Why is Business Change So Hard to Enact?
Because to make it happen you need to think. Really think. Go past what you know. Go past what works. Find solutions where then are none.
Last month, a six-year-old boy in Delaware was first suspended from school, then sent to reform school for forty-five days. His offense? Bringing a pocket knife—replete with eating utensils— in to use at lunch.
The issue was his school district’s policy on barred items, and the fact that it was a zero-tolerance policy. No second chances, no tribunals to decide consequences. Just a book with prescribed actions. Done.
I’m not going to spin opinion of what happened to the little boy either way. His story was that he was a new Cub Scout, excited about his new tool, and just acting like a kid in that position would be expected to act. The school’s position was that a zero-tolerance means zero-tolerance, and that their hands were tied. What if, for example, the boy had lost his tool to an older child with less honorable intentions than his?
The problem as it confronts business change is to avoid setting yourself up this way.
At small businesses it isn’t that much of a problem. Management makes decisions as they go. Documents get written, “policies” get initiated, and the culture changes over time, but up until that moment when things get set in stone there’s flexibility to change.
Larger businesses, weighed down by their sheer mass, tend to have rules for everything. And they’re designed to create as few mistakes as possible.
Whichever side of the decision-making-critical-mass line your business sits on, business change can only happen when you recognize that position and make your decisions accordingly. Avoid creating “no choice” situations.
