Align The Power and The Pain
7/5/2007
One of my children’s favorites
stories is The Princess and the Pea, which tells the story of a
prince who travels the world looking for a princess to marry.
While he meets many, he always finds something that makes him
doubt whether each is a real princess.
So he returns home disappointed.
One night a storm rolls in and, in the middle of it, a
soaking wet princess knocks at the door. The royal family takes
her in and decides to test whether she is really a princess.
Knowing that real princesses are incredibly fragile and sensitive,
they place a pea in the middle of a mattress, place twenty more
mattresses on top of that pea, and place twenty blankets on top of
those twenty mattresses. Then they show the princess to her room.
In the morning the family asks the princess how she
slept. She replies she hardly slept at all because there was
something hard and round in the bed. Hearing this, the royal
family rejoices because they knew that only a princess could be so
sensitive. The prince and princess are soon married and live
happily ever after.
* * * * *
The story of The Princess and the Pea provides an
excellent framework for understanding why large companies
typically have problems detecting pain and, as a result, knowing
when innovation is necessary.
When a company is just starting out, the pain that is
being felt by its employees or customers isn’t hard to detect. In
most cases, the organization’s hierarchy is flat enough and its
processes are simple enough, that it is relatively easy for the
person who holds The Power, and can get things done, to understand
The Pain and know what needs doing.
The Pain may be disguised by the presence of a layer or
two of management, but it is still evident and its cause can be
quickly determined. The result is that an organization is usually
able to respond to problems as they arise.
As companies grow, things get more complicated.
Layers of management are put in place. Formal policies,
processes, and procedures are created. Bureaucracy develops.
On one hand, this bureaucracy is valuable. It allows
the organization to deal with problems in a consistent manner.
On the other hand, this bureaucracy is problematic. It
tends to either attenuate pain signals as they travel up through
the organization or prevent them from flowing entirely.
As a result, as the organization grows, it often
becomes more difficult for the person or people who hold The Power
to understand, much less do anything about, The Pain that is being
felt by customers.
In fact, in many cases they may not even know it
exists. As a result, many larger organizations gradually lose
touch with the marketplace. This leaves them vulnerable to a
disease called Bureaucrathesia.
Bureaucrathesia, or bureaucracy-induced anesthesia,
is a disease that sets in when the person or people who hold The
Power in an organization become disconnected from The Pain that is
being felt by the customers of that organization.
This inability to sense pain renders an organization
oblivious to what is going on in the marketplace.
The result is that the organization is left vulnerable to attack
by unseen enemies.
Bureaucrathesia generally afflicts large and growing
organizations, although smaller, older organizations are also
vulnerable. The causes of Bureaucrathesia are the very mechanisms
that are put in place to manage the growth from startup to
established organization: layers of management and formal
processes.
The difficulty that organizations inflicted with
Bureaucrathesia face is that as these layers of management and
formal processes accumulate, the transmission of pain signals
upward through the organization either slows to a crawl or stops
entirely. How and why this happens can best be explained using
another story.
When I was a child, one of my favorite games was
“Telephone.” For those of you who are not familiar with this game,
“Telephone” is played by lining up 20 or 30 people (usually
children).
The leader starts the game by whispering an unusual
word or phrase — like “rutabaga” — in the first child’s ear. This
child then whispers the word or phrase in the next child’s ear.
This process continues on until the last child in line
receives the message. They then tell the class what they heard.
Usually, the word that the last child hears is very
different than the word that the Leader told the first child.
This game points out several things.
First of all, messages don’t just lose intensity but
often get distorted as they pass from person to person. Second,
each person who passed on the message believed that what they were
passing on was what they heard.
This process is similar to what happens inside of large
organizations. Instead of the people with The Pain speaking
directly to the people with The Power, pain messages are instead
relayed from person to person.
The problem is that this process of relaying messages
is not neutral. Instead, as happens during a game of telephone,
with each hand-off a message is subtly transformed and sometimes
even dropped. Noise may also be introduced into the signal and its
intensity level may be attenuated.
As these handoffs accumulate, the people who hold The
Power gradually become insulated, deliberately or inadvertently,
from The Pain.
Numerous examples — ranging from the surprise attack
upon Pearl Harbor, to the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia
disasters, to the failure of the FBI to detect the terrorist plot
to attack the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 — exist of
organizations and institutions falling victim to the ravages of
Bureaucrathesia.
A prototypical example is the experience of the U.S.
auto industry during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
During the late 1970s, Japanese automakers began to
develop and produce increasingly capable and high-quality cars.
However, the managers of most U.S. car companies did not
understand the magnitude of the attack until they had lost tens of
market share points.
What happened?
Simply put, the people who held The Power in these
companies lived and worked in cocoons that left them unable to
detect The Pain.
They worked together at the top floors of their buildings and
reached those floors using executive elevators. They ate together
in executive dining rooms. They drove or were driven around in
company cars that were the top of the line and that were
maintained on a daily basis in executive garages. Their needs were
catered to by entourages of company employees.
As a result of these isolating measures, these
executives lost touch with the realities of the marketplace.
Like a person with Leprosy, these companies lost the ability to
sense the changes that were occurring in the marketplace and thus
became increasingly vulnerable to attack.
Every complex system, be it an organism or an
organization, requires negative feedback in order to function.
The problem is that organizations tend to accumulate
layers of management and processes as they grow. While these
Insulators help the organization to function, they also tend to
inhibit the flow of pain signals — and/or reduce their intensity —
and thus keep necessary changes from being recognized and made.
Some of the more prevalent and pernicious insulators are…
Hierarchies and Chains of Command
The military and other institutions have long recognized that
hierarchies are the most prevalent, and most pernicious, form of
Insulator. The problem is that if pain signals must pass through,
and be interpreted by, multiple people, then it is highly likely
their message will be subtly changed and their intensity
attenuated. It is extremely difficult for a person far up the
change of command to completely understand what is going on in the
field without actually being there.
Geography and Architecture
One of the things that can slow down the flow of pain signals
is an organization’s physical facilities. As an organization
grows, people can no longer work in the same room. Instead, they
must spread out to new rooms, new floors, new buildings, new
cities, and new countries. As each of these expansions takes
place, it inhibits the flow of pain signals.
Reports
Reports act as Insulators because too often they tell what is
happening in the marketplace but not why. For example, while a
report may indicate that sales are decreasing, in many cases it
will give no indication why this is happening.
The Façade of Competence
As Shakespeare noted, “The nature of bad news infects the
teller.” People understand this rule and are frequently afraid of
being the bearers of bad news. One reason people are unwilling to
talk about problems is that they are afraid they will be seen as
incompetent. They are afraid that admitting the existence of pain
will reflect poorly upon their performance. It is hard for many
people to say, “My customers are having this problem,” because
they — often justifiably — fear that they will be held accountable
for their customers’ problems.
Language
The language people use often acts as an insulator.fn52 For
example, some organizations, with the intention of getting people
focused on acting and not complaining, literally do not let people
talk about “problems.” Instead, people can only talk about
“opportunities”. The problem is that these efforts, while
well-intentioned, have the effect of attenuating pain signals and
making it harder for companies to know when change is necessary.
The message “Customer ____ is pissed off about our inability to do
____” will have much more impact than will the message “We have an
opportunity to improve our ability to ____.” The problem is that
by removing the customer from the equation, the problem is changed
from being concrete to abstract — and less compelling. It moves
from being a pressing requirement to just another good idea.
Surveys
Too often people, when completing surveys, are forced to
simply answer the questions that are asked. They have little
opportunity to volunteer information about what is really
bothering them. Any chance of getting the really important
information is also decreased by the process of compiling and
averaging out the results of surveys. Too often the really
interesting and relevant information is overwhelmed by the
average.
Retail Employees
The poor training given to retail employees is one of the most
effective forms of Insulators, because these are the people who
interact with customers. People on the front lines are the ones
who are the most likely to receive complaints and suggestions from
customers. However, because they are too often treated as
temporary employees, they are also the least likely to be able to
do anything with or about them. The problem is that they do not
possess or are denied access to the relationships and informal
communication channels that allow pain signals to flow within the
organization.
Customer Service Representatives
Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) present a related
problem. Too often they are minimally trained and are not
integrated into the culture of the organization. The incentives of
customer service centers are also problematic. Most CSRs are
compensated based on how quickly they get people off of the phone.
This makes them unlikely — and too often unwilling — to gather
information about customer complaints or concerns. Even if they
did take the time to gather such information, too often they are
unable to do so because the tools they use do not allow them to
capture complaints or suggestions.
Outsourcing
Of course, related to the issue of customer service is the
issue of outsourcing. Many customer service centers are run by
other companies and are used to handle the complaints of multiple
organizations. While this may deliver tangible economic benefits,
the intangible costs of outsourcing are often overlooked. Few
companies consider the impact that putting one more layers between
themselves and their customers has on the flow of pain signals.
* * * * *
The inability to detect the presence of pain will rob your
organization of the ability to generate relevant ideas. As a
result, every organization must be concerned with aligning The
Power and The Pain.
That means developing pain detection procedures. That
means developing mechanisms that will ensure the flow of pain
signals and thus ideas. That means pushing The Power down into the
hands of the people who truly understand The Pain.
There are as many remedies to the problem of Insulators
as there are Insulators.
However, a general rule of thumb is to create
mechanisms that improve the flow of pain signals within one’s
organization.
That means encouraging people to — and developing
mechanisms that will ensure they will — speak the truth. That
means implementing open door, and in this day and age open e-mail,
policies. That means creating a kind of Organizational Ombudsman.
This is a very powerful person who is well connected and is
responsible for making sure that good ideas get heard and
implemented.
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