totem poling
totem poling
(OP)
anyone here working under a totem-pole managment system?
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RE: totem poling
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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...
RE: totem poling
corus
RE: totem poling
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks Pro 06/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
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RE: totem poling
TTFN
RE: totem poling
Come to think of it, are there any really good "Management Styles" anyone would care to endorse or do we just accept that bad managers will deliver bad management whatever the system?
The real question might be to ask under which system do good managers deliver good management?
A "Totem Pole managment system should at least puts some sacraficial "middle managers" into the queue for redundancies... so it can't be all bad.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: totem poling
RE: totem poling
I tend to find that a flat management structure works well:
- Those at the top are not too remote from those nearer the bottom, so they are less likely to be spoon fed the 'right' answer by sycophants looking for their next promotion.
- The top brass have a very good idea of the general mood of the workforce.
- There is less space for the inept and the incapable to hide.
The problem with a flat structure is that it requires a small number of good managers with substantial experience of their industry who are dedicated and prepared to work hard. It is all to easy to add another subordinate level and divest some of the work onto them. When that is allowed to happen, bureaucracy emerges.Anyway, what do you imagine a dog would do when confronted with a totem pole?
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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...
RE: totem poling
Did you have a question? Or, were you just trying to spin everybody up to dance around the totem pole?
RE: totem poling
i read a bit about some of the bigger corps doing this, wasnt sure if anyone out there had any good or bad experiences with the totem pole employee ranking system(?)...
no one wants to play second fiddle
contracting makes more sense every day
-nadam
RE: totem poling
Sounds to me as if your company is headed for mass lay-offs; what better way to 'objectively' justify laying off people than to totem pole them? Just start from the bottom in every pay grade and work your way up until you've laid off enough people.
RE: totem poling
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RE: totem poling
Hg
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RE: totem poling
As for contracting, how is that any different? If anything, the totem-poling results in more drastic behavior with a contractor, since a low-performer is simply let go and there is no incentive to help or mentor him, since there is no long-term benefit.
TTFN
RE: totem poling
if a contractor cant/doesnt do his job- he's run off, easy enough
if a contractor performs- he gets paid, no attaboy's, no promotions, etc...
i dunno, i dont want this to turn into a 'what is and what isnt contracting debate', but it seems like contracting might be a sidestep to beauracracy- if i spelled that right
so far we are slated to be totem pole ranked employees by job description- (mfg eng, tool design, nc prog, etc..)
so if there are 5 mfg engineers, they will be ranked by performance (i guess at yearly eval meetings or something)
anyone have any positive or negative experience with a similar-type management system?
RE: totem poling
It is not really a management style, but rather a HR syle for determining who to keep and who to let go when times get lean. It is also a method for determining merit increases. The company I work for used to do totem polling, where they literally had names and placed them vertically (by department and labor grade). It can get ugly, when two managers are trying to sponser their employee.
Now we just do forced distribution with a nudge up or down in the distribution.
RE: totem poling
I contracted for over ten years, and what you say is true. You may not have the job security, but the politics can roll off of your back like water off of a duck. No personal or emotional investment in your "customer" is needed. Do a good job, and the chances are very good that you will be able to return if they need you in the future. Do a poor job, and you are out the door with hardly a moments notice.
RE: totem poling
Our company used to hire lots of contractors specifically so that they would not incur unemployment insurance issues in downturns, they'd simply dump the contractors.
TTFN
RE: totem poling
Contracting at another company, management laid off all the directs except one. All the contractors were upset because they should have sent us packing. The reason was budget issues. hmmmmmm
RE: totem poling
In my experience, contractors always get more notice than directs.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: totem poling
The more experienced contractors have raised their rates to compensate for the lost bennies and there is often parity in cost between contractors and direct.
TTFN
RE: totem poling
The company decides how much the peasants will get as a pay rise.
This forms the pool of money that is to be split amongst the peasants. Somebody splits this pool into a smaller pool, for each department. Each peasant is then ranked against various objective measures by their managers.
Each department then gets all the rankings for its employees, puts the best ones at the top and the worst ones at the bottom. They then look at how much each person is paid, and gives a raise from the merit pool to adjust their pay in line with their performance in the department.
I will leave the deduction of how this worked /in practice/ as an exercise for the reader.
Since we peasants aren't quite as stupid as HR thinks we are, we gutshot this procedure a few years back.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: totem poling
Since both management and contractors seemed happy, I wonder who really ended up with the short end of the stick?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: totem poling
Geoffrey D Stone FIMechE C.Eng;FIEust CP Eng
www.waterhammer.bigblog.com.au
RE: totem poling
you wrote
"...we gutshot this procedure a few years back."
what does 'gutshot' mean in this regard? I heard this term for poker "drawing to inside straight", little fuzzy on the meaning here.
RE: totem poling
Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091
RE: totem poling
This leads to a comment made by one of my former colleagues when asked about his rise:
"I'm pretty happy with the size of my slice. Pitty it wasn't a bigger cake though!"
RE: totem poling
Contractors do get unemployment, paid by the jobshops and reflected in the rate that they are paid. So, indirectly, the customer company is paying for unemployment insurance for contractors.