Dealing with Bureaucracy
How to deal with bureaucracies.
Listener Calvin asks:
How do I deal with HR?
Calvin, bureaucracies are famous for helping you get where you want to go in the most roundabout way possible.
Bureaucracies! I just love bureaucracies! No … I don’t… I hate bureaucracies. But they exist for a reason. As organizations grow bigger, it takes more and more coordination to keep things working well. They also give us more people to talk to. We once had time to spend with friends, learn stuff, be creative, and build caring communities. Now, we’re too busy updating our Facebook profiles. Bureaucracies fill this void, giving us whole new communities, all aligned around the common purpose of feeling busy and productive even when we’re not actually being busy and productive. Heck, if we actually got stuff done efficiently, there wouldn’t be enough work to go around, and we’d have layoffs. So Hooray! for bureaucracies.
Think it Through Beforehand
It sounds like your HR department is staffed by Catbert, the evil HR director. If you let them drive the process, you’ll never get done. You’ll get halfway through filing a performance review only to discover that your competency profile was never updated after your last review. By the time you’ve updated that, your performance review data is more than 48 hours old. That’s a no-no, so you have to file an exception form. Your HR people care about your spirit, your ambition, and your competencies…just not your productivity.
Before you go to HR, sit down and make a list of everything you need to deal with. Write down all your questions and issues. “Get new employee badge.” “Approve hiring requisition.” “Respond to Bernice’s complaint about my new deodorant.”
Run through the list and gather all the backup documentation you could imagine anyone asking for about the issues. That way when they lovingly say, “Why don’t you bring the purchase receipt for your deodorant, along with a list of the ingredients back here next Thursday,” you can just reach into your satchel and give them what they need.
Collect All Paperwork at Once
When they find out they can’t stymie you with requests for backup information, they’ll give you a form to fill out. If you are foolish enough to fill it out and bring it back, they’ll give you another, and so on. Ask them for all paperwork related to your issues, all at once. Thank them, make a follow-up appointment, and dive back to your office.
Don’t fill anything out, yet. Browse through the papers and see what information you’ll need to fill them out. Make a list of anything you’ll need that you don’t have immediately at your fingertips. When they ask for things like your firstborn child’s bank account number and PIN, you might have to look it up.
Do Everything at Once
Now you have a complete list of everything you need to fill out all the forms. Run around and collect all the information, then start writing. Fill out everything at once. You’re doing the same thing you did at the start of this process—you’re preparing so when you return to their cavernous lair, you’ll have every possible space filled out on every possible form they could ask you to complete.
When you deliver the forms, specifically ask when you can check back on the different issues. They’ll try to be slippery (even if they’re not reptiles) and say things like, “it usually takes a week, but could be as little as four days, or as much as nine years.” Nail them down! Say, “I’ll check back in two weeks, on Thursday, at 3 p.m. If you need anything else to insure the issues are dealt with by then, please give me a call.” Get them to agree, then follow up at the time you specified.
If they still aren’t done two weeks from Thursday, politely point out, “I’m checking back at the time we agreed upon. When should I next check back?”
If They’re Truly Incompetent
At this point, you’ve connected directly with HR the fewest possible times. Each time, you’ve come armed with every piece of information or paperwork they could demand as an excuse not to take action. You’ve even let them set the due date, or at least approve the date you suggest.
After all this, if they’re still a hassle to deal with, you might want to declare war. You have done so much homework and made it so easy for them that their failure really is a red flag of a badly broken department. Document what happened and take it to whoever’s in charge of HR and see if you can get them to clean up their act.
Note, by the way, that the CEO’s sibling is in charge of HR. They will see your case, notice what a bad job their department has done, and lay you off tomorrow so you don’t tell anyone else. Ah, bureaucracies. I just love bureaucracies… No, I don’t.
I do love connecting with Get-it-Done Guy fans on my Facebook page, however. Come visit me!
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
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