I was lucky to learn to drive in a place and time where heavy traffic was something you only saw on TV. My driving skills were honed going fast on open roads, or occasionally late at night on suburban streets, not grinding through heavy traffic. It was not until I lived and drove in some of the great Asian cities like Manila and Jakarta that I learnt about real traffic!
In real traffic there are 2 challenges. One is obvious – you take a long time to get anywhere. The second is learnt only by experience – changing direction is difficult, maybe even impossible if you’re moving against the flow. It’s gets even harder and more dangerous in heavy fast traffic.
So it is in business or busy organizations. You can think of problems or decisions coming through your organization like cars in traffic, with teams and individuals steering many problems through the business. In a small or stable organization, like the quiet suburbs I grew up in, solving Problems is easy, but in larger, more complex or stressed organizations managing Problems is like Mega-city traffic – much more difficult & requiring different skills.
The Problem traffic jam is a common, yet often invisible cause of failure in organizations. It is a major reason why many large, merged organizations fail to deliver expected results! When there are many things to do and not enough resources, or no system to handle them, problems and decisions pile up and results are effected.
Just like car traffic, there are 2 impacts from such overload. The first is obvious, and so gets a lot of attention, that is it takes too long to get things done. Things are too slow.
The second is less obvious, often invisible – it’s actually hard to change direction, mistakes are made, decisions are compromised.
Great leaders earn their pay here. Not only do they see the traffic jam, but they see it for the problem it is, and put in measures to free it up. Leaders need a process for handling decisions like a city needs a traffic management plan. High volumes of Problems can be solved!
Other leaders don’t. Often they don’t see the traffic jam but only see the slow results. One poor response can be to slow down and give up, thereby making the traffic lighter but also slowing progress. Another is pushing harder, pressuring people to “go faster”, or worst of all piling more work on, starting a vicious circle of pressure, delay & compromise which results in huge stress for people and failure for the business.
Failure comes from bad choices. Instead of solving problems, stressed people find quick and easy answers. Often the wrong ones, or the one that the boss suggested (just to make them happy), or simply regurgitate the easiest answer which maybe the way this problem was always solved.
Gradually Improvement stops, and repetition wins. Ironically these same leaders get even more frustrated! Losers all around.
“the Problem traffic jam is a common, yet often invisible cause of failure in organizations.”
A large organization can’t be run in the same way as a small one. Just as village can ignore heavy traffic, a small organization doesn’t need to manage Problems, just solve them. Just as large complex cities needs sophisticated systems and strategies to control traffic, large organizations must treat Problem management as a strategic issue, and manage it systematically, not by chance.
A good Continuous Improvement Program is not just an ideas collector or Engagement tool but should be part of a comprehensive Problem Management strategy.
Great cities like Tokyo manage traffic superbly, whilst others do not. Great cities employ multi-faceted strategies to keep traffic flowing, not just more policemen with whistles. Great organizations treat Problem management as a strategic issue. Other organizations don’t.
How an organization manages decision traffic is a telltale sign of whether leadership understand complexity or not.
Do you have a Problem traffic plan? Does your organization have a strategy for prioritizing and solving problems? Or do you just blow your whistle harder when things slow down?
Next week I’ll talk about one simple decision which leaders make which takes their organizations into a different space, eases problem traffic forever and accelerates value creation.
Stay safe, especially if you’re driving!