Consultants are problem solvers. It’s also who I am, it’s how I position myself and it’s what I’m good at. It’s part of my why and why I went into consulting.
A few things I’ve seen happening over the years.
- I’m being called in to help with freeing up time as we are too busy. I teach them about non-value add work (ie waste – muda) and all of a sudden it’s everywhere and we need a kaizen to remove the waste
- Then I start scheduling an event, assign prework and people are stressing out
- In the event members freak out when on Tuesday as we start ideating on the future state, when I ask “what will change on Monday”. And then I can ask “how can we test this idea today, to make sure it works?”.
Many people freak out once they are actually getting help. In their mind they have been screaming in the dessert for years that stuff isn’t working. Many consultants came and went leaving only some nice but expensive powerpoint decks behind.
They have given up. They have concluded that no one is coming for help and this is the new reality. Their boss can’t help, senior management won’t listen and those consultants have no idea. This is it as of now, for ever.
And somehow, someway at a certain point… they got used to it. As it is the new reality, the thing with daily struggles is that you get used to them every day. So now you see it as part of the job, part of your day, part of life.
And if then some weird Lean Consultant comes along… they might actually be solving some things. They keep on asking where the waste is and how we can do things better, faster and easier….and maybe cheaper. And then they are expecting things to change immediately.
But wait, that’s not what I want. I’m actually very comfortable in this new reality. It’s good to know that things are the same as always, that I can simply blame management and be done with it. There is peace is in accepting the status quo. Nothing I can and should do…right?
And that my friends, that is organisational learned helplessness.
I also don’t recognise it immediately. I’m used to the ‘this is how we always do it’ and ‘people never listen’. But when the team actively starts resisting some improvements, a new process or new piece of Standard Work, with the message ‘I don’t even have time to work on this, so busy I am’….then you know you’re dealing with organisational learned helplessness.
So how do you unlearn? This is hard. I think there’s a combination of top-down Leadership behaviour that needs genuine improvement. Then with the teams you need to teach the how to help themselves. Teach them some basics on process, quality, pareto, flow and problem solving and they can help themselves. Let them find their own problems and implement their own countermeasures.
Only when they learn they can help themselves will you make progress…as long you have strong leaders that know how to show up.