Human Beings as Machines: Managerial thinking of Ethiotelecom

Two out of different functions of management are organizational structure and staffing.

 Organizational structure is formulated according to the organizations goals, objectives and values. For an engineer organizational structure may mean low level design (LLD) of strategic planning. The engineer specifies appropriate location, on that location which building, on which floor, how many racks to mount, how many slots each rack should have, how many servers, hard disks, disk arrays and what type of communication is needed etc. And then in which slots to mount the servers, hard disks and disk arrays.

Finally, installation takes place, both hardware and software, then testing and then maintenance. It continues that way.

For the management body (board of directors) after organizational structure (LLD in engineering terminology) is designed staffing follows by. Staffing is assigning duties and responsibilities. For the engineer this means installation. Continues assessment (evaluation) and training for the management body are termed as testing and maintenance (for the engineer).

For the engineer every component of the system is crucial, for the system to work properly. Power, network communication, storage and processing must integrate and work synergistically to produce higher output.  As a result all of them are given equal weight, equal follow up, equal testing and maintenance. Here there is no so-called hierarchy.

In management there is no equality. Importance increases as one goes up the organizational structure. And so do the benefits. But work load decreases. The responsibility of the management body is throwing down hot potatoes to the lower staff.  The so-called collaborative management is, hence, impractical. All organizations prioritize classical hierarchy – because the management body is the most egoistic body of any organization.

In organization I’m working for this egoistic nature is prevalent. The management body is meant to solve organizational problems or to assign people that solve problems. But what is happening, in our case, is to the contrary. For all internal problems, what the management body is looking for is external solutions.

 But things cannot be solved that way. Inside out approach of solving problems is long lasting, yet they don’t like. They instead blind fold themselves and frantically run for outside in approach of solving problems. They are always in search of machines, not capable human beings.

That’s why no matter how much we invest to transform the organization; it never moves even a single step forward.

According to Public relations professionals, for any organization two things are crucial for its continuity: employees and customers. Employees are crucial Internal customers are employees, whereas customers and business partners are external customers.

Therefore, to achieve its objectives an organization must focus on its employees and its customers. It must satisfy their needs and respect their values. It must build a very strong relationship at least with both of them. Negative relationship is tantamount to failure. Neutral is okay, yet not enough. Positive (strong) relationship is what the PRs department is expected to build.

In the organization I’m working for employees have lost hope on the company, the customers don’t trust it either. With both crucial entities, there is almost no communication. This means the organization doesn’t know whether it s customers are satisfied or not. 

And this in turn leads us to conclude that the company doesn’t know what its objectives are. Which of its values are un-compromisable and which can be tolerated.Its objectives, mission, vision and values are nothing more than paper values. This is the main problem of our company.