I know that having policy is a good thing in most cases – brings some repeatability and control to important actions but some times they just get out of control and most of that is in the application of one that is difficult to understand at best.
The interpretation of some of these things does away with the intent of the original idea – case in point. We have a policy that sets out how a “consultant” must be hired to fulfill a need in the company. In the old days you justified the business case and got one or two levels up approval (probably both) and then hired the consultant. Along came the new tracking systems and the division of powers and we then had to prepare the business case, get approval then present to “purchasing and contracting” the info and they would go through it all again and make out the “requisition” to hire at a rate etc… so the consultant could get paid because all payments were removed from the front line to a finance group but they could not do contracting so that was moved to the warehouse – purchasing and the advent of SAP put in place the Requisition first then the purchase order then the tickets through finance to match up with the PO then payment might be issued for the service rendered… but recently we have added in the “loop” to run the whole thing through Human Resources to identify that we need to hire a person (consultant) so now we have to go first to HR to get a Personnel requisition raised so that can be justified that we do not have anyone internal to the operations that can assist in the needed work (crap if we did we would be looking for a consultant – right) anyway they have an approval process that sometimes go to the VP level then it can come back and the PM&L (purchasing Materials and ? – hell I don’t even know what all that stand for anymore – used to be ‘warehouse”… anyway they have to approve the contact terms with the consultant and make sure he has insurance, etc, etc. so that we can then “raise” the requisition and notify them we have (which usually take a lot of their time to help us get that done so it is useable) then they create the Purchase Order then we can request the consultant to arrive on a agreed date (here it is more complicated as we have to get a Letter of Invitation so the visitor can get a visa to come into the country and that has to be approved by the country manger, anyway… the process appears to be a set of 3 concentric loops that may never spit out the required end product if one does not constantly stay with it to divert it at the proper times… In the meantime several “stake holders” can introduce delays and modifications at any point…
The beginning of this process was supposed to save the company money… by better utilization of existing assets… but when your “ass-sets” are scattered all over and so many times they have an input and each sees the problem differently and has a personal interest in the outcome it can be a really big, never ending, circle and the understanding of why gets lost in the execution of the authority levels trying to insure they are covered and can not be criticized for an incorrect outcome… whew!… in lay terms it is a SNAFU waiting to happen every time…
I just had one that lasted 4 days… and I am totally wiped out over this… felt like I was in a cross between a volley ball tournament or an extended “ping-pong” match… server up a need or request and get back a requirement – fill that and serve it up and “bong” back it comes… over and over and over… it appears to be over and I sure hope so, I cant do another one of those real soon…