In one of the threads, where a person complained of continuous stress, someone made a good observation that some departments are privileged, overstaffed by people who do almost nothing, while in others people burn out from work. This is something that all serious managers would deal with as it harms the whole company. I believe they are aware of that but no one is doing anything about it. Why is that? I cannot come up with any logical answer to that question.
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Agree with @4ofo+18FlZtAw
See same thing in my department
Everything is reported as green on instruction from LL5. She waits until the very last minute to report that a project is off track. She actively looks for some other LL5’s area to blame for the project delay. Of course all the other LL5’s involved in the project are doing the same thing. It is a game of chicken to see who will blink first. No one trusts anyone. So the truth is buried.
We need some reporting to get an accurate account of status. Accurate is the key word here! In most organizations that I have been in management doesn’t typically have visibility to issues until it is too late to resolve them. I had a manager tell me that if current status doesn’t align to the projected status from prior weeks I should change the projected status to make it look like we were on track. I explained that we were not on track but the manager said we could not report issues on status reports because upper management gets angry. This manager had no clue that their anger was because we would go months with perfect status reports and then miss deadlines. If you share issues while there is still time to resolve them maybe there would be less anger. In many cases we hove lost touch with the intent of report outs and it has become creative writing.
Reporting is an essential role for the company and it needs to be done accurately. But I don't think there needs to be LL5's and LL4's in reporting organizations
The cause of stress free environments:
- Expectations are incredibly low
- No accountability
- Your work doesn't actually matter. There have been times in which I didn't get something done, but nothing bad happen. Because the tasks were so unimportant, whether or not you got them done made no difference to the bottom line.
- No deadlines
@1too you have hit the nail on the head. There are trackers across the pond who track trackers here in the US and there are paper pushers and then there are engineers who are responsible for meeting product development milestones so Ford can sell vehicles. That's where the meaningful work and stress is.
I unfortunately am not in one of the stress free departments. We were hit pretty hard with the recent VIP but yet the workload is just added to an already overworked staff. Management has said for years that we will stop doing unnecessary work yet that never happens. Please offer another VIP in 2021 as I will finally be eligible and will be the first to sign up!
PD folks that have deliverables and product that must get out on time have the most stress. People on launch will understand this. I had a problem on a part and was given 24 hours to solve it or the line was shutting down. Plant management was ruthless and they do not sugarcoat anything for you. Stress!
I left PD many years later and went to Global Planning - omg people complain when you give them a few things to do. The office area was as quiet as a library. It was too boring - easy money though.