Re: text production process

["Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

John Garside wrote:
> Our department has been discussing promulgating a 
> text production process for some months.

Just wondering -- Why do the 'customers' care what your
production process is? Can every department who needs your
services specify a different production process?

> The sticking point is that the commissioners of the 
> text -- typically other departments -- are treated 
> as 'customers' 

I am familiar with the "internal customer" paradigm. I have
worked under it in the past. It goes like this: Everyone is your
"internal customer" and as such, you have to provide them the
same exalted status and consideration you would to external
customers. The funny thing is, when the documentation department
asks "OK, then who is responsible for providing exalted service
to ME?" then usually the response is a scornful silence, and the
paradigm's reciprocity breaks down. 

The internal customer model is a misguided attempt to bring
free-market incentives to inter-departmental relationships. It's
a substitute for actual leadership. In the absence of actual
cash changing hands, it's just a big pretend game. It's the same
old Theory X management, only with a different vocabulary.

Nobody is a customer unless they are making a buying decision
with their own (real) money. And nobody is a vendor unless they
are free to walk away. And the customer/vendor deal isn't done
until money changes hands. 

In reality, the "internal customer" paradigm is just another way
to enforce the hierarchy of the corporate totem pole. I think
corporations regret having "empowered" all their employees, and
so the internal customer model is just a way to remind you that
you are really low-level support staff after all. 

Notice that managers higher on the food chain never seem to have
any "internal customers." Yeah, I know they are responsible for
the big picture, the whole organization, and theoretically all
employees are their internal customers, bleh, but when it comes
to resolving an issue with one of their "customers" who happens
to be a peon, suddenly the customer isn't right anymore. 

> who, if not always right, do have the last word.

What would happen if physicians suddenly decided that their
customers (i.e., patients) were always right?? 

> How do others reconcile the application of a 
> standard process with gorillas who want lipstick?

Give 'em lipstick and laugh like hell at their monkey-faces.
Just make sure you are still getting paid.

Mike O.

 

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