My client is big, bureaucratic and inefficient. When it hired my company, it sent a huge package filled with contracts and so forth. There was also something laminated inside; it was a parking pass—which is very nice, except that we’re more than 1,000 miles away and will never visit.
Bureaucracies don’t care. Bureaucracies don’t think. They just do what they do, which at least lets them follow a certain predictable formula. Common sense is not part of the equation, but following a routine is. If vendors get parking passes, then vendors get parking passes. It says so right here on line 12, sub-category R.
The vendor has no car, is blind in both eyes and lives under a freeway? That’s terrible! Where will we deliver the parking pass?
There’s another predictable thing about bureaucracies. They’ll always be working on some scheme to make themselves less bureaucratic. Working on it, mind you. Not implementing it. You can’t implement anything, silly. It’s too risky. But you can have endless committee meetings to talk about it. That’s encouraged.
Anti-inefficiency initiatives are very useful. Many interesting ideas are exchanged during these efforts. Of course, if you have endless committee meetings and you never take any action, some of the employees will start to think serving on a committee is pointless. (I know. Imagine.) So on rare occasions, when a committee is all fired-up about an idea, you have to actually let them try it. Of course, you have to frame the implementation in such a way that nothing will actually change—let’s not get carried away here—but you still have to let them give it a shot.
And that brings us to the SWAT team. Remember this from 1970s television: “When you need help, you call the police. When the police need help, they call SWAT”?
Of course, SWAT teams are real. Many police departments have them. They’re specialized units called in to break up riots, serve high-risk warrants and deal with sieges, barricaded gunmen and the like. The SWAT team took down the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, which I suppose kept Symbologna in bondage forever, but someone had to get Patty Hearst back.
Remember Daryl Gates? He was the Los Angeles police chief who caught all kinds of heat after the Rodney King riots and the O.J. trial. The SWAT team was originally his idea, and he ended up writing books. Your CEO wants to write a book, doesn’t he? Then you need a company SWAT team.
The corporate version of the SWAT team works like this: If someone is being inefficient, a bunch of specially trained, special forces dudes show up in full body armor and fill the poor schlep with bullets. Then they leave the body behind as a reminder to others about what will happen if they, too, slack off. (OK. That’s not true. That’s how the SWAT team would work if I were running it.)
The real corporate SWAT team is designed to respond quickly to a pressing need. It uses certain people within the company who are considered best qualified to complete a certain, high-priority task. When the SWAT team is deployed, it goes to the people it wants and instructs them to immediately drop whatever they’re doing and, er, follow them.
If the person is in the middle of something, the SWAT team simply orders someone else to cover their work, and the lucky honoree is immediately deployed for the SWAT-selected project. Presentation due the next day? You, Rutherford, are the best presentation writer we have. Never mind the assignment you had due in two hours. It will be covered. Come with us!
Rutherford enters a conference room; the SWAT tactician still has the scruff of his neck in hand. There are Steurmer, Thompson and Banks—all with crumpled scruffs. Apologetic calls to families have been made. Bad coffee is brewing. We’re gonna be here a while.
Steurmer had been working on a financial report for the CFO, who needed to present it to the board, when he got SWATTED. The SWAT team commander hears the CFO coming down the hall. He’s not happy, because Blimbleberry is now finishing the financial report, and Blimbleberry can’t even count his own fingers.
The SWAT team commander shoots the CFO. (OK, I know. But if I were in charge…)
When the SWAT team was first created, it was sort of an honor to be chosen. People felt like they were being recognized for their ability. But it only had to happen a few times before they started realizing that being SWATTED is basically a big pain in the butt.
Remember, this is still a bureaucracy. Who says the projects chosen by the SWAT team are really more important than the ones you were already working on? When a project goes to the SWAT team, is it because it’s truly unique and deserving of the disruption? Or is it because Dufusberg should have started working on it two weeks ago and instead of letting slide until the last minute?
The very existence of the SWAT team is an admission of inefficiency. If the only way to get things done is to completely disrupt the normal flow of activity, what does that say about the normal flow of activity?
It also doesn’t take long before those being rushed away by the SWAT team start to realize they’re still being evaluated according to how well they perform their normal work. And if their normal work starts to suffer because the SWAT team keeps letting Blimbleberry finish it for them, their annual review isn’t going to go so well.
No worries, because the company has announced that, six months after its creation, the SWAT team is being disbanded. The company announced this, mind you, when there was still five months to go.
Why? Because otherwise, one of two things will go wrong: Either it won’t work, in which case it didn’t work; or it will work, in which case the entire company will have been proven to be a slow-moving, dull-thinking behemoth. Either of these would create more problems than executive management has an appetite for solving. So SWAT simply goes away regardless of the outcome. That’s set in stone, and no one has to do any more thinking.
Which is more like normal around here anyway.
