allow me to introduce you to the organisation's tail

What happens when the tail tries to wag the dog?

Pretty much nothing happens because like any good 'tail' it knows its place.

What happens when the tail believes that it has the authority to wag the dog?

Pretty much nothing because like any good tale, that's all its authority will ever amount to in the dog’s mind.

Allow me to introduce you to the organisation's tail…taada…enter the Human Resources (HR) department.

In the workplace with its established pecking order, HR is that tail even though it might foolishly harbour delusions of grandeur that it has the authority to wag the dog.

A notion which equates to nothing more than delaying tactics and only serves to enhance the popular view that it's the most bureaucratic and impotent functional area within the business.

After four months of working with them to get the organogram fixed so that the project team can disband itself and get on to doing other things, at the last hurdle some HR despot who is completely new to the process has a few concerns which needs to be ironed out.

Where do you start?

Perhaps by appealing to the big dog to give its tail a shake so that we can all swiftly move on to bigger and better things.