Flair up?

I watched Office Space, one of my favorite movies, again the other day. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, it’s about a dysfunctional office where the managers are clueless, and the employees are frustrated and demotivated. Think Dilbert with a plot and a few famous actors.

In addition to being spit-milk-through-your-nose funny, Office Space has some hidden lessons for managers. For example, in one thread of the movie, Jennifer Anniston works as a waitress in a restaurant in which her manager judges her commitment to her job based on the number of pieces of “flair” she wears on her uniform.

You see, in the restaurant where Anniston’s character works, every employee is required to wear a uniform and affix a minimum number of decorations (buttons, pins, ribbons, etc.) to it. The decorations are known as “flair.”

At first, Anniston’s character is chastised because she isn’t wearing the minimum number of pieces of flair. Then, when she does wear the minimum, she’s dinged for only doing “the bare minimum.”

As managers, it pays to look around at our policies, procedures, and practices to see if there are any silly or impractical ones that can be eliminated. There is no “one test” for unnecessary policies, but some possible litmus tests include:

• Does the policy or practice contribute to the bottom line?
• Does the policy or practice improve customer satisfaction or service quality?
• Does the policy or practice reduce the risk to the business?
• Does the policy or practice increase revenue?
• Does the policy or practice cost less to administer than it saves?
• Is the policy ever enforced, or does it ever prevent anything undesirable from happening? (unenforced policies are common, but useless)

This list should provide some ideas, but the bottom line is to see if you have any silly practices or policies that can be eliminated. Your employees and customers will thank you!