Job Relations

JR gets results through people

Moving somebody’s cheese doesn’t solve any problems; it only creates a new problem to be solved. And what makes you think it was a good idea to move that cheese anyway? What problem did you aim to solve by moving the cheese in the first place? And just HOW are you going to go about developing your people so that they can solve it anyway?

"Delegation. Empowerment. Coaching. Stewardship. Mentoring. Leadership."

These are the words of today's human relations model. But they are nothing new, a conceptual system of hollow words that have been flogged into diluted submission over the decades by “subject matter experts”, blurring the distinctions between human relations, business needs, individual needs, social movements and the law. We now believe that if we simply tell a worker our expectations (all documented, of course, for legal reasons) then delegate the task of corrective action to the worker himself; well then, we are managing by objectives – leading, coaching, or mentoring, or whatever the flavor of the month is, was and will be.

Of course, much is lost in translation from pen to practice. Notably absent in today’s western mainstream HR model are the concepts of respect for people and problem solving.

These are simple concepts that are difficult to grasp and practice for today's overburdened manager. No other person on this planet knows this better than the front line leader, the supervisor - the person in the middle directing the work of others - where the upstream and downstream pressures of business and individual needs threaten to crush the leadership spirit every minute of every workday. Rather than render words completely useless in an attempt to explain the strategy of Job Relations Training, it is likely the TWI directors prefer that I cite the JRT manual:

  1. A leader gets results through people. People must be treated as individuals. Good leadership prevents many problems, but the leader must know how to handle those that do arise.

  2. Complete facts must be known or obtained. Opinions and feelings must be found out and considered along with the facts. It is necessary to look at an individual because people are not alike.

  3. Decisions are made on the basis of facts properly evaluated and related. And decisions do not make a solution.

  4. The leader must know his responsibility to check the results of the decision. It is necessary to watch the timing of action and follow-up, and watch for effect on the objective, on the individual, on the group, and on production.

Simple concepts, simple approach. Don’t make it complicated – PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT applies to the human relations model as well.


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