The talent shortage may lie in the recruitment process
A seemingly simple test conducted at a Japanese factory reveals why some organizations find talent where others see only a lack of experience.
If the Toxic Employee Leaves, Does the Problem Leave With Them?
Labeling professionals as toxic may shut down a conversation, but it rarely solves the problem.
The Return to the Office and the Illusion of Control
Mandatory return-to-office policies are often presented as the answer to management, collaboration, and productivity challenges. But they raise an important question: do high-performing organizations manage people by where they work, or by the value they deliver?
The customer should not be paying for your company’s learning curve
Starting from a simple everyday scene, this article highlights a recurring mistake in organizations: confusing training with true readiness and effectively shifting the learning curve onto the customer, with direct consequences for experience and business outcomes.
Flexibility Cannot Be a Benefit
Today, talent, learning, and even the willingness to contribute appear in less linear, more irregular, and less predictable ways. They still exist but no longer fit neatly into systems designed for repetition.
In the Age of AI, Top Performers Can Become the Biggest Risk
This article explores how the combination of pressure for speed, highly autonomous talent, and the informal adoption of AI tools is pushing execution outside formal systems, creating operational risks that traditional performance indicators rarely detect.
When the system fails, the customer feels it first.
It’s Friday night. It’s raining. A simple accident: no one is hurt, but the car is immobilized in the middle of the road. The first instinct is to call the insurance company. After all, that’s what it’s for. The call goes into an automated system. After a few minutes, the first person appears. They are polite but ask for information that has already been given. The system doesn’t show historic customer interactions. The recommended repair shop is fully booked. The tow truck is taking too long. Authorization depends on another department. Each interaction seems correct in isolation and yet, the experience is confusing, slow, and frustrating. No one seems incompetent. On the contrary, everyone seems to be doing their best within their responsibilities. The problem isn’t with the people on the phone. It’s with the system that has stopped working as a system. Initially, this type of service is detailedly architected. Insurance is designed based on a specific audience, known risk scenarios, and estimated volumes. From there, coverage, response times, provider network, support systems, decision-making processes, and training for the people who will operate all of this are defined. The promise made to the client “when you need us, we’ll be there” is, or should be, an operational promise: underpinned by concrete choices about how the work will be done, by whom, with what means, and under what conditions. When that promise is put to the test. Insurance companies, banks, health plans, or any long-term service business thrive on a promise that is only fully revealed in critical moments. Initially, this promise is usually well-supported. Over time, however, something changes, not abruptly, but silently. A decision here, an adjustment there. A new technological system that solves a local problem but creates another one down the line. A change of supplier. An emergency hiring. A redefined goal to respond to short-term pressure. Each decision seems rational when viewed in isolation. The problem is that no one is looking at the system as a whole anymore. What once functioned as a coherent flow begins to operate as disconnected parts. The original system is not redesigned; it is patched together. Exceptions become routine. Implicit dependencies cease to be visible. Operational coherence begins to be lost. From the customer’s point of view, this fragmentation appears as bureaucracy, delays, inconsistent responses, and broken promises. The experience ceases to be predictable precisely when it matters most. Internally, the impact is different, but equally profound. Meetings begin to exist to align what the process no longer sustains. “Key” people become indispensable to make the system work. Decisions are made outside the formal flow. Multitasking ceases to be the exception and becomes the norm. Human effort becomes the main mechanism of stability. When people start to compensate for systems At this point, something critical happens: the system stops protecting those who work in it. People start spending constant cognitive energy interpreting unclear rules, working around integration failures, explaining inconsistencies to the client, and “finding a way” to get things moving. The client feels it first. People feel it later. And yet, the diagnosis usually points elsewhere. There’s talk of lack of commitment, attitude problems, resistance to change, or the need for more training. Investment is made in discourse, culture, and behavior, trying to correct in people what was generated by the job design. The classic diagnostic error Most organizational dysfunctions don’t stem from unprepared individuals, but from the progressive loss of operational coherence. When no one is responsible for ensuring that the system continues to make sense as a system, the cost inevitably appears in two places: in the customer experience and in the exhaustion of those who work to sustain it. Before asking how to engage people or improve customer service, perhaps it would be more honest to ask: what system are we asking them to sustain through their own efforts? No organization should depend on constant human compensation to fulfill the promise it made to the customer. When that happens, the problem is no longer a one-off issue. It’s structural. Disclaimer: Originally published in Portuguese by HSM Management (Brazil) https://hsmmanagement.com.br/burnout-nao-e-falta-de-resiliencia-e-falha-no-desenho-do-trabalho/ Infograms:
Do you consider behavior to optimize your business performance?
Any team’s performance or a business ability to change is dictated by each individual’s approach to the same issue, process, situation. The challenge is that everyone reacts differently, at different pace.