Think Fuzzy, Break Down the Walls

One of the most frustrating things about the consulting field is that often the best ideas go unused by our clients because those ideas demand change in operations, structure or production.

To begin this discussion, I point to David Armano, Logic + Emotion, who is presenting in Toronto this week. His topic: The Fuzzy Tail. Here is how he describes his subject:

"Being fuzzy as I outline in the deck is about unlearning everything we think we know—so we can actually learn and adapt. It's about less focus on rigid tasks and job descriptions and more focus on bringing our efforts together in the overlaps—where our skills compliment each other. It's about being more nimble and adopting "fuzzy" processes to compliment our tried and true methods that have served us well in the past."

And that's the thing about change. It seldom requires throwing out process or blending departments. It is about being open to better ways to do what we do. As I think about my 30 plus years in business, there seem to be some consistencies in why we are so unable to use flexibility and new learnings to adapt better ways of doing our work. Here are a few of them:

• Power: Leaders fear losing it, so they build castle walls around their functional areas, allowing no one in or out.
• Security: We become secure in doing things the same way over and over again, and we become very good at what we do. Even if the product or service that we offer isn't very good.
• Jobs: We work to make money, not to be the best we can be.
• Challenge: We often say we love a challenge but look away every time one presents itself.

These are four of many reasons why some businesses produce mediocre products and services and even worse customer experiences. Taking David's recommendation, if I were King, I would tear the walls down. No more cubicles, no more offices, everyone in an open environment. Functional areas would still exist but people from every functional area would be assigned to work with other functional areas. For example, a marketing person would work with Human Resources, an HR person would work within Accounting, an accounting person would be assigned to Retail, and so on. Of course, we would want to implement the change slowly enough to avoid complete culture shock.

The purpose for the meld would be to break down the doors of departmental thinking and bring in other ways of attacking a challenge. Teams would be organized around challenges, and those teams would stay together for as long as the challenge exists or the product resulting from that team's work is in the marketplace. They would be responsible for everything: design, testing, launch, marketing, customer experiences and so on.

Now that I have laid out my idea for a better way to structure what we do, I challenge you to tell us what you think of tearing down the walls. I believe doing so will produce better products and services and create better employee and customer experiences (happiness). Are you with me or have I strayed too far from the funny farm?