Do you work for Monsters, Inc.?

Pixar's movie Monster's Inc. is a beautiful exercise in creative world-building based on the 'monster-in-the-closet' fear in children. I like it so much that some Halloweens ago, I had built a movie-accurate Boo costume for my 5-year-old daughter and spent two sweatful hours as a blue hairy 'scarer'.

Last week, my brain picked up on it because its story arc maps perfectly to a pain point that many organisations I work with as a transformation and customer-centricity specialist.

Why am I telling you this? Because organisational change is a mindset change and changing mindsets always needs a narrative that helps open the doors for a new way of thinking and seeing.

So I am giving you a narrative that might help where other narratives don't.

Let me break down Monsters Inc.'s plot and then translate it to what you might find all too familiar and then let me tell you how can stop working like Monsters Inc. and start working like a wicked company.

The Plot:

In Monsters Inc., a corporation exists in a dimension where monsters managed to extract energy from screaming and scared children. The company's top workers are 'scarers' specialising in scaring the children most effectively, creating energy for the monster world.

Children are considered 'toxic' and not to be touched by the monsters. A child accidentally makes it into the monster world. The corporate boss wants to test a more efficient way to extract screams from kids, which would kill the child. The two main protagonist monsters want to get the child back to its human dimension. They feel killing human children is highly unethical and discover by accident that making the child laugh creates exponentially more energy than screams. In the end, the boss gets put into prison, and the 'scarers' become monsters that make kids laugh with the monster dimension thriving with energy.

above, Boo and the scream extractor

How to read this(without being condescending):

• A company wants to get more value or profit from their customers. (scare the children more)
• The classic approach is to become more 'efficient' in extracting value or profit from the customer. (get more screams out of children)
• The result of most of the company's ideas is to sell more of what doesn't solve any problems for the customer and to over-market by upselling everywhere. (scream extraction that kills the child)
• These ideas, product or services are created in a context away from engaging, asking or understanding the actual customer problem. (Children are said to be toxic and deadly to the touch)
• Exponential value exists in the customer, but the company doesn't see it. (Children's laughter creates exponential energy with less effort and both parties benefit)

Maybe I am silly, but metaphors can be compelling. 

I am no Lao-tse!

But I hope this story helps some re-visit the significant challenges I see in organisations failing to be modern wicked companies.

• Love the problem, not the solution: The inability for organisations to understand and re-establish the essence of their purpose and the wicked problem they exist to solve. (leadership task)
• Effectiveness vs Efficiency: Efficiency has become a bad investment as problems evolve too quickly. Investment in effectiveness outpaces any other growth or transformation effort. (strategic and operational)
• Experimentation: The organisations that can run 1,000 experiments a month have a fighting chance in the modern economy and market. (teams and delivery)

How much does your organisation align to a wicked problem, rather than the wrong offer?

How much do you fix outdated problems towards marginal benefits?

How much do you experiment and try new things being prepared to fail on 90% of them?

Exciting times ahead!

Please comment and get in contact if you want to know more on becoming a wicked company.

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