about the job fair

Garrett helped set up the eight-foot folding table they purchased with the company card at Walmart, and then Keith, the manager, erected the easels and foam boards, prominently displaying their company name, logo, and classy pictures of guests enjoying themselves on the property—a hotel with plentiful amenities and a small, outdoor water park. Garrett and Olivia, the two reliable members of Keith's front desk staff, arrayed brochures and applications on the table.

Keith reached into the banker's box with the supplies for the day and pulled out three pairs of dog-ear headbands. "Ha, here you go, guys. We're gonna wear these today." Keith put his on first. His dim smile endured even as he saw the flash of embarrassment streak across Garrett and Olivia's faces. "C'mon, it'll just be for fun, guys." Garrett and Olivia complied, timidly leaning toward Keith's wrung-out enthusiasm.

They took their seats at the table, and Keith stood by an easel to the right. The team all wore the red company polos. After only a few minutes' standing and waiting, Keith, in his late 40s, average height and reasonably fit, began shifting his weight from left to right and rocking back and forth from his toes to his heels. He lacked the self-awareness to see that this feeble pursuit of comfort made him appear restless, which would, in turn, make other people nervous.

Today was the day of the job fair, and this local leisure and hospitality business was accepting applications.

 

Corporate Jabs

Did not enjoy reading Company by Max Barry. Jones, the protagonist, a young, recent grad entering the corporate world, soon finds himself smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy and class struggle in which competing values come to blows.  Jones looks for meaning and finds temptation. But Barry does not explore temptation, and his narrative is predictable, the characters are flimsy, and his humor isn't funny.

Perhaps of interest is the author's treatment of the lowly assistants, those chafing in their entry-level positions, gophering in and around cubicles in service of their masters: Middle and upper management. While the workers are, for the most part, the good guys in this struggle, they are so primarily by virtue of being the unwitting victims in this game. They aren't noble people, likable on their own merits; they are fearful, cowardly, weak. But they are also beaten down, leaving you to wonder if they could do better given the right opportunities.

Quickie on Process Management

Current discussions of process management styles depict specific priorities in competition. Agile and other styles go a step further and attempt to privilege certain priorities, sometimes called values, over others. What effect does this value privileging have on actual work?

My guess? Not very much.

Let's assume that a certain set of priorities actually are in competition: For example, the more a worker invests in fine tuning the product's performance, the less he is able to fully document the requirements and changes. In our hypothetical process management style, we privilege product performance. One possible effect of explicitly emphasizing one priority over another is the exaggeration of pre-existing work habits. If Worker 1 has always authored weak documentation, now his documentation may all but disappear. If Worker 2 is learning his trade, he may not learn or develop a round skill set because he is coached to always direct his time and efforts in one direction.

Process management styles tend to assume all people are equal. They are not.

While adopting a process management system with explicitly emphasized values may have less impact on worker habits, it may play a large role in shaping the office culture. I would argue that an office culture can be viewed as a personnel filter. People seek out and thrive in certain settings. A worker whose habits and style are at odds with an office culture may become isolated, lose motivation, and then eventually quit or be fired.

I also wonder if this treatment of values is really all that different from how other, less self-conscious styles of process management deal with competing priorities. Might revisit this later.