Corporate Culture - Make Breakthroughs By Creating A Culture Of Helpful Traditions

Making breakthroughs requires you to stop doing things that waste time and resources. Tradition often binds us into keeping harmful habits. Check to see if you or your organization are following any of these practices.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

A newly wed couple are making their first roast beef dinner. The wife quickly cuts off both ends of the roast beef and prepares to throw them away. Her husband complains: The ends are his favorite part.

The wife explains that her mother always cut off the ends. Why? She doesn't know.

They call the wife's mother and ask her why she cut off the ends. The mother explains that her mother always did that, but she doesn't know why.

The couple then call the grandmother. She laughs and explains that her pot was too small to put a whole roast beef into, and she made a beef salad with the ends.

Aping Human Beings

Imagine a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string over some stairs. Before long, as the story goes, an ape will decide to go up the stairs to grab the banana. As soon as that ape touches the stairs, spray all the apes with cold water. After awhile, another ape will approach the stairs with the same result: All the apes are sprayed with cold water.

Do this repeatedly and then just watch when another ape tries to climb the stairs. The other apes will try to prevent the ape's attempt, even though no cold water is sprayed on them.

Next remove one ape from the cage and replace that ape with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To its horror, all of the other apes attack. After another thwarted attempt, the new ape knows that if it tries to climb the stairs, it will be assaulted. Now remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer enthusiastically takes part in the punishment although it has no idea why it was not permitted to climb the stairs.

After replacing the third, fourth, and fifth original apes, all the apes that had been sprayed with cold water are gone from the cage. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not? "Because that the way it's always been around here." Sound familiar?

The Pecking-Order Tradition: After You, Alphonse . . .

In most organizations, decisions have to follow a certain pathway. Someone who needs a decision begins the process by asking his or her boss. The boss asks her or his boss. This process continues until someone has the authority and wants to decide. When the decision is finally made, communicating the answer has to follow the same path in reverse down through the organizational pathway. Nothing has changed about this process since the days of feudal kings and their lords. But is this the fastest way to make progress? Hardly.

The Hazing Tradition: Get Down!

Organizations don't like to allow newcomers to become part of the group until the new people are put through some ridiculous initiation that had humbled the organization's veterans. Having humiliating experiences in common makes everyone feel more comfortable with one another. The apes in the cage would recognize the process.

The Slow Walking Tradition: Take the Tour

Few people like it when pressure is put on them. To avoid that pressure, many people will pretend to be at full effectiveness . . . while working well below their self-perceived potential. When the big bosses arrive for an inspection, those who host the visitors will take the big brass on a long, slow tour designed to demonstrate that everyone is fully and effectively engaged. Every stop will have been rehearsed for weeks in advance, and everything will be perfect.

This tradition has been around for a long time. During a famine, Catherine the Great took a tour of Russia to see how the peasants were doing. A prosperous-appearing village was erected along the banks of the river just before her arrival. That night, the village was disassembled and transported down river to be erected again for viewing by the Czarina the next day in a new location.

The Time-Is-Money Tradition: How Much Is This Conversation Going to Cost Me?

Many organizations run themselves to be cost efficient. With stop watches and clipboards in hand, cost analysts ensure that activities not earning an adequate profit are ruthlessly slashed. In this way, profits are increased.

Or are they? Sometimes the effects of the cost cutting actually harm profits.

Here's an example: There's no profit in taking back unsatisfactory products. Stores will put as few people as possible working on this task. There may be 30 customers in the store and 19 of them will be in line to return items while a single clerk works as slowly as possible.

But wait in too many of these long lines and customers will buy somewhere else . . . where the return lines aren't so long. A lost customer can cost a company thousands in profits. Sometimes that short-term cutting focus is the wrong way to look at things.

The Isolation Tradition: Solitary Confinement for Learning Development

Most organizations are reluctant to credit innovations and ideas that have prospered in other organizations. Engineers often like to refer skeptically to the sloppy work that everyone else does. Ironically, this approach is more often known as the "Not Invented Here" Syndrome that almost always means falling behind the competition because everything "Not Invented Here" is shunned.

The Inertia Tradition: Millwork Is My Trade

In 1848, gold was found at Sutter's Mill in northern California. There were literally large nuggets sitting in the river beds that could be picked up by the handful. Five minutes' labor would pay for a week's expenses. Sutter lost his business as a result. He kept trying to earn money with his sawmill while workers quit to carry off fortunes in gold. Similarly, many organizations focus on their past activities rather than grasping the great potential of the present.

List Your Harmful Traditions

It's not enough to laugh at others who make large mistakes. You need to identify which traditions hold back you and your organization. If you jot those down now, you'll have taken a helpful first step in eliminating those harmful traditions.