Project efficiency - Thinking outside the box

I saw this picture of a young child's answer that clearly misunderstands what the obvious intent was in the instruction given in the question.  Although, if you read it carefully they did literally what they were asked.  It just wasn't the expected conformist norm.  It made me ponder as to why so many people find it difficult to think outside the box.  We are very conformist to what has already been done in the past, we are reluctant to embrace change.

"Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts." - Margaret Drabble

I see this on ERP projects the whole time where conformist views and resistance to change, rear their heads across different areas of the project.

From an ERP implementation perspective, the team like to follow a methodology that is tried and tested.  I am of course not saying that that in itself is a bad thing as we do need repeatable processes in ERP implementations.  However, things in the world around us move on and there are new technologies available and new thoughts regarding effective ways of working.  There are new tools, methods and models that we could utilise.  Yet we become used to doing things in the way they have always have been done and feel uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

In my view, we should always be looking to see how we can improve our processes and should be looking forward as to how we can do things better.  We need to "sharpen the saw" to make ourselves more efficient and therefore should always embrace good change.  For example, cloud has brought in a whole new set of tools and techniques that we can add to our arsenal and we should be evaluating how we can use cloud to make our work more efficient.  It is therefore vital that we hold regular lessons learned sessions to review what we did well and what did not go so well.  We should examine improvements against what is new in our environment that could help us change the way we work for the better.  Too many projects lack vital lesson learned sessions or they conduct them as tick-box exercises without really driving through the required obvious change.  The objective facts in front of them.

Of course, change has to be backed up by a valid business case that takes into account all benefits, costs and risks associated with the change.  It may be that your project is too near its end to make it worthwhile to change.  Also, too much change at one time can cause too much burden on the project and as such the project leadership always needs to look at change in respect to other changes.

In ERP, we see resistance from the business to change the way they have always done things.  Process re-engineering is hard work and the change needs proper senior stakeholder engagement.  It requires a drive from above.  Otherwise, you can have the best organisational change management team and the best business process team, but you will not be able to make real change if the senior executives are not fully supporting it.  Most people will resist change - ignore the objective facts and instead conform to what has always been the way.

Of course, this resistance to change and conforming to the status quo is not restricted to ERP implementations.  Projects by definition involve change and to drive project efficiency we should all think out the box and try to break the chains of conformity.  One of the ways to do this is to always ask ourselves the question "why?"  Why do we do we run this process in this way?  Why do we use this particular IT system?  Why have we put these controls in place?  We should continue asking ourselves why in a similar approach to the 5 whys root cause analysis technique.  We can then evaluate our underlying assumptions against updated information and view points.  Is our approach still relevant and optimal?

We are all resistant to change and we are obdurate in sticking to what we have always believed to be true.  We resent people who challenge the assumptions behind what we have based our own perceptions upon and even create every type of excuse to hang on to our belief.  We need to be careful that most of our arguments are not just based on finding reasons to carry on with what we have always believed to be true.

All the decisions we make in life are based on our brain examining all the information we have stored related to the subject.  This information is processed by our brain and forms our perceived reality and we make a decision based on these past experiences and our logical deductions.  It is therefore natural for us to conform to the patterns that we have previously seen as these patterns form the viewpoint of our world.  The child who answered the questions has not had the experiences that most adults would have had and therefore imagined a different way of answering the question.  We need to recognise that, our perception of the world, and reality, are two completely different things.  Other people with different worldly experiences may come to different conclusions based on their individual perceptions just as this child perceived the problem completely differently to how an adult would interpret it. 

Recognising our own limitation in perceiving any problem is part of the battle.  We are not perfect and there may be other people who have different experiences.  Better deeper experiences.  We should really listen to those other viewpoints and understand how they see the problem from their perspective.  There may be a different ways to tackle a problem that we have not considered.  By recognising this, we can then free our imagination to explore different possibilities.  Truly break free from our normal conformist thinking and consider if there are other solutions.  My method for this is, after I have completely submersed myself in understanding the problem, I walk away from it.  I do something completely different like go for a run or a long walk.  Quite often the most imaginative and creative thoughts come to us when we are in these relaxed states of mind rather than when we are immersed stressing about the problem. In a relaxed mental state we can let our imagination run wild.  We can think outside the box.

The need for better leadership

Much has been written and debated about the fall of the Roman Empire: the rise of the Barbarians, over spending on the military, over reliance on slaves and corrupt leaders in the senate.  As the empire expanded, leading the empire as Roman Emperor, became a perilous job with 20 men taking the throne in the last 75 years.

As the complexity of an organisation increases we need better, more effective and stronger leadership to steer the organisation to higher levels of maturity.  These higher states require leaders to ensure the interest of all people are taken into consideration and everyone feels part of the onward journey.  We can't be in the situation where the people at the bottom of the structure feel so disillusioned that they will start rebelling against the organisation itself like the Barbarians and the slaves rebelling against Rome.

I believe this is true in all types of organisational structures such as small project structures, large companies or world governments. In a project or company environment, having a clear vision that everyone involved believes in, helps to keep everyone engaged effectively.  However, they also need inspirational leaders that will help them achieve and reach that vision.  Leaders who will make everyone want to participate in assuring the journey has a successful outcome.  This holds true at a government level too and if you look around the world today at the world leaders - how many really inspire you?  How many of the world leaders are in fact divisive and political animals looking after their own welfare?

It is my view, to make our world better in these difficult and changing times we need more effective leaders and more of them.  All organisations should make it one of their priorities to create the next generation of leaders, who are better leaders than us, so that we can continue on our onward and upward journey.