Positive Psychology at Work:

7

Positive Relationships at Work

For some years I have worked with a plastics manufacturer. The manufacturing operation operates a 24-hour day shift system, while the commercial and managerial function works a normal 40-hour week. This means there are times when the site is alive with managers, and other times – evenings and weekends – when management support is very thin on the ground. One of the many fascinating things about working with this organization was how much more smoothly the workers thought things went when the managers weren't present and they could make their own decisions and organize their work. By their account they got a lot more done, with a whole lot less stress.

Management saw things slightly differently. It seemed to them that, left to their own devices, the workers organized things to suit themselves and not to management instructions. Undoubtedly, both accounts were true. In the absence of managers managing things, workers effectively self-organized. The quality of this self-organization varied considerably. On some occasions quotas would be filled, the product shifted through, the yard cleared, the goods stock-piled and the site kept basically tidy. At other times there would be a lack of coordination between the various parts of the process, resulting in bottlenecks, goods being dumped in strange places and quotas not being fulfilled.

When I started to ask about how it worked when it worked well, it very quickly became apparent that it was down to personal ...