Opinion: Desk-bound dictators too distant from human reality

Three years ago, my younger son received a serious medical diagnosis and we were plunged into the tar pits of American health insurance. I hoped that our reputable provider would behave itself and honour the commitments made in return for a very handsome monthly premium. Instead, it has been a war of attrition. Bills are sent which shouldn’t be sent, reference codes for doctors and hospitals are misapplied, and complex courses of treatment get haggled over as if they were crates of fruit.

It’s no fun to return from long days in the hospital to deal with its moronic correspondence, but my wife and I have progressed from feeling exasperated to deriving a ghoulish pleasure from each victory.

At first, I thought we were dealing with classic organisational incompetence. The bureaucracy of healthcare is overwhelming, and the weekly misfires reflected a system out of control. But the longer it has gone on – the rhythm of the mistakes, their consistency – I have become concerned that the behaviour is intentional. Deluge wearied customers with incomprehensible invoices and maybe they will pay a few of them just to make them go away. It’s a brilliant racket.

Monstrous scale

The experience has set me thinking about how the word “human” has surged to prominence in organisational literature lately. It’s a response to all the technology in our lives, the reliance on analysing big data, robot-phobia and the monstrous scale of modern organisations. Millennials are said to crave human treatment by their employers and “authenticity” in their products. Chevron now bills itself as the “Human Energy” company, and JetBlue’s ads claim the airline “airs on the side of humanity”.

But like so many faddish terms, human can mean whatever you want it to. There is nothing inherently virtuous about being human. It’s a biological classification. Humans can be intimate and caring or fallible; good or evil; brilliant or stupid. It would be all too human for your boss to take you out for a heart-to-heart one evening and fire you the next morning.

I’ve had online transactions which have felt more “human” than talking to a call-centre representative reading from a script on the other side of the world.

The range of “human” organisations stretches from the College of Cardinals to the Nazi high command. For a company to claim it is more human is to say nothing at all.

The real issue is not that companies or people are not human enough. It is the moral distance which separates companies from their customers, senior managers and shareholders from their employees. Moral distance means that organisations and those who lead them never have to suffer the moral consequences of their actions. The health insurance executive does not have to explain to a family why his cocked-up billing system keeps pumping out false invoices. That is left to the poor sap answering the phones.

The airline chief executive never has to explain to hundreds of delayed passengers why his decision to cut turnaround times has grounded his fleet on Christmas Eve. That is up to the harried gate agent. The politician does not have to face gunfire in the war he has started. That’s up to his soldiers.

The head of sales at a major aircraft maker once told me that whenever he tired of being bossed around by his chief financial officer, he would insist he came along on his next sales call and pass on any bad news himself. The chief financial officer quickly backed off. It is easy to be a desk-bound dictator, harder when you have to look your victims in the eye.

Efficiency vs abuse

Customers understand that they get what they pay for. They don’t fly easyJet and expect to be treated as if they were flying first class on Emirates. They are wise to the requirements of a competitive market. Equally, employees know when costs need to be cut or decisions made without any pretence of democracy. From my own dealings with the company, Apple has long seemed to operate as a managerial tyranny, but the rules are clear inside and outside its walls.

What grates is when companies can no longer discern between operating their business efficiently and being emotionally abusive. When managers are so removed from the practical consequences of their actions that their decisions only make sense in their peculiar corporate Wonderlands.

I can think of lots of other terms I’d prefer businesses to embrace before they worried about being “human”. They could be straightforward, sensible, good at what they do, and not shady. They could even try to offer that most desirable of products: one which simply does what it says on the tin. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015

Lucy Kellaway is away