Why Nothing Ever Changes At Work

[00:03] James: Hello, I’m James. Jimmy: And I’m Jimmy. Welcome to A Job Done Well—the podcast that helps you improve your performance and enjoyment at work. [00:15] James: Afternoon. How are you? Jimmy: I’m good, James. How are you? [00:18] James: Today we’re talking about organisational inertia. You know that sensation when you’re in a meeting and you think, “We’ve talked about this so many fucking times, and nobody has done anything yet.” So that’s what we’re gonna talk about. It’s gonna be exciting. I like a bit of inertia. But before we get into that, we’re not going to be recording over the summer. The sun is high, people go on holiday, and so they don’t listen to us. So shortly, come summer holidays, we’re gonna back away from the podcast for a couple of months. But before we do that—oh, I suppose we’ve got a request. [00:53] Jimmy: Yeah. We’re gonna start thinking about season four. What would you like to hear us cover? What subjects, what challenges? What questions do you have for us? A reasonable percentage of our episodes do come from our audience, so it’s just a little nudge to say: if there’s anything you like or don’t like, wanna hear more of or less of— James: Please. Jimmy: Let us— James: ’Cause otherwise we just make shit up. Jimmy: Which we did. James: Yeah, so we’re quite good at that as well. [01:12] James: So, inertia then. Have you ever sat in a meeting where everybody bitches and moans, says everything’s broken, and everybody nods and says, “We need to fix that”—and you come back six months later and not a damn thing has changed? Does that sound familiar? Jimmy: God, if I had a pound for every time I’ve had that experience— James: You’d have £7.43. [01:38] James: So what we’re gonna talk about is what drives that in organisations and what you can do to change it. [01:51] Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. [01:52] James: Some of the frustrations—some examples of the type of things I’m thinking about: Several years ago, I worked for an organisation deciding where to put a new office block. Should we put it in that city? This city? Expand over here? Over there? The conversation went on for two or three years. People just wouldn’t come to a conclusion. They wanted more analysis, more data. It just went round and round. And to be honest, it almost didn’t matter where we put the flipping office block. It was just a question of deciding and getting on with it. [02:35] Jimmy: Yeah. [02:36] James: For me, that’s a good example of two issues we face. One is—it’s not very sophisticated, but—let’s call it analytical masturbation: this endless search for numbers and more numbers, but never being happy with what you’ve got. [02:55] Jimmy: Well, I think one of my examples relates to that as well. I was in an organisation changing how we set up our suppliers—going from multiple suppliers down to one. It was a big move. But the people in the organisation wanted so much information about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. Not just the right questions—it’s appropriate to ask those—but it was into the minutiae of what could ever go wrong. They asked me for a solution to one potential issue, and I sarcastically called it Plan Z. Because you’ve got Plan A, Plan B… they wanted everything through to Z. And actually, that name stuck. They called it Plan Z afterwards. [03:50] James: Right. [03:51] Jimmy: But sarcasm aside, they just wanted such a level of certainty. And it’s back to your analysis paralysis point. You get into this “I want more, more, more data”, and what you’re trying to show is more and more certainty. But so many decisions in life, you can’t have 100% certainty. You just have to make a decision. [04:17] James: Another example: I worked for an organisation where every year they had what they called Quarter Four. At year-end, everybody was running around like headless chickens to hit their targets. I was responsible for capacity management at the time. Can you imagine what that was like? Everyone’s forcing volume into the business, and we ain’t got any people. It happened every year. But come the beginning of January, everybody sighed with relief and forgot about it. Then nine months later, we went round the same path again. I swear it happened five or six years on the trot. So there’s another thing: it’s almost like, “Well, we’ve got through that. We can just put it behind us and focus on something more pleasant.” [05:20] Jimmy: The number of times, James, you don’t look at how people do things, and they talk about workarounds. “How long has that workaround been in place?” And I… there’s been workarounds in place for years. Well, they’re not workarounds, are they? They’re just how you do things. But you’ve become accepting of the initial issue, the initial problem. You’re never gonna fix it—you’ve just got used to the workaround. [05:43] James: So I suppose the question for me is: why do organisations tolerate these problems for so long? I mean, I’ve worked for some fairly intelligent organisations—and a couple of not too fucking intelligent ones as well—but why do they just repeat the obvious mistakes? There’s another one I think I’ve heard you bleat on about before: over-collaboration. [06:10] Jimmy: You see it in a lot of organisations. Stuff doesn’t change because everyone’s got to have a say, and everyone’s got to agree. It’s not just collaboration—it’s got to be unanimous. I was working in one organisation recently, and they had a great idea about how they were gonna rationalise part of what they were doing. It really was a great idea. They’d been talking about it for over two years, and it’s just because everyone had to have a say. [06:42] James: That reminds me of something I read this morning: in most organisations, you have to persuade everybody that something’s a good idea. If one person thinks it’s not a good idea, it stops. But if you spin that on its head—if you have to persuade people that it’s not a bad idea—then all of a sudden, the mentality changes. It’s about, “Well, it’s not a bad idea. Let’s have a go.” [07:16] Jimmy: But the reality is, James, if you work that way—that you can only do things when everyone thinks it’s a good idea—you won’t be doing very much, will you? Because it’s very difficult, particularly on big or important or complex or controversial things, to get absolutely everyone agreeing all the time. [07:32] James: So it’s that “nothing ever changes around here” conversation. And actually, once you start to believe that nothing ever changes around here, “nothing ever changes” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. [07:48] Jimmy: Exactly. But it starts off with some single points of inertia in your organisation. Then it builds and builds, and it becomes exactly as you said: nothing ever changes here. [08:09] James: Okay, so we’ve talked about analysis paralysis, over-collaboration, and a desire for certainty. But what do you think causes that? What are the underlying reasons? [08:20] Jimmy: I think there are a few things. The first one’s probably worth discussing: how you set things up, how you incentivise behaviour within your organisation. And that’s not just paid incentives—it’s what’s important, what’s rewarded here. [08:48] James: One of my friends, Rob Wilson—who’s actually been a guest on the show—said to me once: “One man’s waste is another man’s career.” It depends on what you’re set up to do. Have you set your organisation up in a way where you’ve got conflicting incentives, and people never come to a conclusion because they never come to a conclusion, and nothing ever flipping happens? [09:31] Jimmy: Another reason is that people act out of fear—fear of the risks they’re taking. The fear can be of something going wrong, but also, people find that change is threatening. They get comfortable with the way things are. [09:48] James: Here’s an intellectual point for you: there are two types of errors. Error of commission—when you do something you shouldn’t have done—and error of omission—when you don’t do something you should have done. But you’re more likely to get a good kicking for what you did do than what you didn’t do. So in a lot of organisations, the safest thing to do is nothing. Sit down, sit on your hands, wait and see what happens. Because you’re much more likely to get bollocked for doing something than not doing something. [10:28] Jimmy: Yeah. So underlying fear drives inertia in organisations. [10:32] James: Well, people aren’t scared of change. Everybody’s got an iPhone. We’ve moved to that change very quickly. People are scared of being changed—which links back to the underlying incentive points. If you’re changing things that will change the way people are paid, their status… all of a sudden, you get a whole host of brick walls and reasons why people don’t want to change. [11:04] Jimmy: I remember going into one organisation and talking to a very senior manager about what the organisation needed to do. He was like, “Adam, we’ve got so much here that needs to change. That team over there needs to change. That team over there…” except him. He was adamant: everyone in the organisation needed to change except him. [11:28] James: Yeah, yeah. Which doesn’t help the situation. All right, next one: not my problem—or, to give it a more technical term, diffused ownership. When it’s not clear who owns a problem, and because it’s not clear who owns it, nobody picks it up and runs with it. [11:50] Jimmy: This is what you experience in a lot of organisations: your systems, your processes—as a middle manager—they don’t quite work, but you don’t own them. So it can be hard to work out, “Well, how do I change this?” I’ve worked in organisations where we’ve gone with the old cliché: “Don’t walk past bad service.” If you see something that’s broken, that’s causing you to serve your customers badly, you need to do something about it. Doesn’t mean you have to fix it yourself, but you have to do something. [12:24] James: There’s that old fable about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. I know, it’s a bit flipping cutesy, but that’s how it feels in organisations. It’s things where there’s nobody accountable for it, or people feel they shouldn’t touch things that nobody’s accountable for. [13:08] Jimmy: Another thing that sits behind a lot of this is the desire to defend the status quo. Which can be surprising, because you can be working in a very difficult situation or have real problems around you, but people will still defend what is difficult and broken. [13:32] James: Yeah. [13:33] Jimmy: One reason is ego. You know, “This is my operation, my business. I don’t wanna… nobody wants to be told their baby’s ugly.” As well as ego, I think there are a couple of other things at play. People do fear change. No matter how bad things are, you’re certain about what you’ve got. People fear the unknown. Even though it will almost certainly be better, they still fear the unknown. [14:00] James: Well, yeah. [14:02] Jimmy: And I think there’s a bit of the cyclical nature of organisations. You can get swept up in the latest things that are happening, but then it goes back to how it was. You get a new leader in, and they start saying, “We’re gonna change what…” I remember somebody said to me once when I joined an organisation: after about a month, I’d been talking about things we would be doing, and I had a one-to-one with this person. She said to me, “Love what you’re telling us, but I’ll be interested to see how many people are just sitting there waiting for you to move on.” [14:35] James: No, ’cause they’ve heard it before. [14:37] Jimmy: Here. And that was the inertia. It was easier to keep your head down and wait for the next person to move on and the next person to come in. [14:49] James: There’s another one: Can I be bothered? In a lot of organisations, you get that. Have I told you my story of the dog and the nail? So, big old country house in Virginia. You’ve got this big veranda, two good old boys sitting on it, and there’s this hound dog sitting on the veranda, howling to itself. One of the good old boys says to the other, “Why’s that dog lying there howling?” He says, “’Cause he’s sitting on a nail.” So he looks at him and says, “Well, why doesn’t he get up and move away from it then?” He says, “Well, ’cause it’s not hurting him that much.” But there’s just this “Can I be bothered?” Is it really that bad, or should I just put up with it? And I think there’s an element of that. Organisational exhaustion, maybe. People stop believing change is real. They’ve seen so many failed transformations, so many restructures and leadership churn. After a while, you just think, “Well, been there, seen it, done it. I’ll just keep my head down and see what happens next.” [16:02] Jimmy: So if you’re a senior manager running an organisation, you need to pay attention to some of those themes to avoid inertia. But what about if you’re a middle manager? How do you think about this inertia when you’re caught in it? [16:21] James: The trap for a middle manager is they can see the problems really clearly, but they lack the authority to solve them. They sit there absorbing the pressure from both directions, and they almost become the translators between reality and ambition. [16:47] Jimmy: Interesting point, James. I’ve worked in a number of organisations and with senior teams. The thing they point to in terms of inertia is the frozen middle. [16:59] James: Yeah, the marzipan layer, the permafrost layer. There are all sorts of derogatory terms I’ve heard used about that group in an organisation, but not really understanding the themes that drive inertia throughout the organisation. It isn’t the fault of those middle managers. Those middle managers are responding to the environment they’re in. [17:25] James: Totally agree. If you’ve got this problem, it is a senior management problem. If your organisation is disengaged, running an engagement survey and beating people if they don’t give you a five is not the solution. Don’t be surprised. However, how does that manifest in your middle layers? You get cynicism. Endemic. Or learned helplessness: “We believe we can’t do anything about it, so we just don’t do anything about it.” [17:59] Jimmy: Yeah. [18:00] James: The other two things you get—which I think are worse—are survival behaviour: “For God’s sake, bend down, here comes another one. We’ll just wait and see.” Or worse still, quiet disengagement, where people are just watching the clock until five o’clock, then they get out and walk away. They’re just in it for the money. [18:44] Jimmy: We’re guilty at times of thinking there’s nothing you can do about things. It may be true about certain aspects of how the organisation runs, but if you think about what you can control, you can control a lot of the environment your team works in. A good example: in one organisation I worked in, we had a big contact centre with 30 different teams. There was a massive variation in performance. They were all doing the same job, same pay, same conditions. The difference was the manager they had—the environment they created, how they coached and helped them do their job. [19:47] James: Yeah, but that comes down to enthusiasm, right? What you just told me is that some managers were more enthusiastic than others, and that enthusiasm rubs off. For me, it’s this whole circle of influence vs. circle of control. Don’t worry about what you worry about—worry about what you can control. [20:15] Jimmy: In the things that you can control, the point I was making about how different managers manage their teams—that stops inertia creeping into your teams. [20:23] James: I think small changes trump grand transformation plans. It’s very easy to pull together some whizz-bang deck—150 slides—and ask for half a billion quid. But small stuff that gets changed, and people seeing it changed and moving on—that’s what really starts to unlock inertia. [20:46] Jimmy: One of the great things you did in one organisation we worked in together was help teams understand what those small changes were and how they could impact them. The majority of them loved those small changes. They had loads they could tell you about. And when you analysed with them how they could solve those small changes in ways that were in their control, quite often they could change a lot of them. [21:21] James: Well, people say it’s not strategic, but if you make small changes, it’s a bit like bridges to islands. You make a small change, you create a bridge to a different island, you walk onto it, and you realise, “Oh, we could do this, we could do this instead.” It expands your geography. It makes you think about your problems differently. Second thing: lots of small changes make a really big difference. But thirdly, it just gets people enthused. They see things changing, they want it to happen. Nobody wants to come to work and be bored. [22:17] Jimmy: And at the end of the day, big transformation is the crack cocaine of corporate life. Everyone’s addicted to it. They all want it, but the reality is the gold dust is in the small stuff. As a middle manager stuck in this environment, you can focus on how you lead your team and the small changes you can implement. That’ll be far more meaningful than the fact that you aren’t changing the big stuff every year. [22:50] James: And I think there are two more things that link to that. First: stick at it. Persistence. “We can’t do that.” “Well, we will do that.” Because you’ve got two options: suck it up as it is, or change stuff. If you’re gonna change stuff, you have to be persistent. But if you are persistent, that generates trust in the people around you. And people need some belief, and that’s driven by trust. The other thing: you’ve got a lot more influence than you think you have. It’s easy to say, “Oh, I can’t do this, this, and this,” but you can restructure your meetings. You can do something about your local culture. You can do something about that small process, team norms, honesty, clarity. All of these things matter—a lot. [24:00] Jimmy: Overall, it’s back to your point: control the controllables. Don’t underestimate what’s controllable. At the end of the day, that stops inertia hitting your team. [24:12] James: And it might be a bit of a throwaway line, but most successful change is much quieter than an organisation expects. It’s not big bang stuff—it’s just getting on with it. [24:24] Jimmy: So in summary, James, we’re saying that organisational inertia, one way or another, is almost always inevitable in an organisation. We’ve seen it wherever we’ve worked. The danger—the risk it brings—is that it spreads. Next thing you know, “nothing ever changes here” becomes the company mantra. [24:45] James: Yeah. [24:46] Jimmy: And if you are in a senior position, you have to do something about it. You have to play at the risk, the fear, the incentives, the reward level. That’s what you’re paid to do. [25:03] James: But for the people who can’t address those issues— [25:03] Jimmy: There is plenty that is within their control in terms of the environment, the work, and the small changes they can make to avoid inertia creeping in. [25:14] James: So we can’t do anything? Jimmy: Well— [25:15] James: I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode. [25:19] Jimmy: And we look forward to our barrage of thoughts about what we could talk about next season. [25:23] James: Absolutely. [25:26] Speaker 3: We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast, Speaker 2: from purpose to corporate jargon, Speaker 3: but always focused on one thing: getting the job done well. [25:35] Speaker 2: Easier said than done. So if you’ve got unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck, Speaker 3: if your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiralling, and that big IT transformation project that you’ve been promised just keeps failing to deliver, Speaker 2: we can help. [25:53] Speaker 3: If you need to improve your performance, your team’s performance, or your organisation’s, get in touch at jimmy@ajobdonewell.com or james@ajobdonewell.com.