The Hindu Business Line : Individual, freedom and organisation

LET's face it. With very few honourable exceptions in the IT industry, individuals in most manufacturing organisations virtually surrender their individuality on joining an organisation, after signing a one-sided appointment letter.

Freedom is one word that does not exist in the dictionary of most such organisations. Arrogant and autocratic bosses, subordinates and peers who try to create trouble for the individual, or politics that creates mental traumaare not at all rare.

This kind of politics becomes very difficult and more acute for a lateral recruit, at any level. Those with years of experience in the organisation understand its power structure well and create difficulties for the newcomer. Even if, at the interview, the individual was promised freedom to experiment, he/she is rarely allowed to, more so at senior levels and especially, if he/she has a mandate of introducing something dramatically new, as, for instance, procedures that confirm to the ISO standards.

For each and every small thing, the sanction of the Chief Executive becomes essential. After this exasperating experience, the Senior Manager finds himself up against a battery of senior executives who monotonously sing the "we are very busy" song. At the middle level, the executives take much pride in engaging in any number of unproductive meetings, which are by and large unstructured, where the executives unconsciously spend a huge amount of time discussing non-value-adding issues.

To get these middle-level executives to subscribe to something new becomes a very daunting task. The Senior Manager does not have too much freedom to initiate tough action or even talk tough. Only after several hits and misses does the new manager learn the tricks of the trade, and his "framework", as days and months roll by.

It does not mean any organisational culture that encourages loyalty and builds people through various on-the-job training initiatives does not have its own merits. In fact, most family-managed organisations are built on this model. What is particularly disturbing is that in the absence of the freedom to experiment, explore now horizons of knowledge and implement progressive management practices, the creative individuals or the hard-working ones with fire in their bellies are forced to subscribe, much against their wishes, to unhealthy practices in the name of "our way of doing things".

The more serious ramification of "our way of doing things" is the needlessly complicated bureaucracy. When an individual tries to break it, he finds himself in a hopeless minority, and merely resigns himself to his fate, when he finds that his ideas do not find takers.

As in most other situations, the qualified HR professional becomes a victim of circumstances and, as most Indian manufacturing organisations are engaged in the serious task of building competencies for surviving in a global market, the range of activities the production professionals need to carry out day after day, presents a very big challenge:

The precious time of Senior Managers is just not available for any progressive HR initiative like mentoring or 360 degree appraisal, or competency profiling.

The whole concept of freedom in modern organisations needs to be re-defined. Everything new does not need to be embraced, but modern management practices such as business process re-engineering (BPR), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and competency profiling, are imperatives that any organisation can only neglect at its own peril. To get the creative and professionally qualified youngsters to do an honest job of implementing these initiatives, is a challenging task.

Manufacturing organisations would do well to learn from the experiences of their IT counterparts, and seriously define roles and responsibilities of individuals.

(The author is Deputy Manager, Brakes India Limited, Sholinghur.)

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