When management runs into an intractable problem often times it thinks the solution is more training. Apparently over 80% of the time, a consultant friend in the training industry said, he finds training is the solution only 15% of the time when the problem is fully investigated and the root cause is found.
Ouch.
How can this information benefit you?
Hold their assessments as you would something with a 1 in 5 chance of being correct. Investigate further.
Ask yourself, what’s really getting in the way to us doing this correctly? There’s a 1 in 5 chance it’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. That means it’s a 4 in 5 chance it’s something else. Well, actually, the stats are a bit off there, but you know what I’m getting at. It’s closer to 5 in 6.
And you know what, the solution is probably not obvious to you or the management. But it may be obvious to someone who’s not in your business culture or industry.
When we, as human beings, see things occur again and again we start to tune it out. Stop for a second. Listen to your environment. Is there a humming sound, a ticking, is there something fairly regular happening that you’ve tuned out?
Our brains want to find new things, unique things, and interesting things. We become blind to the humdrum.
If that humdrum is abject stupidity, we’ll be blind to that too.
What doesn’t work or what gets in your way from working more effectively, as a person, and as a business unit may be something that’s done day in and day out. It is part of the scenery. You’ve tuned it out and so has the management.
Perhaps it made sense last quarter. Perhaps last year. Perhaps the last large business cycle, but it doesn’t make sense now. But you’ve done it that way time after time. It’s now policy.
Policy, half the time, is enforced blindness.
So, you either have to look at things with new eyes or you have to bring new eyes in to observe.
The trick is getting your boss to see this. How can that be done?
It’s not an easy task. Especially if you don’t know where the problem is yourself, and you don’t have proof.
What I recommend is point out the mismatches. Point out how the assumptions you and everyone is making is not tracking with the results you’re getting. Do not do it from a position or an attitude of you know best. Ask simple innocuous open ended questions. Plant small seeds in people’s minds.
Do this is through humor. It’s a gentle art. Try humor along the lines of funny anecdotes and quirky observations. This is opposed to humor putting others down, embarrassing them or making fun of some process…because, remember, someone put that process in place. Someone bought the machine. Someone at some point had the guts to make a decision. Make fun of the mismatch now, not the person or even the thinking then. If you can, make fun of yourself in the midst of it. Effective self-deprecation releases others from a feeling of indictment. Again, it’s a gentle art.
While you are pointing out the mismatches look into the implications and costs of the mismatches.
“We expect X and we always seem to get Q. What is the cost of the difference between X and Q?”
“What do we have to routinely do because we’re getting Q instead of X?”
If you can gently point these out you’ll find
a) you may move closer and closer to the root problem on your own…you’ll perhaps get in the neighborhood, and…
b) your boss may start to feel the need for an investigation into a change.
Yep, it’s a slow play. You allow your boss to come to a conclusion to act. Hopefully the action isn’t a knee jerk “we have to train you more.”
