As I read the Promising Practices article, I remembered something that happened when I took Dr. Keller’s Intro to Instructional Systems class. Several of us realized in horror that we are learning to be “the Bobs” from Office Space. If you haven’t seen Office Space, check out this YouTube clip:
The sad thing is, Office Space is HUGE for those of us who work in corporate America. We quote it all the time. We give each other gifts based on the movie – I even gave my boyfriend a red stapler for Valentine’s Day one year. Its so huge with us because it is so true to life.
The Bobs were the consultants who came into a high tech company (both of them were named Bob) to help resolve some performance issue. Pretty much everyone in the company knew the Bobs were there to figure out who was going to get laid off.
The Bobs diligently interviewed everyone in the company about what they did for work every day. But they really don’t understand the system that was the company. For example, watch this interview (can’t find it on youtube & can’t embed it sorry!):
http://odeo.com/episodes/24110829-Office-Space-People-Skills
So is that what we are learning to become? In the reading, David Chavis made me think this is what the profession of evaluation is like. He talked about how evaluators blame stakeholders when all they deliver is reports, brand themselves with buzzwords that don’t really mean anything, rely on their credentials as an author rather than a practitioner, maintain the mystery of the world of evaluators to maintain power of those who are evaluated, refusing to be accountable to anyone, and not understanding limitations from lack of knowledge about a subject that they are evaluating.
Yuck! I don’t wanna be a Bob!
I’ve never been interviewed by a Bob, but I’ve felt the downstream effect from their evaluations. My experience has been just as Chavis described about the bad evaluators, and just as Office Space portrayed the Bobs. Reports were produced that made it painfully obvious that the evaluators had not figured out the real performance problems, and then just like the Bobs a bunch of the wrong people got laid off.
One thing that draws me to this field is the opportunity to help people, the possibility of being what Chavis calls “part of the societal change process”. I want to find ways to eliminate the problems that keep people from working to their true potential. I think the issues on diversity pointed out by Ricardo Millet were very important. How can you perform a useful evaluation if your information filters prevent you from seeing all of the puzzle pieces necessary to paint the picture?
So, is it possible to pursue evaluation as a career without becoming a Bob?
Fantastic! And definitely cautionary. I wonder what the answer is?
I was an International internal production auditor (Read: Internal Bob) for a large building products company, right out of graduate school. One of the frustrations I had was that if we did not find any deficiencies, we were told we were not doing our job. Often we were told by our bosses that we had to find SOMETHING. Needless to say, I did not last in the position for very long as I felt sometimes what I was doing was morally wrong.
Anyway, I used to be able to get a lot of information by playing dumb. Sometimes, they would think that I didn’t understand their comments (the audits were conducted in French and German for the first time since all of the auditors were multi-lingual). I found it was important to ask those I was auditing how they would solve the problems I would identify. For example, there was a storage room in which there was only one key to ensure against theft of replacement parts. The problem, the day shift manager had responsibility for the key. So when we checked the storeroom during the evening shift, it was open.
It was important that we understood the system. One person was responsible for the key. He was on duty during the day. If there was theft, it was not during his time when he had the key. This had been an ongoing problem and the previous auditor had insisted that the storeroom always be locked. As a result, there was a major problem when there was an equipment failure and the “key holder” was away on vacation. They needed to bring in a locksmith to get the door open, resulting in a major production delay. Thus the door was open during the evening and night shifts.
My suggestion: give keys to a supervisor on each shift. The Production Manager’s suggestion, leave the key in the production office in case of emergency. While my option was fine, his was politically more acceptable. So we went with his option. The previous auditor had just looked at the organization’s “rules” rather than looking at the system as a whole.
So it is possible to work like a Fred or Debbie, rather than a Bob.
Kia ora e Gina!
I have been interviewed by a ‘Bob’. Glib though it may seem, it all comes down to matching the knowledge transfer process. I believe accurate evaluation of processes in large organisations has become impossible. There are a number of factors that have led to this, the chief of which is complexity itself.
@Tony – you will appreciate the problems with getting one’s head round the idea and scope of complexity. Part of the contribution to the increased complexity has been the ever-increasing reliance on the individual who ‘turns the wheels’ in an organisation in order to get things done. The complicated routines that are welded into some organisational systems have become almost impossible to implement. In many ways, that’s exactly how people work, so much so that no two people will necessarily do any one routine the same way.
For everyone who performs the ‘same task’ in an organisation the same way requires coordination and practice that is inefficient for they do not need to be performers like the Swiss Drummers at the 2006 Edinburgh Tattoo!
Catchya later
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