The management systems have destroyed professionals in the gas industry

 

by Dumitru Chisalita

People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity and curiosity to learn.  This is the naturalness of the human being. What we have today at the workplace, people and teams are hierarchically separated, the seniors are rewarded and the juniors are punished, appreciating the former and mocking the latter. We reduced everything to trenchant discussions, management through objectives, rules to achieve, rewards, business plans etc., which separates what should be united and makes people turn against each other.

The world has become increasingly interconnected, the environment more and more complex and dynamic, the time increasingly compressible, the intuition more and more limited. It’s simply no longer possible to establish everything at the top and others to blindly follow orders of the “big BOSS”, whatever his name would be.

The country project Starting over in the gas market (“Punct și de la capăt în sectorul gazelor naturale”) means rebuilding not only a legislative and organizational framework, not only developing energy governance, but it means the return to PEOPLE.

I think it’s time to stop working to achieve the dreams of others (who today are “perched” in some position) and to mobilize from the positions we hold to achieve our own realistic dreams in relation to organizations where we operate.

I believe it’s time that professionals in the gas industry continuously extend their capacity to create the results they truly desire, in which the executive status under the principle “pipe down because we are in power” be changed with the appreciation and encouragement of new and prolific ways of thinking, in which we discuss about US and not HIM or HER, where collective aspiration is free and people must continually learn how to learn together and not how to execute blindly.

The complexity and dynamics of the business environment require the work to also become increasingly full of learning”, from anyone who has something to say and not just applying the principle “the boss is always right.” It’s no longer enough to have a single person learning for an institution, company, branch, section, formation etc. It’s simply no longer possible to establish everything at the top and others to blindly follow orders of the “great strategist”.

What was forgotten when the plans, designs and projects were drawn up is that the fundamental units in an organization are the work teams (people who need each other to produce a result – to bring added value).

Managers have failed, because that’s how they were educated, their way of thinking and acting being deeply marked by formative experiences.

What characterizes the current management system (even only theoretically) can be structured on eight pillars (according to P. Senge), but which has proven in the recent years, including through the developed private management, that does not entirely correspond to a change for the better.

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A new Management System must be implemented in entities in the gas industry, in view of restoring the situation to normal. This system can only be one of rapprochement between people on the basis of principles and professionalism.

The article was originally published in Romanian here.

Image source: inteligentenergy.ro