Destructive Set Ways

By Paul Bertrand

December 1, 2014

 Is your management caught in their set ways? All too often leaders of an organization continue to do things that are not practical and nobody ever questions it. Sacred cows are what we call them when I'm doing process improvement. The industry can be full of businesses not willing to change since the decisions are made, or lack of, because of obsolete knowledge or traditions.

I recently discovered an example from Freek Vermeulen from the London Business School in England. He shares a great example of a company, or industry with organizational dysfunction, which he refers as collective inertia.

His personal example begins with him having worked for a newspaper prior to becoming a professor doing research on strategy and entrepreneurship. He like many of us, experienced the less favourable reading pleasure in tight quarters of a subway or outside with any wind, the broadsheet format of a newspaper can cause. He assumed that the large format of newspapers were probably because of cost efficiencies. When he questioned his employer at the time on the format and the pain experienced by readers, customers, they told him that it is the norm for a reputable newspaper to be in this format and change would cause loss of sales.

He since discovered a couple of points. First, the newspapers that made the decision to change to a smaller tabloid format did not experience loss of revenue, some would even argue a positive impact on the revenue. Second, he discovered that the reason for the larger format had been obsolete for over 150 years. His research discovered that in the 18th century a tax had been implemented in England based on the number of pages a newspaper would print. Hence the larger format to avoid tax. In 1855, this method of taxing was eliminated.

I was also reminded this week about the work of Gordon Stephenson and his monkeys and how it relates to organizations set in their ways. Please note in the 1950’s the ethic committees were not as prominent as they are today with animal studies.

Stephenson put four monkeys in his lab, with a ladder below a hanging banana. Whenever a monkey touched the ladder to climb for the banana, the monkey and the others get sprayed with cold water. I’m sure there were a few attempts for the banana with some cold, wet and pissed-off monkeys before none were making the attempt. Then added is replacing one of the four monkeys with a newcomer. When the new monkey saw that banana, he did what most would do, go for it. Interesting is the other three pounced, attacked and fought the new monkey when he attempted to go on the ladder for the banana. Just imagine what he was thinking of those three.

Eventually one by one the original monkeys who had experienced the cold water treatment were replaced, but yet none were ever allowed or trying for the ladder. Have you ever questioned the bad practices that are causing some monkeys in your organizations?

If you would like to learn more about organizational effectiveness and how the solutions at Canadian People Management can improve your results, visit us at www.cpeoplemi.com

 

 

Paul Bertrand is founder of Canadian People Management Inc. which is based out of Pickering, Ontario. His company specializes in organizational effectiveness development through solutions tailored to strengthen his client’s cultures, leadership and teams.

www.cpeoplemi.com