Tuesday 18 November 2008

Corporate ethics. The guideline or the attribute?

Since I have moved from European company to American one, I never experience any cultural shift between two organization. In fact I didn't believe in so called "corporate culture". I'd rather believe in "corporate superstition" meaning by that usual way how people there used to get things done. Only thing that was changed for me was using rather American English than British. So now I write "color" instead of "colour" and try too update my written text and speech accordingly to American traditions.
In the aspect of team behavior nothing was going to be changed: Our team was planned as very agile and egalitarian: no managers, no subordination, no strict policies. We were pretending to the team of well-motivated professionals. And what I had seen there had indeed impressed me: team leaned to be unique within large organization. So I made my final choice voting rather to the team and people there than to organization as a whole.
Soon after my start I was told that our company is well-organized, modern and has some set of things that recognizes it as something special. I didn't pay much attention to this again: all things pretended to be informal, of course any company wants to recognize itself. "We are unique, we are the best". But they look like too isolated from each other.

And indeed it lasted like this about 3 month. Then things started to get changed gradually but steady: now we have at least 2 "pure managers" (who refuse to do any technical tasks) and 2 semi-managers (who supposed to do lesser technical tasks, but essential part of efforts are going to be spent on some sort of management).
I used to overtake some management tasks even at my first job, considering those tasks as inevitable expenses in order too keep whole team free from such routines. And eventually I can see that I'm pretty much successful in that: here I became one of those two semi-manager and unstoppable power pushes me to be even more distant from technical tasks.
Concentrating on management tasks, which include large amount of inbox and outbox items I began to suffer from lack of understanding the corporate principles.
Today the manner how I hold negotiations had been condemned by my boss. , but for me they were to trivial comparatively to things that was done in team by local managers. I was warned to not use informal lexis to not see and was informed about how it is had to be done within organization (oh, God, they spend so much time and efforts to create presentation for newcommers how to do such trivial things like sending mail). I agree with all pointhere, but anyway there are few points that make me furious about what's happening in our team
* They are breaking moral rules that seems reasonable for me: for instance, it's considered to be correct if higher manager sets responsibility upon lower even if it's not agreed with the latter.
* Those people are to idle to get things done. They will rather delegate to you creating reports even if they can do it more efficiently and faster
* They consider watching somebody meeting rules and sending important mail as attribute of their power.
In my professional life it was more critical to be honest with people and be direct rather to be polite. It doesn't mean to be not polite at all, but there was necessary to be so anxious about that.
Unfortunately my resources are exhausted to change the hierarchy of management that was raised here, I have missed already chance to keep team agile, and only thing to do is too keep Otto von Bismark principle:
Be polite. Even when you are declaring war.
That makes sense. So I believe in my talent of automation and self-learning: in a week or two I'll be polite, tactful, friendly and gentle ... at least in outbox :)

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