~ Mark Twain
Where a manager has had to deal with a difficult situation or often merely if they can't stand the thought of having to deal with an imagined difficult situation, they may put processes in place to ensure that it never happens or never happens again.
In doing so, they frequently fail to consider:
- how the situation arose in the first place
- how common it is or whether it is even likely to recur
- whether the precautions they have put in place are even likely to be effective, and
- what the cost to their organisation is in time, money and efficiency in applying a general process to an unlikely event.
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange
~ The Simpsons (Episode 3F20 http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html )
Maybe there is some likelihood of a tiger attack, perhaps a tiger could have escaped from a zoo. But building processes around the least likely possibility is a recipe for waste. But once they have their 'tiger rock', which may in actuality be little more than a security blanket, they may hold onto it like grim death.
They may then be afraid to discontinue the process in case an undesired consequence occurs. Like Lisa Simpson's 'Tiger Repelling Rock', an ineffectual and unnecessary process is continued at a cost in time, money, and efficiency to the organisation. For example, a manager may believe that unless they constantly monitor their workers then the workers will slack off and work won't get done. Yet in fact their workers might actually get more work done if someone wasn't constantly looking over their shoulder. And conversely the constant monitoring may actually promote the behavior that it is intended to reduce, since the workers may live down to the low expectations of the manager.
It isn't rational to put a procedure in place to prevent something that is extremely unlikely to happen and then concluding that because it doesn't happen the procedure prevented it.
There are three consequences of doing so:
- the organisation carries the cost of carrying out an unnecessary procedure
- the manager may become complacent that their 'tiger rock' will prevent the problem and so become less vigilant,
- in the rare event that the feared event happens, the procedure doesn't prevent it anyway, any more than Lisa's rock would keep away a tiger that escaped from a zoo.
We see something similar in corporate strategic planning. "Everyone else has one, so we must have one, otherwise we may be criticised". However as Richard Rumelt points out in his book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy many if not most strategic plans fail to incorporate sound strategic principles. As a result, they become what Russell Ackhoff refers to as 'rain dances': people dancing around thinking they are doing something important when what they are doing is totally ineffectual. And then congratulating themselves when the rain comes, as ultimately it must.
What tiger rocks and rain dances have in common is a failure to consider cause and effect and a failure to consider costs.
In both cases, putting in place and maintaining ineffective processes while superstitiously believing in their efficacy takes resources away from work that might achieve more valued outcomes, while often promoting the occurrence of what is most feared.
