Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
~ Bertolt Brecht
Billie runs a shop of 24 workers that have a maintenance contract with a local school system. Over the summer, the shop has been busy, but not overwhelmed. They’ve been making routine repairs at schools around town. The crew is happy.
Billie knows that in one month school will start. The unnoticed maintenance needs over the summer and the impending assault by the returning students are going to drive demand through the roof. This change will not only result in the obvious – a very busy time for the staff – but also in the unexpected. Staff stress will go up, job satisfaction will go down, tempers will flare causing unexpected interpersonal issues, some number of people will be injured, and two or three “really weird” things will happen.
Billie and his team have to be prepared for added work load – which standard work processes can handle. But they also have to be prepared for the human emotional toll and the rise of things that will only present themselves when they do. They don’t know what those things will be – they just have to be ready for something.
We have two choices with change. We can ignore it or we can embrace it. We can not eradicate it. We cannot tame it. Change is both external and internal. We change, markets change, the weather changes, politics change. Everything migrates, shifts, and evolves.
While there is much in these changes we cannot foresee, there is much we can accurately anticipate. Billie knows that tempers will flare and that there will be interpersonal blow-ups. They will always be petty. They will always make him want to shout, “Seriously? This is what you’re wasting my time on?” But Billie can see that its because of stress and change. When these flare ups will happen is a mystery. That they will happen is a certainty.
The two or three really weird things can range from the minor-but-time-consuming (there’s a family of angry cats stuck in the HVAC system at Bernie Madoff Elementary School) to the horrifying (which we really don’t need to envision here). These may or may not happen.
Having no tolerance for change as a manager means that every event not covered by process becomes a traumatic event for all involved. Process cannot deal with the daily operational change, therefore the change is a crisis. That trauma makes people less able to effectively respond to the change when it occurs.
Change before you have to.
~ Jack Welch
Managers need to respond to these types of operational change daily. I’ve never met anyone who disagrees with this. But what I often find is managers wanting to respond to these events with more process. There is no reason after cats appear in an HVAC to create a “Cats in HVAC” rule set. The event itself is unimportant.
What was important was:
- How quickly was the issue responded to?
- How quickly did the worker or team devise a fix?
- Did the worker or team ask for help when they needed it?
- Were the appropriate people informed of the situation?
- How was other scheduled work impacted by this unforeseen event?
In essence, what impacts did this change from the status quo have on the crew, the schedule and the customer? Did Billie and his team have a system in place that could elegantly respond to change? Were there existing processes or procedures that slowed response or made it less effective? Was the response to change to freak out and lose control of schedule, communication, and the crisis itself? Or was the response to change to escalate the new event, inform those downstream of the delay, and move forward?
Note: This post is about operational change … there will be others about organizational, market or other types of change.
Further Reading:
Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules Our Lives – Leonard Mlodinow
Photo “Unexpected Food III.2: Gourmet Sardine Fries” by Jo Christian Oterhals
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