ThingsGoingWellThingsGoingPoorly

New thread from SanitationSystemsForOrganizations

Johanna asks It's difficult for any organization, healthy or not, to consider change. If the delays are long enough, how can you tell what's going well and what's not?

I'm never certain that all the things that bubble to the surface are truly what is and isn't working. But there is power to writing things down, questioning them, and gaining agreement that you have defined them correctly.

Often someone in the organization has sufficient experience with system to see through the fog of delays. And the insight of these people often conflict with the orthodoxy and thus are dismissed or ignored. Has that ever happened to you?

Imagine going to see your doctor and he or she never asks you how you feel. Is never concerned about your problems until a test detects something. There are delays in your bodily system. Your perception about what's going on are clues. And an effective doctor is trained to work through the clues so he or she can properly diagnose your problem.

Every organization has things that they will agree are going well and things that aren't. Sadly in too many organizations, management focuses 95% of their time on a few things that aren't going well and ignores both the other things that aren't going well and the things that are going well. Note, I'm okay with choosing to ignore certain things because you are time contrained. I'm not okay with the concept that the only choices the person has is which emergency to work on. Some energy must go to preserve thing that are going well. Otherwise entropy will happen every time.

I agree that delays with a system make it difficult to correctly define the problems. The bigger problem in my eyes is the failure to take an inventory of things that are and aren't working. And using that information, a long with the objectives of the organization, to choose where to focus energy and time.

The whole concept is ridiculously simple and effective.

What's your insight on why only a few organizations take the time to inventory the things that are going well and the things that are going poorly?

SteveSmith 2005.08.2

Dani is fond of pointing out to me that most people, and most organizations of people, don't do things all that well (like driving). Maybe we should ask why it is that any organizations at all take time to inventory things that are going well and poorly. - JerryWeinberg 2005.08.28

Updated: Sunday, August 28, 2005