The Waiting Game

I think it was Seinfeld who said, “when you go to the doctor, and they put you in the waiting room, you KNOW you’re gonna wait.  It’s called the WAITING room…”

That got me thinking about how tragic it is that FEMA continues to struggle with their responsiveness to folks who need help from Hurricane Sandy, especially with respect to housing.  (minor aside – I refuse to call it “Superstorm” Sandy.  Enough already with that…)   And while I recognize, after a good solid 20 minutes of research, that FEMA is doing a better job overall than they did during Katrina, that’s not really my point.

FEMA is the Federal EMERGENCY Management Agency.  They have the word EMERGENCY right in their name!  You would think that would give them a clue as to not only what their purpose is, but more importantly, how they should structure themselves to fulfill their mission!  It’d be like the “lightning round” on Password taking 20 minutes. 

So my question to you leaders out there is: what is the purpose of your team or department?  Are you supposed to be nimble and quick to respond to unplanned situations, like an outage in a power plant, a server crash,  or a virus on your network?  Or are you supposed to be capable of maintaining a steady pace and executing work over the long haul?  Ensuring that processes are followed, risks are being managed, and prizing accuracy over speed?  (by the way, an accounting department responsible for publishing a monthly balance sheet might be a good example of the latter)

Does your team make-up, culture and reward system mirror that purpose?

You should check.  What are you waiting for…?

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized