Are you experiencing Ground Hog Day? You know, the movie with Bill Murray when he finds himself living the same day over and over again? It certainly seems that history has a tendency to repeat itself—not always in a good way. I was sitting in on a safety/quality committee recently listening to the discussion when I couldn't help but think this was akin to Ground Hog Day. Why? Because history was repeating itself (unfortunately it wasn’t a comedy). This company was in the midst of a series of safety close calls (one incident could have easily resulted in death but due to pure luck it didn’t) and host of production quality issues in which thousands of dollars were lost. The purpose of this specific meeting was to identify gaps that lead to these costly breakdowns and determine action steps to resolve it one going forward. Everyone who should be there was, i.e. HR manager, operations manager, production supervisor, technical trainer, a couple frontline employees and the COO. The discussions on why and who was to blame were pretty fired up when the COO basically said to everyone to calm down, this is nothing new, same thing happened 3-4 years ago when we had a similar number of staff and foremen turnover, no need to do wholesale changes. Ground Hog Day! Serious safety incidences and poor work quality happened before and nothing was done!?!—wow! I was very disappointed in COO's response. It came across to me and others in the room as what has happened in the past 2-3 month wasn't anything special and there was no need to fix it. Instead he saw it as we've had issues before, once our new people get trained all will be well, end of story. What a blow to the safety/quality committee team members who appeared ready to begin, in my opinion, a very important process improvement project.
There are two lessons from this story I want to point out. The first is what causes leaders and frontline workers alike to stay with the status quo and the second is 5 steps to take to prevent Ground Hog Day (history repeating itself)!
You may be wondering what this has to do with my consulting work that focuses on improving work processes for quality, safety and efficiency. It’s definitely true that part of my job as a consultant involves making recommendations (changes) to the work processes to ensure efficiency, quality and safety. However, those changes can’t occur unless I do the other “hidden” but very necessary part of my job which identifies psychological and relationship (“political”) issues. It those aren’t taken into account no matter how painful the issues and how obvious the gaps are no changes will occur.
It was obvious to me the COO, despite the negative impact on profits due to the poor production quality and safety near misses, was content with the status quo. The status quo has a huge following as there are almost always more defenders of the status quo than there are proponents of change. This is why beating the status quo is so difficult. It’s also why many talented idea employees leave companies—they get fed up with the status quo. We need to understand why the status quo is so powerful before we discuss what can be done to lessen its stranglehold on your company.
4 Reasons why Status Quo is so powerful:
1) Comfortable like your old pair of jeans: Change isn’t easy nor is it known. The status quo is comfortable even if it comes with some pain or dissatisfaction. You know what to expect, when to expect and have either learned to work around the problems or have grown used to them. In the case of the COO he had grown accustom to a certain amount of cost as a part of his business.
2) Good Ol’ Friends: The status quo is often accompanied by long term friendships and/or relationships. Having to point out to an long term employee who has become a good friend that he/she is not performing as needed and to make changes is not easy. It especially isn’t easy if the needed change involves letting that employee/friend go. That increases the discomfort and makes change scary. In this case, the managers of operations and those that oversee production have been with him and the company for years. It would be very difficult for him to have to face and tell them things need to change—starting with them.
3) It’s Always Been This Way!: Humans are creatures of habit. We love certainty, predictability and routine. If we’ve done something one way for a long time, it’s difficult to imagine doing something different—especially if it’s brought some amount of success. For the COO the company has made a profit, albeit slim, for a number of years. Why change if things were good enough in the past, it should be good enough in the future.
4) Risk is a Bad Thing: Status quo is safe and secure. Change equates to risk—not safe and not secure. This conjures up the series of “What if?” questions, i.e. What if we do this and it fails? What if the decision reflects negatively on me?, What if the expected results don’t happen? The status quo says “play it safe and do nothing.” Playing it safe is very powerful and will lead to inaction. For the COO the risk of doing something new and having it backfire causes him to fear moving ahead with change. The cliché “the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t” seems to describe this pretty well.
4 Steps to Combat and Overcome Status Quo
Now that you know and understand the reasons why status quo is so powerful, it’s time to move on to what you can do breakthrough its powerful grip.
1) Make the Case for Change Compelling: It should be obvious that to overcome the status quo there has to be a compelling reason to make the pain that will come from new ways of doing things worth it. The value and benefit have to be clear. You need to provide a vision, a map if you will, of how they will get from the current state to their better future state. Not only that, you need to provide them with the belief that can and will overcome every obstacle that they see are in the way. The COO saw the dollars lost due to the poor work quality but did he see how it relates to profit margin? The near misses sometimes can be put aside because they didn’t happen; however, you need to make them real. How do you put a dollar sign on someone’s potential death? Perhaps it would be much better to ask the COO what words will you tell the worker’s wife and children for the reason he died. That is compelling.
2) Build Relationships: To overcome the long term friendships that develop over time, you must develop good relationships as well. Actually, your relationship must be trusted and that you will be there with them through thick and thin, i.e. when the employees start complaining of all of the changes. In this case the safety/quality committee members need to be “all in” in not only the need for change and for doing the change, i.e. being change agents themselves.
3) Eyes Open: It’s easy to come in the room and point out what’s wrong and where things need to change. It’s quite another to teach them to see and think about things from a new perspective. It’s your job to teach them how to see with new eyes. As a consultant, my clients count on me to keep them from becoming complacent. It’s all too easy to become entangled in old ways of thinking—we all do it at times. However, because something worked (sort of) in the past doesn’t mean it was, is or will be the right thing going forward.
4) Embrace Risk!: Yes, I said to embrace risk—that is what is the risk to him, to the company if things don’t change. The case for not changing is even riskier than the case to change. Complacency, although comfortable, is even more dangerous than change. Status quo likes to focus on risk so use it to your advantage.
The Status Quo is Ground Hog Day but it’s not a comedy. Status Quo is a formidable foe. The above 4 steps is how you defeat it.
Need help in overcoming the status quo? Contact us now before you become trapped in the status quo and do nothing
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