Making Sense of the Census

I don't think that it is possible to make sense of the census. The census, by law, is taken every 10 years. I can't think of another project that depends heavily on the use of computers, outside of the Y2K projects, that has more time to plan and prepare for execution. Ten years and we still can't get it right! I don't have any insider knowledge to rely on, but what I understand is this... the taking of the census count was supposed to depend very heavily on hand-held computers. Each person in the field, and this is where the majority of employees work, would be able to enter data directly from their HHC (hand-held computer) into a major computer system somewhere via wireless transmission. The HHCs did not come close to performing as they should have. In my old office, for example, instead of 1000+ persons entering their own payroll information daily, it will fall on several office clerks (and not enough of them and those not well trained!) to manually enter 1000+ handwritten payroll sheets every single work day and this is just one of several ways that the HHCs failed. By the time the Census realized that there was a major problem, it was too late to fix it. This leads to the second thing that I have been told in conversation with management from the 2000 census... the software that is being used today is basically the same software that was used for the 2000 census, but it was quickly adapted to handle today's conditions. Heads should have rolled. Did you hear of a congressional hearing on census stupidity? Neither did I. Maybe there was one, but the waste of time, money, and manpower certainly didn't make the headlines. Now, I'm going to talk about my own office and there will be some names included. I figure that I can't be fired since I quit at lunchtime on Thursday. I might be sued, but I'm not sure that you can be sued for the truth and even if I can and loose, there isn't much anyone can take from me. The census is a firm believer in training done by verbatim reading. I understand that this aids in being certain that everyone trained gets the same instruction set. What isn't taken into consideration is that this doesn't allow for experience and expertise to be passed along and it doesn't allow for daily, hourly, and sometimes minutely changes that are made in the way things are processed and the policies and procedures to be followed. The policy is that the verbatim reading must be done by a management level person. This is a real farce. I've known some very good people managers who couldn't pronounce a three-syllable word correctly. I've also known some very sharp census clerks, who had learned their jobs by doing them and making them work, who weren't allowed to do any of the training. It is probably a ridiculous comparison, but would you want to have CPR performed on you by a doctor who had read about it or by a nurse who had actually done it many times? I once had the nerve to question this policy with my manager. I was scheduled to do verbatim training on a task on which I had no experience. We had a very experienced clerk available who could have done a much better job of the training. I asked my manager what she would do if I went out and got hit by a bus. Her response was that her family didn't play the "what if" game. As a manager of many years of experience, I learned that playing the "what if" game was an integral part of planning: if Ross is sick and I have 15 persons scheduled for training, what would we do? If the HHCs fail to perform as expected, what would we do? I used to call this "contingency planning" and made it a part of every project in which I was ever involved. In our office, we followed policy when it was expedient to do so, but we bent and even broke policies when we felt it was necessary. I have no trouble backing up this claim. I wonder, is the way that lower level census personnel are treated a symptom of poor management, the economic times, both, or some other reason? There are so many persons wanting a job and the census can't hire them all. There is a ready supply of job candidates. Don Shank is the area manager for the area that includes my old office. In a teleconference on the last day I worked, he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that we should just get rid of any clerk that isn't doing the job and hire replacements until we get clerks that can do the work. There was no question of the legitimacy of their training or support. There was no thought given to the fact that management might be failing our clerks rather than our clerks failing to perform. There was no mention of where the time might be found to properly train them. I mentioned in an earlier blog, that I had done verbatim training for a class and was so pressed to get them out into the field that I wasn't allowed time to cover instructions on the daily activity of filling out a time sheet. Again, this example is a real reach, but can you imagine doing verbatim training to teach a squad of Marines how to shoot a rifle and then send them to war without any instructions on how to reload their weapons once they had used all of their original bullets? One of the favorite responses given when a procedure question is asked is to "look it up in the manual." Not once are we ever given sufficient time to digest the instructions found in the "manual" nor is consideration given to how much longer it might take a neophyte to find something in one of many manuals than it does to just give a straight answer to a straight question. If there is plenty of time, this might not be a bad training technique. Given the fact that there is never enough time, this approach fails miserably. Time after time, in our office, we have found that there is never enough time to do a task right, but time is always found to do it over. I hope that all of the rest of the many census offices in the US are managed differently than my old office. The technique of choice is in the Winston-Salem office is "fear and intimidation." The mantra is "what have you done for me lately" and blame is the name of the game. I absolutely adore the direct manager that I had when I left yesterday. She puts in way too many hours trying to do the the best job of which she is capable. She was just moved from manager of one area to the management of my area. She has been ill-trained for the change and yet is ahead in the major milestones just as she was in her last area. At the same time, she constantly fears for her job. I have seen her publicly berated in front of the whole office staff and held and comforted her as she tried to hide her tears back in a corner of the office. I suspect that, if her husband knew what really goes on, he would be ready to clean up the office with some of the managers. I left in order to protect what little sanity I had remaining, but I feel so very badly that I put more pressure on her. I hope that she understands and forgives me. I don't know the area manager, Don Shank, as a person or a manager. I haven't been around him enough to draw any real conclusions. This much I do know; if he is as important as our office management make him out to be, he must sit at the left hand of God. I can't count the number of times that I've heard, "Don Shank wants this now!" I can't count the number of times that I've had to interrupt something that desperately needed done to hire persons or to get them paid because "Don Shank needs this 10 minutes ago!" Maybe Don Shank is a convenient scapegoat for my old management. I hope so. I have trouble believing that someone could be such a poor manager otherwise. While I'm naming some names, and I intend to name others later, let me mention three: Rea, Arizona, and Tony are not actually assigned to the Winston-Salem office although they all spend considerable time here. I admire each one of them for their knowledge and their desire to get the job done. I have disagreed with their approaches sometimes, but I cannot ever fault them for their work ethic. I claim the friendship of all three and hope that they feel the same. It would really hurt to know that they thought I wasn't worthy of their friendship. As the clock approaches 5 p.m. each day, we hear the "what have you done for me lately" cry. A clerk can knock out a ton of payroll forms or call, interview, and hire a dozen census takers, or plan and schedule 20 training sessions, or process several dozen personnel folders, or prepare supplies for the training sessions and the crews going out into the field, and at 4:45 p.m., you can bet that one of the upper management is going to ask why some other task hasn't been completed yet (and probably drop Don Shank's name as the requester of the uncompleted task.) This one thing turned out to be the straw that broke this camel's back. At 8 a.m. on Thursday, I joined my manager, and the manager of the Winston-Salem office in a teleconference with Don Shank. I was a second thought, pulled into the conference once it had already begun. I think that Don wanted to impress on me just how tenuous my job as a supervisor in the Admin Dept might be. He pointed out that some changes could be made and probably would be made. That didn't really bother me much since I work hard and don't feel like I owe the government a penny back on my paltry paycheck. Later that morning, I was a part of firing an employee. He really wasn't performing up to standard, but it is never fun to be a part of giving someone the axe. At what should have been my lunchtime, I was pulled into another meeting with my manager, the Winston-Salem office manager, and one of the regional technicians assigned to our office. It was pointed out to me that I had failed to accomplish an assigned task. I made the point that everything in our office was treated as a #1 priority. I said that I was willing to get the task done that afternoon, but I really didn't want to hear the "what have you done for me lately" questions at 5 p.m. The office manager stated that she would reserve the right to ask that question no matter what. As long as she was manager, she said, she would ask anything at 5 p.m. that she felt like needed asking. That was the straw! I calmly stood up, laid my ID badge in the middle of the table, and walked out. I will work as hard as I possibly can, but I will not be crucified for not completing something in a perceived timely manner when every single task is considered a #1 priority. The last thing (that I'll mention, not that bothers me) is the "blame game." For many years of management, my technique, when things went wrong, was three-fold. First, I wanted to fix the problem regardless of the cause. The second step was to find a way to prevent the problem from recurring, whether by a software change, a procedure change, a retraining, or whatever. The third step, and it was used only when the same problem was recurring, was to identify the individual responsible and offer retraining. Only on very, very rare occasions did I find it necessary to take any other action. People want to do good. They don't want to make errors and they want to establish themselves as dependable. If you believe that about your people, than the fault has to be in the tools that they are provided by you or the training that they receive from you. If you want to place blame, blame yourself as a manager. That certainly isn't the case in our local census office. In my entire career, I never fired anyone, I wrote up only one person, and was never written up myself. At our local census office, the joke is that, if you haven't been written up, you just aren't doing anything. Before I mention a few more names, let me say that the way we were all picked for our jobs was to do well on the census test (and sometimes get veteran's preference points), show up on a list of candidates by test score, and accept the offer. When I first came to the Winston-Salem office late in 2009, I don't think that I could have picked or worked with better people if I had personally interviewed each one of them. Robert, Lori, and I came almost all at the same time. Lori and I were soon promoted and the only reason that Robert wasn't was that he just didn't want the grief that would go with the job. He was as good or better than any of us. He left a couple of weeks ago because he had other things he wanted to do. Scott, Justin, and David came a bit later and fit right in. Scott, too, has left us for greener pastures. David is running our supply room and I hate to think of the mess we would be in without him. Justin has just been promoted and will be missed in his old job. Frank is a manager and we have become friends. Sara and I have been out to dinner with his family and I hope that we continue to build on this foundation. Suzanne works so very hard, cares so very much, and is my lifetime friend. She has the promise of a heartfelt hug anytime I see her. I hope to be able to build on a friendship with Suzanne and her husband. There are so many others in the office and in the field that I've gotten to know. With the attitude the office shows toward them, the office just doesn't deserve them. I'm so very glad to know them and would like to see them all often in the future. There are many I've not named, but I hope that they will forgive me and that we will rejoice whenever we see or hear of each other in the future. Who knows, maybe 2020 will find us all fighting the same battles all over.