BEYOND THE BUZZWORDS

A MAFIA godfather finds out that his bookkeeper has swindled him out of $20 million.

This bookkeeper is deaf, so the godfather brings along his attorney, who knows sign language. The godfather asks the bookkeeper: “Where’s the money that you embezzled from me?”  
The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the money is hidden.

The bookkeeper signs—“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  The attorney tells the godfather:  “He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”  At this point, the godfather puts a 9mm pistol to the bookkeeper’s temple, and cocked it while directing the attorney to ask him again.

“He’ll kill you if you don’t talk,” signs the attorney.

The bookkeeper signs back:  “OK.  You win!  The money is buried in my cousin Enzo’s back yard.”

The godfather asks the attorney, “Well, what’d he say?”

The attorney replies—“He says you don’t have the balls . . . ”

This trick of some shady lawyers is known in management as “filtering.”  It is the intentional distortion of information to make it appear favorable to the first recipient.  Information filtering is often found in communications between lower-ranking employees and higher management in organizations.  

Unlike our Mafia story, filtering can happen in companies, whether in private or public when someone tells the boss what he or she wants to hear.  This could happen due to many reasons:  One, it is founded on the fear of the person bringing in the bad news. Two, is the unwillingness of this person to be identified with certain mistakes.  Three, is the general desire of the news bearer to please the boss or the recipient.

Whatever is the reason, the person receiving the filtered communications can end up making poor decisions because of inaccurate information.

When I was active in corporate human resources, I used filtering a lot when I tried to convince the employees’ union to accept and support a certain organizational policy.  For instance, when management decides to transfer a deadwood to another work assignment or geographical location, we don’t simply say it is management prerogative and you don’t have a choice.  

But no, it is not a good political statement for managers.  Otherwise, if you persist in hiding from the cloak of management prerogative, chances are—the employees would be more than rebellious than you can imagine.

That’s how HR management must try to be diplomats.  You have to blend in to what is acceptable to the employees even if you feel like hitting them on the head.  Sure, the labor union can immediately spot management insincerity, because by nature, managers cannot pronounce the code in a certain secret way to sound like they’re part of the working class.   

All HR management books are vague about this.  But whatever approach you take with the workers, you have to seriously consider applying a proactive two-way communication process. 

Depending on the quality of your experience with people, you might get complaints from certain of group of workers that I will describe here, for want of a better term as “problem employees.”

Take this as a typical example from a certain Marco Domingo, who works as a corporate manager of one medium-sized organization, based in Makati City who is asking the following question:  “Why do some employees who are known for their absences and tardiness problem, would be brave enough to ask management why they were given the lowest rate of yearend bonus this year?”

This question expresses a commonly held negative bias by problem employees or employees with problems.  Many of these people believe that management has been unfair to them that if you want to hide something from them, all you have to do is to write a formal policy, post it in the bulletin board or intranet, and they will never ever read nor understand them, and just the same, will ask the same question with no guilt whatsoever: “What can you offer us?”
 
Rey Elbo is a business consultant specializing in human resources and total quality management as a fused interest.  Send feedback to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or follow him on Facebook or LinkedIn for his random management thoughts.