Time for change

Thought: What do we want? Positive and productive change! When do we want it? When and how the valid and reliable data tells us to!

Tip: Workplace practices are, by their very nature, difficult to change.?

It takes time, resources, and often a great deal of effort to shift something that is embedded in the operations of a company, not to mention the foresight to know something needs to change in the first place.

It is much simpler to allow things to continue the way they are, even if that’s not the best way to do them.

So many of the practices we took for granted as ‘standard operating procedure’ over the years have been shaken up recently.

More and more people are working remotely, and flexibility is becoming the norm, so this time presents us with a golden opportunity to look at some of the work practices that are no longer serving us, and may be causing more harm than good.

Inefficient processes, high effort to low reward customer services (or even customers), meetings that could have been emails, and tasks that are seen as standard operating procedure but are really just time fillers are just some of the ways we can streamline the workday and take some of the load off staff.

In health, it is often not what we can introduce to help us that is important, but what we can take away that’s hurting us that does the greatest good.

This requires insight, effort, and honesty to really look at ourselves and our companies and think about what needs to change in order for our health to improve.

This change is often painful in the short term but beneficial in the long term

5 monkeys

This kind of pervasive culture can be seen in the story of the 5 monkeys.

The story goes that 5 monkeys were placed in a cage as part of an experiment. In the middle of the cage was a ladder with bananas on the top rung. Every time a monkey tried to climb the ladder, the lead scientist sprayed all of the monkeys with icy water. Eventually, each time a monkey started to climb the ladder, the other ones pulled him down and beat him up so they could avoid the icy spray. The monkeys soon learned not to climb the ladder.

The scientist then substituted one of the monkeys in the cage with a new monkey. The first thing the new monkey did was try to climb the ladder to reach the bananas. After several beatings, the new monkey learned the social norm. He never knew why the other monkeys wouldn’t let him go for the bananas because he had never been sprayed with ice water, but he quickly learned that this behaviour would not be tolerated by the other monkeys.

One by one, each of the monkeys in the cage was substituted for a new monkey until none of the original group remained. Every time a new monkey went up the ladder, the rest of the group pulled him down and beat him up, even those who had never been sprayed with the icy water.

By the end of the experiment, the 5 monkeys in the cage had learned not to climb the ladder, without any of them knowing the reason why. If we could have asked the monkeys for their rationale behind not letting their cage mates climb the ladder, their answer would probably be the classic: “I don’t know, that’s just how it's always been done.”

So be open to changing work processes in the way the data, research, and your own people are telling you to, because keeping things the way they currently are will, at best, produce the same results you are currently getting, and at worst give you diminishing returns for the same amount of effort.

Question: What could you change or eliminate to make things easier and simpler for yourself and your people?

News: The benefits of, and the know-how to, create mentally healthy workplaces - from the incomparable Black Dog Institute.?