The people on the ground doing the work have very valuable insight on the business. This means they can probably tell if your instructions are problematic.

That only happens if managers listen. See a perfect example of what happens when they don’t.

Everything is to plan. Technically.

Working in a UK retailer of a 300+ chain, head office had this idea of putting up plans for various sizes of stores detailing the exact location of every item in each section of the store, so that, basically, every store would be as identical as possible and these plans would be checked and possibly updated every week.

We had a ‘tech department,’ which was basically tablets, bluetooth speakers, headphones, earphones, sometimes cheap laptops and the occasional random ‘techy’ items that head office had decided to source from somewhere. The problem was that the stuff we actually got delivered for the tech department almost never matched what was on the head office plans and was often not even close.

That created a problem.

We had no clue why this was, and the store manager pointed this out to his boss and various people at head office, but nothing changed. As such, our standard procedure was to look at the plans for the tech department, then pretty much forget they existed and fill the department by deciding what would go where ourselves.

Head office got wind of some stores not sticking to the plans, usually because of selling out of something and either spreading stuff out or putting something else in there. Down came the commandment from on high (via email), ‘All stores are to merchandise according to plan and cannot deviate under any circumstances. If something sells out, leave that plot empty until the next restock of that product.’

The store manager sent a query up the chain, double-checking this, asking if ‘any circumstances’ really meant ‘any circumstances’, including ones that would have a large negative effect on sales, like the issues he’d already highlighted. He got told ‘any circumstances’ meant just that.

So they let his order speak for itself.

So, we did exactly what we were told. We stripped the tech department of everything that wasn’t on the plans, and put everything that was where it was supposed to go. This meant about two-thirds of the department was empty. We also piled up everything that we had that was not on the plans in our stockroom. Then we waited.

By the following week, there were a good few emails from people up the chain, asking why our tech sales had plummeted. The manager’s response was to simply email back two pictures, and explain what they were.

Picture number 1 was the tech department, ‘merchandised’ according to plan. Picture number 2 was the pile of stuff sitting in our stockroom, not out to sell, because it wasn’t on the plan. The week after, we were told to revert to doing things as we had been.

Here is what people are talking about.

Haha good analogy.

Right. Planning isn’t inherently helpful.

That would have helped.

Logic isn’t the strong suit of a lot of people like this.

I guess not.

Boss of the year right there. Yikes.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.