Podcast Summary About Reducing “Red Tape”

Have you heard of the term “red tape”? “Friction, sludge, no redeeming value” are some of the words associated with red tape in scholarly literature. Most people think of red tape pertaining just to government, yet also impacts business results.

For example, as a customer, have you ever had to decipher a bill you knew was incorrect and then try to get it fixed? It is difficult because organizations have dysfunctional and outdated rules, processes, redundant paperwork, wastefulness, and unnecessarily long wait times. The keyword is unnecessary.

Red tape is avoidable, which is the theme of my podcast episode featuring Stephanie Thum. She has spent the last year studying bureaucratic red tape from a customer experience perspective. While Red Tape is a customer problem, it has a tremendous impact on employee engagement and their ability to deliver customer excellence.

 Topics include:

• What is bureaucratic ‘Red Tape?’ 
• Why it’s a customer problem and obliterate employee experiences?
• What are the root causes?
• Is it all bad? How can change happen whereby leaders stop looking the other way to improve customer and employee loyalty?

Watch Stacy Sherman’s Interview on Youtube

More Highlights from Stephanie.

It has been argued that red tape is hardest on customers. But bureaucratic red tape has a compounded impact on employees. Most employees usually must administer red tape of some kind to customers. It’s their job to know the rules, communicate them, and enforce customer service policies or rules, for example. But then employees have rules, procedures, and processes of their own to deal with at work. Things like:

• Rigid hierarchy.

• Piles of paperwork to get reimbursed for travel expenses.

• More piles of paperwork to get approval for a training seminar.

• Rules that make it hard to get a promotion.

• Rules about communicating with colleagues in other departments.

• Unnecessarily long processes to hire and fire.

• Long requisition processes to get the materials to do a job.

Why Red Tape Is A Big Deal

Research has shown red tape can:

• Create cognitive uncertainty for employees.

• Send employees into rule-bending mode.

• Lead to cheating or gaming performance data.

• Make employees want to leave their jobs.

• Lead to employees deliberately working against leadership.

• Create job stress.

• Cause mistakes from being overburdened.

• Inhibit innovation and employee motivation.

• Make employees feel powerless and alienated.

• Slow down productivity.

• Cause job dissatisfaction.

• Impact performance.

• Stand in the way of employee participation in organizational change.

Unfortunately, few leaders seem to want to do anything about the red tape that causes poor employee experiences. In fact, most seem to be looking the other way while the rules pile up.

About Stephanie Thum

Consultant, writer, speaker, evangelist, researcher, a former practitioner in B2B and government. Recently published in the scholarly world. My Dictionary of U.S. Federal Government Customer Experience Terms, Phrases, and Acronyms: A Guide for Practitioners and Consultants, is listed as a top CX book of 2021 by Book Authority.

Stepanie’s website

Twitter  LinkedIn

About Stacy Sherman: Founder of Doing CX Right®‬

An award-winning certified marketing and customer experience (CX) corporate executive, speaker, author, and podcaster, known for DoingCXRight®. She created a Heart & Science™ framework that accelerates customer loyalty, referrals, and revenue, fueled by engaged employees and customer service representatives. Stacy’s been in the trenches improving experiences as a brand differentiator for 20+ years, working at companies of all sizes and industries, like Liveops, Schindler elevator, Verizon, Martha Steward Craft, AT&T++.   Stacy is on a mission to help people DOING, not just TALKING about CX, so real human connections & happiness exist. Continue reading bio >here.