Houston Southard

Dan Heath - Reset

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

Change management is hard. Corporations are run by people, and because those people’s willfulness is just poorly-described willful ignorance, they organically insulate themselves in self-assuring echo chambers, surrounded by yes men, held fast by having built what they did.

When you find a niche to make a lot of money, having outsiders come in to tell you how to change with the times is a lot like giving someone a treasure map then watching them use it as toilet paper as they rough it through the directionless terrain.

Mismanagement like this is the not-so-accidental accretion of outdated habits. That’s why change consultants, unlike the impotent titans that build their empires, go and actually observe the frontline work that’s done. They talk to the people doing the jobs and get the raw feedback those workers are too jaded or scared to deliver up the management ladder for fear of retribution thinking feedback means criticism.

In the absence of that crucial kind of feedback, C-suite’s smart sounding words are sweet hot air guesses. It’s one of those fundamental differences between functional vs systematic understanding (ya i know how a toilet works, until you ask me to write out the steps in which it works).

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, or so we’ve heard, forgetting that what old Tommy Jefferson actually said was that “error of opinion may be tolerated as long as reason is left free to combat it.”

To Reset, find leverage points: go and see the work, consider the goal of the goal, study the bright spots, target the constraint, and map the system. Then restack resources: start with a burst, recycle waste, do less and more, tap motivation, let people drive, and accelerate learning.

Past words for present probs, because when all is said and done, more is said than done.