WHY INNOVATION AND IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS DON'T ALWAYS PAYS OFF
The Story of the bridge between the two Holst's
Everyone is talking about the importance of innovation lately, but many organisation don't realise the perceived benefits of innovation, or even benefits from organisational improvement efforts.
Have you ever wondered how so many people can continually be so wrong about the benefits of innovation and improvement?
Part of the problem is the baggage left behind when we replace the old with the new.
This is often subtle, and it is often difficult to grasp at first - so to illustrate the point let me tell you a fairytale!
Once upon a time, a long time ago, the country of Holst spanned large tracts of land on two continents, and the country became rich as most of the trade between the nations of both continents flowed through Holst.
A narrow strait separates the two continents; actually at its narrowest, the straight was just a bit more than a ravine. The closer you came to this point, the more treacherous the crossing between Nederholst and Oberholst (the two sides of the country of Holst) became.
At the time Holst was a republic that consisted of ten large cities, each having one seat on the Council of Holst.
The people of Holst were traders by nature and tended not to become involved in their neighbour's politics. That did not mean that there were no politics in Holst! There were lots of politics, but all politicking was internally focused, sometimes when factions gained the upper hand, some ridiculous laws passed, as a simple majority of the ten seats were required to do so. Trading favours and paying bribes were at the order of the day - the result was that the statutes of Holst were considered to be the most convoluted in all the world.
Only a few new laws needed more than a mere majority vote to pass. Laws concerning the makeup of the council, voting rights, repealing old laws and trade between cities – here, a majority of 3/4 were required.
So it happened that the Burbandion Empire gained prominence in the Continent of The Highlands, where Oberholst was situated. Burbandia started annexing the territory of one neighbour after the other, and after three of the Oberholst cities were lost to the Burband's, Holst with the help of other nations in The Continent of the Lowlands stop the expansion of the empire in its tracks. By that time - only the Duchy of Dalen and the two Host Cities - Bergenrood and Dalenrood remained independent on The Continent of the Highlands.
The Council of Holst now only had seven seats.
Bergenrood was mostly landlocked, except for a very narrow strip of coastline with very high cliffs falling into the sea.
Dalenrood was situated at the narrowest choke point between the continents and spanned across both continents. A narrow suspension-bridge connected the two parts of the city, over the deep ravine-like part of the gap between the continents. Only essential trade in the city used this bridge. But as Holst now losts all its ports in The Continent of the Highlands, this bridge now formed the only connection between the two parts of Holst!
The loss of its other possessions in The Continent of the Highlands meant that the importance of Holst as a gateway diminished overnight.
Merchants in Oberholst was now totally dependent on the suspension bridge in Dalenrood.
Although the bridge could not handle the volume of traffic that flowed between the continents before, the Dalenrood Guild of Merchants supplemented their income by establishing warehouses, inns and stables on both sides of the bridge. After the Dalenrood merchants closed the bridge a few years later, citing the increasing cost of maintaining the bridge, a law passed allowing them to charge a toll.
The Dalenrood merchants carefully influenced the text and eventually, the new law read "All those who pass over the gap between Oberholst and Nederholst must pay a toll of 10% of the value of the goods transported, to the Guild of Merchants of Dalenrood).
Because of the prevailing high winds – the crossing of the bridge was often treacherous, and after the loss of several lives, the Council of Holst passed a law that forbade passage during times of high winds. Once again the Dalenrood merchants made sure that the wording of the law favoured them. The new law read "As soon as the flag of Holst flew level in the wind – no person or beast of burden may pass over the gap between Oberholst and Nederholst.
Although the new law saved lives, officials colluded with the merchants and allowed traffic to pass over the bridge during stormy periods for a fee (usually just before sunrise). Lives were lost, but because it 'never happened', nobody did anything about it!
The merchants of Dalenrood remained prosperous whilst those in Bergenrood suffered until the city became the backwater city of Holst. The other cities in Holst worried - Bergenrood was the sharp-end of the spear that defended Host from the Burbandians!.
But one day everything changed – gold was discovered in Bergenrood!
The merchants and miners of Bergenrood faced many problems, of which logistics was but one! They could not move enough of the heavy metal over the narrow bridge between the continents that also shared all other traffic intercontinental traffic. Secondly, toll-fees on gold shipments increased three-fold, because of the 'extra load this placed on the bridge and the resultant maintenance cost' (or so the Dalenrood merchants claimed). Many cities objected in sympathy with Bergenrood, but when the merchant's guild threatened the closure of the bridge for maintenance for a protracted period of time, everyone relented.
Bergenrood reached out to the city of Overbergen, the city with the territory right across the small patch of coastline they owned and together an ambitions bridge-building project was hatched. We will not dwell on the difficulties of this endeavour and the attempts by Dalenrood traders to flaunt the attempt, needless to say – after much sweat the project was completed ten years later.
The result, a wide and modern bridge that did not sway in the wind and that allowed for ten times the traffic to flow between Oberholst and Nederholst.
So let me ask you a question. Do you think that the new bridge solved the problems of Bergenrood and traders from cities other than Dalenrood?
No? Why not?
Yes, you are correct;
Some people out of habit still chose the narrow bridge, especially since they started depending on the infrastructure created on both sides of the gap! The use of warehouses on both sides became the standard business practice that continued for many years after the construction of the new bridge.
Because at least the two laws that we sited remained on the statute books, the Merchant Guild of Dalenrood insisted on collecting their 10% toll fee for all traffic crossing the gap.
Both Bergenrood and Overbergen objected with good cause, but then officials started enforcing the high-wind no-crossing law, even though on the new bridge with its modern construction was unaffected by winds. The wind did not cause any threat to life when crossing the new bridge.
So what should happen for the new bridge to bring prosperity to the Republic of Holst and not just a few?
- Scrap the toll law!
- Scrap the wind law!
- Help organisations that rely on infrastructure to find alternatives OR build a road to the old bridge site so that merchants with long-term contracts can still use the warehouses they lease.
- Aid Dalenrood merchants to find new sources of revenue that is not exploitative.
The lessons we need to learn from this story are many and not always that simple or obvious!
- Whenever organisations face a challenge or problem, attempts to solve the problem is not always possible, therefore alternative solutions are often used.
- Solutions put in place are often not ideal, and many times intended as 'temporary' until a better solution can be found.
- To deal with the remaining shortcomings, organisations often implement controls to lessen the associated risks. These controls, in turn, change behaviour and affect business processes.
- Behaviour in organisations becomes entrenched over time and are difficult to change, often because organisational processes were built around the constraints or the controls put in place.
- Not all controls are always beneficial to all, sometimes controls favour vested interests. Because they do offer some benefit or value, they can not be disregarded out of hand.
- Whenever a new solution, or an improvement is introduced, one should always understand what it replaces in totality. This understanding needs to be deeper than the obvious. Ask the question – what does it replace, and what else is connected to it?
- Understand ALL of the constraints, and controls associated with everything that will be replaced, and make sure that old controls are preferably removed or if not feasible, changed and simplified to only address residual risk.
- Understand how business processes and value chains are woven into the status quo unless you change business processes to work with the new solutions, you will not optimally exploit the benefits of the new improvement introduced.
- Understand that those with vested interests will fight the changes at all costs, even though it benefits the organisation. Find ways to involve them and make the change less painful. However - what is done should be driven by the overall benefits to the organisation.
Johann Botha is a digital provocateur and CEO of a training and consulting company getITright?, specialising in building digital age capabilities in organisations. Johann is also a coach, trainer, consultant, author and speaker. He is one of the lead authors of VeriSM? Unwrapped and Applied – a definitive digital transformation reference used world-wide and the architect of Agile ADapT? (https://www.agile-adapt.nl) - an innovation and design-driven digital transformation method.
getITright operates out of the Netherlands and South Africa. Their services include; practical skills development workshops, classroom or virtual classroom training, online learning, in-project, onsite or virtual coaching and consulting. The most common approach is to help managers and companies, using a custom-developed blended approach of all our offerings, and by doing that we help solve problems, grow people, facilitate difficult change, dream, scheme, do and always, always question and learn (Alvin Toffler called it unlearning and relearning)!
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