Porridge BBC prison comedy where the prisoners routinely outwit the prison officers. Yes minister a comedy where senior Civil Servants run rings around their Ministers. The Reworking of the classic Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim in which the slaves out smart their masters by adopting a way of speaking which appears to reinforce white peoples’ view of them as uneducated, illiterate, unintelligent, inferiors whilst out of earshot it is clear quiet the opposite is true. In each case those in authority who think they are in control are in fact being subtly manipulated.
Do you manage employees who need a lot of supervision , who constantly need reminding of your expectations, who seem unable to use their initiative, who miss deadlines, and produce careless work unless you are chasing them up and checking everything they do? Do you find you are repeating yourself because people don’t listen and seem to have difficulty following simple instructions? Are you sure you’re not being manipulated.
Can an organisation have of a culture in which management seriously underestimates employees , assumes they are not capable of using their own initiative, need to be constantly monitored other wise they will do the minimum they can get away with. An organisation that doesn’t trust its employees. An organisation that doesn’t value employees and organisation that doesn’t respect employees. Doesn’t trust them to get on with the job unsupervised. Doesn’t value their knowledge, experience and skills enough to consult them. Doesn’t respect their judgment or opinion so dismisses their views with a “they would say that wouldn’t they. “
This view of the workforce is reflected in the concerns about working from home, namely that employees will take advantage of managers reduced oversight. It is reflected in an arbitrary approach to absence management 3 stricken and your out. It’s evident in a lack of compassion in the approach to management and a need to know attitude to information sharing. It’s reflected in an assumption that employees don’t want to see improvements and automatically resist any changes. It’s not surprising that in such organisations senior managers do not have the respect of the workforce.
In such an organisation managers think they are in control. But the evidence of a deviant sub culture such as portrayed in Porridge and Yes Minister or referred to in the rewrite of Huckleberry Finn suggests not.
