The Great Run Around

Building an efficient culture within your organization “Akujunkan” is a Japanese phrase that translates roughly to “The Great Runaround”. This is considered one of the greatest frustrations in everyday life in Japan and is the cause for unbelievable amounts of inefficiencies.

What is the Great Run Around?

The great runaround, if you don’t already know what I’m referring to, is the practice of dividing or segregating various job functions into smaller parts that require it to be done by different people, in different departments.

The System

In Japan, this system was considered a normal way of life and many felt it probably couldn't be helped. To my amazement, this method of compartmentalization still persists today. I’m sure many of you, without naming names, have been to leading department stores and have contacted someone from the ‘cooking and utensils department’ who couldn't seem to manage even the most basic task if it fell outside their highly specialized duty.

Japan is a nation with a reputation for squeezing high productivity from its workers, achieving top-level quality for their customers. Until the 90’s virtually all local and national government offices, post offices and banks were notorious examples of the divided system. Let’s say you needed to renew your car license, for example, you would need to first register and fill out a form at one counter, then pick a number for another counter, then pay at a different counter, then pick up your license at still another.

Think of a simple task like going to the post office (where there are already ridiculously long lines). If you had to get your stamp in this line, a form from over there, the payment there, and a slip issued at another counter. It would be absolutely maddening if there’s absolutely no sharing of responsibilities, and it’s just one person that handles all the stampings, payments, etc. So for 1 complete process, you instead get 4 people that are repeating the same thing over and over without change, a vicious cycle of an inefficient process. ​

Does this happen at your organization?

As naive as I am, this happens in all organizations big or small, there is no perfect place where compartmentalization does not exist and there are I'm sure positive reasons why 'running around' is a norm. What can we do about it? To be honest, not much and maybe only a little.

If you're in a leading C-level role at an organization and your board members, embrace change and disruption, then you're human resources division or head of people are your allies to spark the flame. That could mean re-introducing of job roles, it could mean re-defining an individual role and its responsibility, packaging this up into a more attractive Job title, and pitching it to your HR reps.

-- An example of redefining a role and its responsibility --

'A Human resources administrator turns into --> Employee Engagement, they manage from start to finish the talent search, talent onboarding process and even talent review, instead of being in charge of administrative tasks, they are in charge of the people they hire, it's people being engaged and the administrative functions that come within it.'

Many managers and first-time founders, make the mistake of not defining a clear job description, responsibility and goal agreement prior to onboarding staff, people want to know how they can excel at their jobs, what type of responsibilities are available for them if they work hard, that it's a way for them to clearly understand how to progress through the organization.