OPEN DOOR POLICIES IN MANAGEMENT: A STATEMENT
When the Chief Executive of an organization maintains what he describes as an "Open Door Policy" (Always while patting himself firmly on the back) it says two things about him:
1. He's a poor time manager--usually because he fails to value his own creative and productive time; and
2. He has no clue he's cutting the legs out from under his Department Heads and Middle Managers by inviting the inmates to drop by and run the asylum with him.
Beware Mr. Open Door Policy New Age Manager--he'll destabilize your work force faster than the Ebola Virus.
posted by UMRBlog @ 13:33
28 comments
28 Comments:
Better to sit behind a closed door so you don't know what your employees and managers are doing.
Really? And just what is the extent of your Chief Executive experience that lead you to this distortion of what Bellis said?
1354,
No, better to require your employees to exhaust all the organizational and contractual requirements before they come wandering into a feel-good "OPEN DOOR" without trying to solve their issues within the organization.
TYFCB
Who's Bellis and what am I distorting that he said?
Gosh, I know lots of folks named Bellis and I wouldn't want to distort anything any of them said.
Golly, if anybody named Bellis out there didn't say he'd have an open door policy, I'm sure sorry if he thinks my discussion of an important management principle is a distortion of what he either did or didn't say.
I've been in depositions all day on a city matter and I haven't seen the newspaper or heard the radio or television.
Now I'm gonna have to read the paper, I guess.
Hey, there it was! o-p-e-n-d-o-o-r-p-o-l-c-y"
When do we get to the distortion part? Was he misquoted? That's an interesting media-relations strategy--claim a misquote as a relationship-building exercise.
I didn't say anybody said "My door is always open to folks with charges pending before the Independent Commission hired empowered to hear such matters." I didn't say anybody said "my door is always open to anybody who wants me to buckle on a matter of princple simply to save litigation costs?" I didn't say anybody said "My door is always open to Union Leaders trying to cut a better deal for their misbehaving members."
I just said Open Door Policy is a poor CEO/COO technique and explained why. Where's the distortion?
Have a nice evening. I must go read the paper and keep up on these things.
So for some reason out of the blue you decided to make the exact same post about open door policies as you did back in August? What was your CEO experience in the last 30 years again?
I'm sure you'll be keeping up on these things. You job depends on it.
Don't you have a letter to write?
Can't read the paper. It is not in the paper.
You might ask someone why an event that took place this morning didn't make today's paper.
If Bellis was a Democrat, it would have been in today's paper.
So the reason Spring doesn't listen to anyone is because he's a GOOD manager? I'd like to see a post from you devoted solely to the talented management abilities of our current mayor. You'll say it's your blog, you don't take requests or some other smart assed comment, but the reality is even you don't believe it.
1858,
Thanks for following my views so closely. I guess my background, experience and education in this area is sufficient to hold your interest.
TYFCB
1906,
Well, both are likely. I have a lot of friends on the ballot this trip. But that's usually the case. The basin's a big place and there's lots of elections around here.
TYFCB
1932,
Damn, you're right. I didn't get to unfurl my paper until a few minutes ago.
Usually guys running for office with morning events give the print folks a little preview so they get into the paper. I know that's pretty inside baseball but I thought you might be interested in such esoterica.
TYFCB
1935,
When my days as a municipal attorney are done, I have every intention of comparing and contrasting management styles of the Mayors in my lifetime. During an election cycle is probably not the time.
I would point out that I only said ODP's are silly--never advocated a leaders "not listening to anyone!"
TYFCB
So you are saying the Herald-Whig needs help to do its job?
I'm betting more people use the Internet and watch television than read the Herald-Whig anyway.
Out of the 20 people on my block, I think 5 take the paper.
Thanks for following my views so closely. I guess my background, experience and education in this area is sufficient to hold your interest.
The interest is your complete lack of experience in matters such as this, where as you purport to be some sort of expert. So, no experience in the last 30 years? Just keen observations.
0410,
No, not at all. I'm simply saying, if you want coverage from a news organ, you help them make a deadline. It's a discussion about political technique--a technique which is not a real secret.
If the candidate attaches no important to local print media, that's his privilege.
TYFCB
0457,
If I felt like posting a resume here, I'd have done it a long time ago.
Obviously, with your vast and successful management experience, you think ODP is a great idea. Fine. Defend it on the merits.
We can take up the centralized Police facilities and their price tag next. Golly, we could even talk about what the County Jail has to do with the Mayor's duties>
Name your poison.
TYFCB
My only point at this time is you have no experience running anything in a CEO capacity. Your opinions in this matter hinge solely on your desire to keep your job. You should say that from the outset that a lump of shit would get your vote as long as it had a D next to it, especially if that lump of shit controls whether or not you get a paycheck.
0553
Well, no, it's not your only point. You've been throwing multiple points around rather pitifully here for some time.
You know next to nothing of my background or experience and you just want to impute motives to me that fit into your prejudices.
It's pretty simple: You either think ODP is good leadership technique or you don't. Take a position and defend it. Since I don't know whether you're a man or or a woman, I'll say it this way: Person Up!
It's supposed to be a shock that this is a democrat-leaning blog? What you want? A disclaimer like on the cigarette package?
Break out of your prejudices and do some free thinking.
UMR- your "open door" scenario is kind of a worst case vision. Being accessible and transparent can work very well depending on the personal abilities of the manager. Look at how Bloomberg set up his office in NYC. I don't live in Quincy and could care less who you people elect- just arguing a point.
0708,
We have a lot of common ground.
Having an accessibility feature is not the same as ODP.
When I was State's Attorney, we had a specific half day per week scheduled for victims of crimes to come in and see me, no schedule, no prerequisites. I learned a lot from those folks, often even learning there was more to the crime than we had rec'vd int he police reports. It was valuable for them and valuable for us.
A different half day was set aside every week for anybody else who wanted to see me, whether about random dumping in the county to truancy in Mendon to dogs running at large in Loraine. We didn't leave until the last person was seen. Sometimes that was three o'clock, occasionally it was 8 at night.
Now, if the beef of was a bad check and they hadn't been to the right police agency, they were directed there. If the person was an employee of a County Department, they were sent back through their own chain of command. Orderly accessibility is useful. An ODP, especially involving employee discipline is just a superficial way of a Chief Exec making himself feel all fuzzy, New Age, and enlightened.
It looks to me like we don't disagree much here.
Not only will you not post the disingenuous letter you wrote begging for your job, you won't even post comments regarding it. It goes to motive and leaves suspect anything else you have to say. It's dishonest and you fucking know it.
You showed 802. Now post that letter for all to decide Nancy.
0802,
There's a tissue over there on the table. Wipe the froth off your snout. If you've got a letter of mine that I wrote to friends, post it on your own web site. I've written a lot of political letters in my time, both mass mailings and letters to friends.
I remember one in particular that really upset some of my friends but nobody ever claimed I ever wrote something that wasn't true.
BTW, and this is just a helpful suggestion, if you're gonna call somebody dishonest, it's usually a good idea to lay out what you think the truth is and then state what the person said that was untrue. That's sort of the accepted method for proving dishonesty. But if you just want to form conclusions and call folks names, that's your choice. This is a America and you always have a choice, coke/pepsi, boxer/brief, reason/rant.
Oh, and look up above here, it appears there's a comment about "the letter" with which you're obsessed. Isn't that the letter about which I block comments? Imagine that! There it is. And so well reasoned too. Your mother must be very proud.
"Goes to Motive" BTW, is lawyer talk--Surely you couldn't be one of the lawyers lurking out there waiting for a City Job in the event there might be a change in administrations.
I'm sure you're just a philosopher-king seeking truth, justice and the american way.
TYFCB
I already decided about Nancy. Had some great times with her but she wasn't the one for me. Didn't save any of her letters--always a good policy when you marry someone else.
Now I hate to disappoint so many people but I probably wrote 15 different individualized texts to maybe 90 people--people I thought might be interested in my opinion. So there really is no "the letter".
What I can tell you is that any political letter I write states clearly "Not Printed or Posted at Government Expense" and it never is.
TYFCB
This is a post that came in as a regular post, I hit "publish" and it disappeared.
This is it verbatim and I apologize to the commenter. Don't know what happened.
"You showed 802. Now post that letter for all to decide Nancy."
UMR
CWS had a pretty open door policy , and so did Sparky . They were easy to reach and were pretty easy to wrok with .
Mayor Ego on the other hand is not so much easy to work with .
But for F***'s sake he got us a 2nd train and hauled it here all by himself.
CWS did not have an ODP with respect to employee discipline or complaints. If you hadn't been up the chain with your beef, you weren't getting in.
If you got in on a ruse, you were sent back to where you should have been going and then CWS would ask the Department Haid what his E'ee was doing haunting the Mayor's office.
Chuck was accessible but did not have an internal ODP, to his credit.
Post a Comment
<< Home