from what the needs are at ground level.
The reason for this is that there are different priorities at different levels of management. For example, a management priority to save money will almost always be misunderstood by workers on the shop floor. More subtle ones exist also – i.e. education, rank and status, what used to be called white collar and blue collar etc.
Naturally enough, community work does not escape this disconnect.
What about an organisation that sets itself up to alleviate the suffering of others?
We stated in a previous post that in the private sector, the customer is king. If a private company that depends on people buying its products disconnects from its customers they will stop buying. This is why there is constant market research and why whenever we buy anything nowadays we are asked for our opinions on the product bought or the service offered.
If customers stop buying our product (that is, stop buying into what we offer) then it is a statement about how little confidence that they have in us to alleviate their suffering. If we disconnect from our own staff there is a higher chance that we will disconnect from people who seek assistance too.
It’s unrealistic to think that there will never be any disconnect, but in respect of the human experience we need to do everything in our power to ensure that it is minimised, and that we connect deeply with people.
This is different to business, where connection is used primarily to keep staff happy and customers interested in a product.
There is really no alleviation of suffering involved.
There are also subtle differences between our kind of organisation and a Hospital Accident and Emergency Department, or Fire Service. In such places, I believe that management needs to connect with staff, so that the staff can (appropriately) disconnect from death and injury that is part and parcel of their day-to-day life-saving work.
The difference between the physical A+E and what I call emotional A+E is that in emotional healing the practitioner needs to be more part of the process than in physical healing.
In general, I believe that large size can get in the way of connection both between management/leadership and staff, and staff and people for whom the service is intended (in our case the Focus Group) thereby – in the long term – wasting money.
I will expand on this theme further in the next post.