WRITTEN AND SUBMITTED BY JOAQUIM A. CASTRO DO CASTELO, B.A., B.Sc., MBA
MANAGING DIRECTOR
OLETSAC?SCIENCE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH CONSULTING
I. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. TABLE OF CONTENTS
2. ABSTRACT
3. INTRODUCTION
4. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
5. THE USE OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHODS IN PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
o THE LAW OFFICE EXPERIENCE
o THE BRAMPTON INSURANCE BROKERAGE OFFICE
6. CONCLUSION
II. ABSTRACT
This paper was initially written in 1995, to help the Nordic-SADC Journalism Center (NSJ Center), a Mozambique-based educational and media development institution geared towards the training of journalists and other media personnel, in Southern Africa. It deals with the use of the Scientific Method as a powerful tool for the successful management of Human Resources, or Personnel Management. The logical framework followed, and the examples mentioned in this article, emanate from a pilot study that I conducted over a period of 5 years, from 1983 to 1988, while residing in Canada and studying at York University, in Toronto, and simultaneously doing a number of odd jobs ranging from dish-washing to painting, translation and interpreting, to survey research and university teaching assistantship, as part of a personal initiative to uncover the major causes of job-related conflicts. It is a retrospective assessment of past job-related experiences, from the perspective of the scientific method and its use in personnel or human resources management.
The focus of this paper is the ?Use of the Scientific Method in Personnel Management?, a human resources and conflict resolution methodology that I first tested to be valid at Vieira and Associates Insurance Brokers, Ltd., in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and then later at the Nordic SADC Journalism Center or NSJ Center in Maputo, Mozambique. In general terms, the paper discusses the functional nature of the Scientific Method, and concludes that a careful use of the Scientific Method in the diagnosis, analysis and resolution of job-related problems does indeed contribute to a better management of human resources, hence Personnel Management and improvement of employee motivation and satisfaction.
The strategy that I chose to adopt is one of resorting to primary experiences, and supplementing them with secondary experiences extracted from relevant literature on successfully settled job-related disputes, and on employee motivation. The paper is structured along thematic areas, starting with the introduction, and going through the definition of the Scientific Method, to the use of the Scientific Method in Personnel Management.
The primary conclusion drawn out of the studies conducted and experiences lived, is that unlike the old traditional model of management, which is characterized by emphasis on ?strong? bosses who spend a lot of time controlling or ?managing? their subordinates, the Scientific Method allows the manager to be less intrusive in the job performance processes of his/her employees, and takes his/her time to objectively reflect on any existing problems before solving them. Most importantly, he/she does not jump to conclusions: he/she formulates hypotheses, tests them and, if valid, makes objective decisions. The paper also concludes that where the Scientific Method fails to be used or is not firmly implemented in the management of Human Resources, which may result in the inability to be objective in employee assessment, assertiveness and/or communication and conflict management or resolution, employees may succumb to overwhelming feelings of alienation from the employers goals and objectives, causing thus a dramatic drop in their motivation and, subsequently, productivity.
III. INTRODUCTION
Although the primary experiences outlined in this paper happened in Canada, this paper was not conceived there. At the time of writing this paper, I had already returned to Mozambique from Canada where I lived for more than a decade, and was working for the NSJ Center. Then the NSJ Center, sometimes also referred to as the Center, was managed by its then Executive Director, Ms. Karin Lis Svarre and the Deputy Executive Director, Mr. Faray Munyuki. The Center was facing enormous problems of personnel management: the communication links between management and staff were broken or inexistent, and there was no interaction among workers themselves. What existed was a hostile environment between staff and management, and fierce struggle of each individual staff member of that institution for recognition, characterized by gossips, influence peddling and a general sense of alienation from the institution?s mission.
I was admitted in March of 1995, to work as an Administrator. Although the work contract clearly stated that I was going to work as an Administrator, I was not given any terms of reference outlining my duties and responsibilities, or about what should be expected from me. When I approached the Executive Director for clarification, the answer was: ?Don?t you want to work?? As the reader may guess, for a recently employed person having his first job in the country after a long exile in Canada, and willing to be productive, the obvious answer could be a yes. And my answer was a clear yes, because I really wanted to work. To my answer she shot back: ?Then go back to work?you will, sooner or later, find out what your terms of reference are, and what you are expected to do.?
After two months of continued work with the NSJ Center, it became obvious to me that I was working in a dysfunctional environment that was not conducive to professional growth and satisfaction. I was confined to a small office where there was no communication with other staff members, and had no visible assignments to work on, except to explore the computer?. Also, I realized that the institution?s top management did not have any clear personnel management policies, nor did they have courage to face the reality of the conflict-ridden environment at the Center. As an Administrator without any terms of reference, I found myself in a dilemma or, to say the least, at the crossroads: I did not know where the boundaries of my power as an Administrator lay, nor was I sure if accounting and personnel management were my responsibilities for the Center had an accountant who worked autonomously from the Administration. One thing, for sure, I knew: something had to be done, and fast, in order to change the situation that both myself and the NSJ Center were going through.
One morning, while seeping through a cup of coffee in the Deputy Executive Director?s office, I remembered that while in Canada, I had successfully solved similar problems using the Scientific Method. Then I thought that if I could only bring up my concern to him, at least someone else would know what was going wrong with the management of the NSJ Center (if nobody else knew, of course). I began by asking Dr. Munyuki to give me the historical background of the Center, with a particular emphasis on the responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with each of the employees?positions, including the Administrator?s. Dr. Munyuki, a very humble and honest person of Zimbabwean descent, briefed me about both the NSJ Center and the duties and responsibilities that were meant to be discharged by each employee plus the Administrator. Among other very important facts revealed by Dr. Munyuki about the Center, I learnt for the first time that: (a) according to the organizational chart and terms of reference elaborated by the Nordic Countries that constituted the Center, which were never implemented at the Center, personnel management and the supervision of the Center?s Accounting Department?which appeared to be autonomous from the Administration?were conceived to be the responsibility of the Administrator; and (b) that although even the NSJ Center?s own organizational chart and terms of reference had a provision for an Administrator, there had not been any Administrator during the 2 years of activity prior to my engagement with the organization, and that the Administrator?s role had been ?traditionally played by the Center?s Accountant.
Since the Deputy Executive Director had agreed to back me if I presented a proposal on the management of the Center?s human resources, I decided to get involved. Then, I remembered my own previous management experience as an Insurance Broker in Toronto and Brampton, Ontario, Canada, where I was saved by the Scientific Method at the latter Branch.
With my Brampton inspiration in mind, I started to diagnose the NSJ Center and soon discovered that I was dealing with an institution that was being managed by a Heroic Manager , who viewed herself as the center of gravitation of all decisions and activities at the NSJ Canter. So, single-handedly, and without any request from my immediate bosses, Dr. Geoff Nyarota and Dr. Farayi Munyuki, I decided to prepare this short guide in an attempt to help the NSJ Center deal with its immediate personnel problems. Quite surprisingly, it did: the Guide lent an insight into the way the NSJ Center was to be managed from now on, identified the major problems at the root of dysfunctional personnel management and interaction there, and even helped the CEO or Executive Director and other senior managers to better realize their full potential.
Furthermore, and because the Guide helped everyone became aware of his/her duties and responsibilities in the organization, the management was able to ?locate? the terms of reference, which existed at the Center and, as stated elsewhere above, were elaborated by the Nordic countries members of the NSJ Center, but were not used. As a result, both senior and junior management (including the Chief executive Officer or Executive Director), and the staff, were able to adhere to the terms of reference for each and every position that existed at the NSJ Center. Also, after I suggested that tea be served in a 15-minute break where every employee would interact with each other, the Center?s work environment improved significantly in less than two months: employees begin to chat with me, the Executive and Deputy Executive Directors, the Operations or Project Manager, and most important of all, they began to interact among themselves.
Due to its proven rapid positive impact on both personnel management and conflict resolution, I decided to share this Guide with all those interested in improving the management of their human resources and, to a certain degree, job-related conflicts, and to improve communication and assertiveness in the workplace.
In order to make its absorption much easier, this document is written in simple English, and is divided into three parts in addition to this introduction: Part one describes the Scientific Method, part two deals the use of scientific method in personnel management, and part three is a conclusion stating the merits of the Scientific Method in the management of human resources and in the resolution of labor conflicts.
IV. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
PART I
Scientists learn what they know by using a tool called scientific method. The heart of the scientific method is the testing of theories. It was not always so. Before about 1500, philosophers believed statements because they sounded right. For example, the great philosopher Aristotle (322-384BC) believed that if you took the gold out of mine it would grow back . He believed this because it fitted in with a more general picture that he had about the workings of nature. Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924) once said: ??gold will eventually be used to coat the walls and floors of public lavatories.? (He?s been proven wrong ever since he uttered the words). In ancient times, this was the way most thinkers believed. If a statement sounded right, they believed it without testing.
About 1600, the scientific method came into use. Let us look at an example to see how the scientific method operates. The Greek physician Galen (A.D. 130-200) recognized that the blood on the left side of the heart somehow gets to the right side. This is a fact. A fact is a statement that is obvious to anyone who cares to look, that is a statement based on direct experience. Having observed this fact, Galen then proposed a hypothesis to explain his assumption. A hypothesis is a statement that is not obvious. But it is offered to explain facts. Since Galen could not actually see how blood got from the left to the right side of the heart, he came up with the hypothesis that there might be tiny holes present in the muscular wall that separates the two halves of the heart.
Up to this point, modern scientists and ancient philosophers would have behaved the same way. Each offers a hypothesis to explain the facts. From this point on, their methods differ. To Galen, his explanation sounded right and that was enough to believe it, though he couldn?t see any holes. His hypothesis was in fact believed by most physicians for more than 1,000 years. When we use scientific method, we do not believe a hypothesis just because it sounds right. We test it, using the most rigorous test that we can think of.
Around 1600, William Harvey (1578-1657) tested Galen?s hypothesis by dissecting human and animal hearts and blood vessels . He discovered that there are one-way valves separating the upper chambers of the heart from the lower chambers. He also discovered that the heart is a pump that, by contracting and expanding, pushes the blood out. Harvey?s teacher, Fabricius (1537-1619), had previously observed that there are one way valves in the veins, so that blood in the veins can travel only towards the heart and not the other way?and the story goes on.
The scientific method is thus very simple. We don?t accept a hypothesis or theory just because it sounds right. We devise tests; only if the hypothesis or theory passes the tests do we accept it. The enormous progress made since 1600 in both life sciences and the other sciences, including the management sciences of which human resources management is an integral part, is a living testimony of the value of the scientific method.
To summarize, the Scientific Method is the best way yet discovered for knowing the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:
a. Observe some aspect of the universe.
b. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis that is consistent with what you have observed.
c. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
d. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in light of your results.
e. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between hypothesis and experiments and/or observations.
When consistency is obtained, then the hypothesis becomes a theory and provides a coherent set of propositions which explain a class of phenomena. A theory is then a framework within which observations are explained and predictions are made. This paper will not elaborate what a theory actually is.
V. THE USE OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
PART II
The use of the Scientific Method is not confined to science laboratories. It can be applied profitably anywhere a person wants to understand something that isn?t immediately obvious. Good personnel and executive managers use the Scientific Method in screening, selection and recruitment of their employees. They also use this method to motivate employees and to investigate and solve job-related complaints among employees in the workplace. Some examples of the use of scientific method in personnel management are outlined in the sections that follow.
1. The Law Firm Experience
The personnel office of a large North American law firm faced the following problems, separately: (a) a thirty-year old male articling lawyer had long been complaining about bad working environment in the office where he was articling, and his complaints were basically leveled against his young female colleague whom he alleged to be against his professional advancement; (b) quite coincidentally, the same female lawyer the complainant was referring to was also experiencing tremendous lows in the workplace. As she had confided to the personnel manager, this was because she had been receiving anonymous ?obnoxiously suggestive? typewritten love letters, and because she did not know who was writing these letters, the situation was affecting her morale and performance at the law firm. She had no idea about who was writing the ?love letters? which, in reality, were harassment letters. However, none of the two employees mentioned here, and affected by the problems referred to, formally had submitted a written complaint to the Personnel Manager. But every employee could notice that the work environment at the law firm was not good and had a tendency to become increasingly worse.
The revelation of the problems that existed at the firm started when the male lawyer missed an important court hearing assignment. Because there was a lot of money involved, and due to the fact that the legal exercise required to win the case would be definitely relevant to the young lawyer?s articling experience, the assignment was crucial both for the law firm and for the young lawyer. When the news of ?no-show? reached the Personnel Manager, this immediately summoned the young articling lawyer for a clarification.
At the Personnel Manager?s question about why he had missed this so important court assignment, the young articling lawyer answered: ?I thought my colleague (y) would be there, and I did not want to become an emotional and performance burden to her. I know that she hates me, and my presence in that court could spoil everything for both of us.? The young lawyer was referring to his female colleague, who was also an articling lawyer. With this information, the personnel manager decided to embark on the first step of the scientific method, to unobtrusively ?observe some aspect of the universe?, in which the problem occurred?the workplace. For two days, he followed the interaction of all employees, with a particular emphasis on the two young articling lawyers mentioned here. This involved sending case documents through the male to be analyzed collectively with his female counterpart and vice versa. In the process, he realized that unlike the female lawyer who appeared to be at ease when engaging her male colleague, the male articling lawyer showed numerous constraints and reserves whenever engaging his counterpart.
Then, the personnel Manager decided to call the female lawyer for ?a brief discussion on business matters.? Here, he attempted to take the temperature of the female lawyer, i.e., to find out how she felt about her male colleague. To the Personnel Manager?s surprise, the female lawyer even praised the ability of her colleague to absorb concepts and to understand cases and find precedents for same. So, what was wrong here? Could it be that the female worker was honestly unaware of what was going on at the workplace? Or was she simply trying to avoid touching any problem that she might find to be sensitive? Since there was no answer confirming any of the above questions, the Personnel Manager decided to go on and act on the information that he had received from his male subordinate.
From the protests against implicit gender exclusion and discrimination, to alleged unfair treatment, factors that seemingly lay in the mind of the young articling lawyer alone, the Personnel Manager decided to find an explanation consistent with his observation (Hypothesis Formulation): ?There is lack of effective communication and/or assertiveness in the behavior of the male articling lawyer in his attempt to date his colleague.? In my view, this hypothesis was affected by the manager?s awareness that some people have difficulty speaking up in conflict situations. Furthermore, he must have realized that many people may feel intimidated by pushy colleagues, or have low self-esteem and regularly put aside their own desires in favor of what others want. This can result in a variety of psychological problems, especially depression, with feelings of low self-esteem and helplessness. As reflected in the behavior of the male articling lawyer, lack of assertiveness makes people feel unwanted and powerless.
Now that the Personnel Manager of the Law Office had formulated his hypothesis, he had to move on to step number 3 above, i.e., the use the hypothesis to make predictions. The first prediction that he made was that perhaps the female employee was trying to conceal the problems that she was having with her male colleague. But why wouldn?t she say the truth? To clarify this, the Personnel Manager decided to call the female employee again to try to find out if she was aware that her colleague was pretending her. To his surprise, the female employee immediately answered no, and that (once again) she had the highest regard for her male colleague who she considered as an exciting and excellent person to work with. However, she proceeded to inform the Personnel Manager about the annoying love letters that she was receiving from someone unknown to her.
With the above revelation, the Personnel Manager was able to test those predictions through further observations. To accomplish this step of the scientific method, the Personnel Manager summoned the male articling lawyer and asked if he knew anything about the letters her colleague was receiving from a ?secret admirer.? The answer given by the male lawyer was a definite ?yes?. When asked if he believed that his female counterpart had knowledge that the said letters came from him, the answer was a vague ?I think she does?. But when the Personnel Manager suggested transferring the female employee to another branch of the Law Firm, the male lawyer burst into tears saying that he could not stand the idea of having to work without his female colleague. One thing, however, became clear: Taking into consideration the revelations obtained through his investigative work, there was little doubt that his hypothesis had past the test. In fact there was lack of effective communication and/or assertiveness in the behavior of the male articling lawyer in his attempt to date his colleague. In scientific method, when the hypothesis passes the test, we have more confidence in it and can call it a theory. In our Law Firm case, and quite understandably, it was used only to solve the job-related conflict between two employees and to ?clean? the work environment.
Now that the Personnel Manager?s hypothesis was confirmed to be true, there was no need to repeat his observations or investigations of the situation. Instead, he had to work toward finding a solution for the situation of low motivation and poor working environment at his Law Firm, created by the events outlined above. This was done by calling both employees to his office in order to clarify the situation. Methodologically, the Personnel Manager found it useful to allow both employees, one at a time, to tell their side of the story, with the Personnel Manager serving only as a mediator. This method proved to be appropriate. After presenting all the facts and clarifying their positions, the two employees became best friends as they were now able to engage themselves in open and assertive communication. As a result, they started dating each other and, a few months later, got married.
As the reader may have realized, had the Personnel Manager not used the Scientific Method to solve the problem stated in this section, the most probable outcomes of the problem could have been:
a) Subjectively, and after hearing the male employee?s side of the story at the very beginning, the Personnel Manager could have formed a biased and negative opinion about him, implying that judging from his stand he was a useless nerd who?given his inability to openly show interest to date his colleague?must have been a de facto author of the unhealthy work environment at the Law Firm. In turn, now that he had added an insult to injury by missing such a very important job assignment on absurd excuses, the Personnel Manager could have given him a yellow card or even fired him for sexual harassment expressed through his obnoxious letters, an extremely unpleasant experience for any woman.
b) Also, he could have asked the female lawyer about the alleged hatred in relation to her colleague lawyer. This could have worsened the situation by pitting the female lawyer against her male colleague, a condition that could have contributed to the lowering of employee morale, not only of the two employees, but also that of the remaining staff.
This case shows that when applied to Personnel Management, the Scientific Method can be a very effective and objective tool. It allows the Personnel Manager to use all available information (facts) in order to find: (1) a reasonable explanation of the events; (2) a fair solution for any prevailing problem and/or conflict. In our Law Firm example, the Personnel Manager was able to use all logically valid perspectives in an attempt to investigate the case presented and/or to observe his hypothesis. The most outstanding strategy was that of calling both employees for an in-depth explanation of the circumstances surrounding their misunderstanding. When used alone, hearing one person at a time can be very dysfunctional. A personnel manager who uses this approach in isolation risks creating–sometimes unintentionally–an unhealthy work environment, particularly when information is leaked to other employees. This happens because the firm?s most aggressive employees may use their best tricks to easily manipulate the favors of the manager for themselves and against others, while the latter are oblivious to what is going on. But the use of the Scientific Method in personnel management and to solve work-related problems and conflicts enables the personnel manager to thoroughly investigate alleged violations and undesirable behaviors, both unobtrusively or by speaking to the employees affected thus allowing for findings that are more objective and near to reality. Here, the need for information, the need to know the truth, and the need to question ?why? is very important for the solutions of serious interpersonal problems in the workplace.
Personnel managers and other business executives who fail to use the Scientific Method in personnel management or in their dealings with employees risk having no competent permanent employees and, quite frequently, end up having to hire permanent temps. For those who use the Scientific Method, the rewards are countless as one problem after another is solved and the work environment is improved.
2. The Brampton Insurance Brokerage Office
My experience as a manager of an insurance brokerage in one of Canada?s predominantly Anglo-Saxon cities, Brampton, put me face-to-face with a sensitive situation that characterizes Canada?s social mosaic, and most of Canada?s business ownership:–social closure. In fact, throughout Canada, business is dominated by specific ethnic groups. For example, the Italians dominate the construction sector, followed by Portuguese; the West Indians, dominate the entertainment industry; etc., and each ethnic group lives in a clearly naturally established neighborhood or District/township. As a predominantly Anglo-Saxon city, most of the business located in Brampton belongs to Anglo-Saxon Canadians. Although there is no direct discrimination in most parts of Canada (including Brampton) for anyone familiar with the Canadian culture, Brampton is one of the most difficulty places for any Canadian from an ethnic Canadian to conduct business activities. Since ethnic Canadians are a minority in Brampton, it goes without saying that there are only a few businesses owned and run by ethnic Canadians there. Where such a business owned by an ethnic Canadian, you can be sure that the majority of its clientele comes form either the community of the business owner, or from other ?sympathetic? ethnic communities. The business of my employer, Vieira and Associates, was no exception. It catered mostly to a few Portuguese or Brazilians and Portuguese speaking Africans residing in Brampton.
The Brampton Branch of Vieira and Associates was managed by an Insurance Broker from the Portuguese community of Toronto, Ms. Connie Mota. On my arrival, the Brampton office had failed to break even. The costs for its maintenance had to come from the Maputo Head Office of Vieira and Associates, a situation that had led the owner to consider closing that branch. Five years of continued service had proven to be futile in terms of a sustainable profitable business portfolio of insured?s. In Brampton, I was saved by the Scientific Method. Using the Scientific Method, I first held a meeting with all of the branch?s employees, seven in total, and asked them to brief me about the workings of the Brampton Office. Beginning with the outgoing manager (whom I met alone), all employees gave their views on what they thought about the Brampton Office of Vieira and Associates. At the end of the collective briefings, I had a ?clear? idea of what was going on at our Brampton Office.
But with the Scientific Method in mind, I still questioned myself if what I had heard was all the truth. So, I decided to call each employee, one at a time, for a clear focus on the problems?both perceived and real?of the Brampton Branch. I found out that generally, when employees are asked to focus on the major problems of their work-place, they are more likely to be honest and willing to volunteer information that can serve as important guide spots that can influence the management of job-related problems or conflicts, rather than empty statements.
2.1. My Findings at the Brampton Branch
After having spoken to all 6 employees, except the former manager whom I met alone later as stated above, I realized that:
2.1.1. Careful attention to the quality of people working at the Branch was lacking. For example, common knowledge has it that under normal circumstances of employment, people are recruited for their qualifications, not for similarity of social class, race, tribe, political ideology or political party affiliation, gender or religion. At the Brampton Office, all employees were either second or third generation Portuguese-Canadians, or Brazilians; while the former spoke English fluently without any ?funny accent?, the latter often spoke English with a foreign accent, and were in charge of customer services.
2.1.2. Judging from the quality of the Brampton insurance portfolio at the Branch, I realized that there was no emphasis on quality work and on performance, which suggested that the management had no commitment to help people reach their potential and to support their efforts to improve.
2.1.3. Surprisingly enough, because there were only 06 employees plus the manager at the Brampton Office, I discovered that there were at least two turfs at work which, in my view, implied that work-related information was not freely transmitted among members as well as between members and the boss.
2.1.4. Unlike the information collected during the group interventions, the person-to-person interviews revealed that genuine disagreements at the Branch were never acknowledged upward, because the manager did not encourage employees to speak their minds and, instead, killed the messengers for bringing bad news. Similarly, the manager failed to encourage members to be open with each other in order to reveal task and strategy disagreements so that they could be resolved. Instead, he pitted subordinate against subordinate.
As the reader may already have noticed, lack of careful attention to the quality of employees recruited at Brampton Office reveals a great weakness of the Branch Manager. Considering that Brampton is a city that is heavily populated by an Anglo-Saxon majority, and taking into consideration the mentality of English-speaking Canadians in relation to people speaking English ?with an accent? or English as a Second Language, it does not make any sense that the manager had to select people using English as their second language to be Customer Service Representatives; this gross lack of cultural sensitivity must have been behind the lack of new business (clientele) at the Brampton Office, a situation that almost killed the Brampton Branch of Vieira and Associates Insurance Brokers. After all, almost all Canadian institutions, including Insurance Brokerages, place value on diversity.
Furthermore, according to the policies guiding Canadian Multiculturalism, cohesion is produced through commitment to a common goal toward which all citizens, in this case employees, work, not by everybody?s thinking and acting the same or belonging to the same ethnic community. From a business perspective, in line with this, different viewpoints about how the goal is attained surface and various approaches are encouraged; conformity in thought and style is definitely discouraged. In fact, in spite of the owner of Vieira and Associates Insurance Brokers Ltd being a Canadian of Portuguese background, our Toronto Office was managed by two Anglo-Saxon ladies?Millie and Helen?who led the Accounts and Payroll Departments, respectively. So, the Brampton case was an utmost paradox.
Regarding the poor quality of the portfolio at Vieira and Associate?s Brampton Office, this reveals that in addition to their cultural insensitivity, employees in our Brampton Office shared no commitment to making the Branch extraordinarily successful in accomplishing agreed-on organizational objectives. As reflected by the existence of a large number of renewed policies with huge claims paid resulting from frequent losses, it became obvious to me that there was no focus on quality business. In fact, some employees revealed that the choice of the quality of both new business and eligible renewals was the exclusive property of the manager. No other member of the Branch shared the responsibility of selecting the quality of business to be written at that Branch.
Lack of team spirit was another factor that led to the situation described in the previous paragraph. The six employees of the Brampton Branch had to wait for their boss to notice any problems regarding methods, service, coordination, marketing strategy and the like. Nobody was satisfied with this procedure, but because the boss had been successful in dividing her workers into turfs, she ruled supreme without any challenge. As a result, nobody worried about the lack of clientele at the Brampton Branch, as long as their wages were timely paid, from the Head Office, of course. In other words, nobody worried about the business as a whole and no one took initiatives to see what problems existed and how they had to be dealt with. Likewise, nobody seemed to know what objectives, if any, were set for the Branch and how they were met. Since there were no clear individual responsibilities and accountability, everyone passively accepted things going wrong because all were saying ?it is not my job.?
As point 4 above clearly illustrates, the problems that I found at the Brampton Office Branch were caused by the model of leadership used there. The model used by Ms. Connie at the Brampton before my arrival there is long outdated and is now inadequate in eliciting ideal best performance in complex, contemporary organizations like our Insurance Brokerage. Although David Bradford and Allan R. Cohen (1987:10) claim that ?all theories of leadership and management irrespective of what label is used and how participatory they claim to be, contain core assumptions that actually prevent excellence from being obtained in contemporary organizations??, I believe that managers must be facilitators able to encourage competent subordinates to have plenty of room to do things for the business.
2.2. How I Saved the Brampton Branch
In essence, I believe that leadership in any organization must be active, in fact proactive, strong, yet avoiding to become heroic. It must tap the energies and potential of talented subordinates whose skills and knowledge are vital for dealing with complexity and change. But above all, I believe that in order to perform better, all managers, particularly personnel managers must be able to use the Scientific Method (through a thorough study of a company?s past history, its potential and actual productive capacity, and future employment plans), and need to know their work environment first in order to be able to design proactive improvement plans.
So, during my person-to-person conversation with the Branch Manager alone, she told me her side of the story and, thereafter, I asked her the following question: ?What do you think that is going wrong with the Brampton Office?? The former manager?s answer was a quick one: ?There are too many insurance brokerage firms here in Brampton, and ours is not one of the best. Also, Brampton is a small town, inhabited by people who do not sympathize much with Portuguese-Canadians?they just do not seem to notice us. Another problem that I personally detected, is that all of my collaborators are lazy and do not want to canvass, looking for new business?theirs is a labor of endless complaints!? At this point, I was able to formulate a hypothesis about why the Brampton Branch was not working well. Here is the hypothesis that I came up with then:
Here is a heroic manager, the type of what A. R. Cohen (1987) called ?the military commander whose coolness under fire and consistently correct orders wins the day, the business maverick who doggedly holds to one idea and pushes it through to economic success, and the western hero who single-handedly eliminates the town?s problems.? She was a victim of her inability to overcome the performance difficulties that she was facing, which I am sure came from softer and more touchy issues of how to motivate others, handle conflicts and disagreements and make and meet company objectives or commitments. Or is it because a particular knowledge is lacking among the employees of the Brampton Branch?
Now that I was sure my conversational strategy had proven useful, and had drawn my hypothesis, all there was still to be done was to test the above hypothesis and prove or disapprove its validity. I spent the first 3 weeks holding regular collective meetings with all employees trying to influence their behavior in order to do away with the ?we don?t get along well? phenomenon that seemed to prevail at the Branch Office. At the end of three weeks, I realized that there were, indeed, softer touchy issues that caused my colleague to fail and even threatened the job security of all the other employees at the Branch. Many of my new colleagues had difficulty speaking up in conflict situations. Others seemed to feel intimidated by pushy people, or to have low self-esteem and regularly put aside their own desires in favor of what others wanted.
In my view, this must have resulted in the variety of problems, especially depression, with feelings of low self-esteem and helplessness. Again like in the previous case, lack of assertiveness made most of my Brampton colleagues feel powerless.
Because a team can seldom mature if some of its members can?t be trusted to take responsibility, and I had pretty good reasons to believe I could not rely on all employees that I found in Brampton, I started using the system of distributing specific job assignments for each employee. Each assignment lasted two days and workers were given the opportunity to share their doubts and learn from each other thus enabling them to effectively interact.
Experience has taught us that working out problems around an issue that involves many parties, which in turn require the ability to diagnose other people?s motivations and develop an appropriate strategy for gaining cooperation, can be a particularly difficult task for those who are unfamiliar with the Scientific Method. For me, and because I had been wrangling with the Scientific Method as applied to Personnel Management and knew its merits, I used individual and group meetings both with the employees and their former manager, to reinforce the reliability of my findings and, with them as a base, to expand on what steps I should take to best manage the Brampton Office of Vieira and Associates Insurance Brokers.
V. CONCLUSION
PART III
As used in the two cases mentioned above, the Scientific Method is accepted not based on the prestige or convincing powers of the Personnel Manager, but on the results obtained through a careful intervention that included observations and/or experiments which anyone can reproduce: The results obtained using the scientific method are repeatable. In fact, most observations and experiments can be repeated many times (in pure sciences, certain experiments are not repeated independently but are repeated as parts of other experiments). If the original claims are not verified the origin of such discrepancies is hunted down and exhaustively studied.
Nonetheless, no matter how beautiful and simple a new theory might be, it must explain the same phenomena the old one did. Even the most beautiful theory can be annihilated by a single ugly fact. Like other scientific method uses, the Scientific Method in Personnel Management has various degrees of reliability and one can think of them as being on a scale of certainty. For example, up near the top end we have the theory of gravitation based on a staggering amount of evidence; down at the bottom we have the theory that the Earth is flat. In the middle we have our theory of the origin of the moons of Uranus. Some scientific theories are nearer the top than others, but none of them ever actually reaches it. In the two examples mentioned here, however, one thing is clear: The Scientific Method has helped the Personnel Manager successfully solve a potentially disruptive conflict at the Law Firm and at the Brampton Insurance Brokerage Branch, as it did at the NSJ Center in Maputo, Mozambique.
