Bridging the office-field gap can transform operations
The plumber that my dad hired came up the basement steps slowly, shaking his head (for dramatic effect, I thought). He sat at the kitchen table and let out a long, loud exhale. He spent the next few minutes working on his calculator. He started to speak but then hesitated and chuckled quietly. Whatever he was preparing my dad for, it certainly wasn’t good news. He made that clear.
As he was explaining the work that needed to be done, he was sure to use technical terms and trade lingo to try to make my father feel stupid and incapable of challenging him. Not all tradesmen do this, but I’ve seen my fair share. There’s a natural conflict between laborer and contractor—in other words, the one who knows what needs to be done and the one who will pay for it or greenlight the work. However, my dad was a metallurgist and quite adept at technical language and jargon. To level the playing field, he asked a few field-savvy questions. The plumber moved his glasses to his forehead and sighed, never letting on that he was rattled but reining in the challenge. His client was no fool. He looked disappointed. I thought Dad was quietly heroic. I was only 10 then, but I remember the lesson. In a battle of unspoken words, the less said, the better, and the quality of what is said speaks volumes about the inevitable chess-game moves.
Field Versus Office
The modern workplace is no different. People who operate heavy machinery, use power tools, and wear helmets and ear/eye protection are terrific at this. They rev the engines, stare at the boss through mirrored sunglasses, and often pretend they can’t or didn’t hear the orders shouted at them. The boss plays his games, too, walking away, shaking his head, widening his eyes at his assistant, indicating, “It’s just impossible to talk to these guys.”
It’s all part of a game—a power game in which everyone participates. Industry professionals know about it, but no one talks about it. As long as the company has a management staff and a labor staff, tension between the two will exist. Labor will call management “The Ivory Tower,” and management will refer to labor as “The Guys in the Field.” The terms themselves indicate the prejudice felt by each. So, on the occasion a “field guy” stops in at the main office, or a “management guy” steps into the field, the walls immediately go up, and the energy resembles a turf war. “What’s he doing here?”
This implication is so prevalent that, even if there are no clear field versus office clusters, like a suite full of lawyers or stockbrokers, sides will be drawn based on anything that represents a class distinction—veteran versus rookie, married versus unmarried, young versus old, anything to differentiate and sequester. Them against us. It just can’t be avoided. And the whispers that fill the room are inevitable.
Changing The Culture
So, fifteen years and four years of college later, I stood in a six-bay garage at my new job, where 50 or so people celebrated the completion of a newly built playground/park area. A ribbon-cutting had taken place earlier in the day with the mayor and all the city planners who participated in the blueprints and construction. Now, all that remained was a sheet cake and all levels of people from my company. That’s right—field guys and office guys. The whispering began, and I couldn’t stand it. As a new planner, I’d spent a lot of time on each side of the fence, in the office rendering plans and in the field contemplating the installation of those plans. They were all great people. Why all this distrust? Why all this conflict-seeking? I was powerless to change what I observed that day, but I stored it in my mind and vowed not to forget.
As fate would have it, I advanced through the company ranks and became an assistant manager at one of the park reservations. I made it a point to bring staff from the field with me when I visited the main office and always took a moment to introduce the designated worker to the engineers, HR staff, marketing associates, and so on. My hope was they returned to the field office and told the others about the nice people “downtown.” It worked to a degree, but as leaders know, it’s always easier to be critical of others than supportive, so the situation was improved but not solved.
After a few years, I was promoted to purchasing manager at the main office. I remained determined to close the field–office gap. I decided to do the following:
- For my staff (three buyers), I built two mandatory field visits per month into their annual work program. That meant my staff listened to feedback from the field at least 24 times a year. We learned so much. These garbage bags are failing, these paper towels don’t hold up, these snowplow blades wear down too quickly, this brand of chainsaw isn’t as strong as the other. All this input was gathered, and adjustments were made to give the field better tools and equipment to perform their jobs. And in the monthly company newsletter, I included a list of those who contributed to help improve the company.
- Next, I held monthly doughnuts-and-coffee meetings with the field staff at the main office (whoever the park manager elected to send). The gatherings featured salespeople who wanted to sell new or improved products. This meant salespeople no longer sold to the buyer; they sold to the end user who recommended products to the buyer. By working together and decentralizing the process, the field-to-office relationship became a partnership. One of my happiest memories was walking down the office hall and noticing three sets of muddy boot tracks leading to my head buyer’s office. When I walked past his door, there were three field techs showing him the corrugated-metal pipe that had failed on the park trail. They asked for a higher-grade improvement and were compelled to walk right in and demonstrate their challenges. The ice was melting, and a mutual appreciation was forming.
- Later that first year, I rewrote all the bid packages that provided tools to the field (e.g., shovels, rakes, etc.). One of my buyers found the annual bid for such items provided so much overstock that some field offices had 15 or 20 similar items rotting in the tool shed. Instead of sending each park reservation the requisite six shovels, six rakes, etc., I wrote the bid in such a way that bidders were required to provide one solid price for the year and hold that price. So, anytime a park worker needed a new shovel or two new rakes, he or she could pick them up (or have them shipped) at a locked-in price. This way, parks that didn’t need additional stock could save that money in their budgets and buy a bigger tool or a more relevant piece of equipment. It was up to them! As one can imagine, this was hugely popular and demonstrated how well the office team listened.
So, the cornerstone of my administration had a motto: “BUILT ON TRUST.” I still believe that this very simple, decentralized application brought the park system into a mode of field-to-office familiarity and reciprocity that remains present today. As technology has improved, inventory lists have transferred easily to the spreadsheets that now facilitate an open and shared environment.
