Adopted from The Capitalist magazine
By Daniel Onyekachi
Contributor for The Capitalist Magazine
Has there been any time quick fix solutions paid off in your organization?
“It is so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem” says Malcolm .S. Forbes
There is a natural proclivity to always look for the easiest way out in every situation. Some organizations at one time or the other have sought for quick fix to their problems. Much to the chagrin of these organizations, the more they try to quick fix their problem, the bigger the problem becomes. Organizational problems are always systematic in nature and do not always appear simply as we often times assume them to be. These issues and problems in organizations are always interrelated. In some situations, the causes of the problems are not easily seen with our OPEN eyes. Quick fixes and other traditional problem solving approaches are no longer adequate in this our ever changing and complex world.
It is imperative for us to understand that quick fixes are not long lasting and are likely to fail because they are not holistic or creative enough. One might ask- WHY ARE THEY NOT HOLISTIC? They are not holistic because they concentrate on the part of the organization rather than the whole. In so doing, they miss the crucial interaction between the parts. They fail to recognize that optimizing the performance of one part may have consequences elsewhere that are damaging to the entire organization. Having worked and interacted with some CEO’s, I have realized that most of them are not satisfied with the UNCLASSIFIED quick fixes they have engaged in the time past such as BENCHMARKING, RIGHTSIZING, VALUE CHAIN ANALYSIS, CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT, TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT, PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING, AND CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT. My instinct tells me that someone might be asking, how come all these measures above quick fix? Let’s look at some of the measures closely.
Looking at PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING for instance, the originator of the approach has admitted that process re-engineering concentrates far too much on the things that can be engineered at the expense of the people in the organization. People react and process re-engineering intervention may possibly fail in terms of securing overall improvement.
BENCHMARKING encourages looking at the efficiency of different parts of the organization separately against external comparators. It fails to see that even if each part is optimized, the performance of the whole organization can be disastrous if the parts do not interact well together.
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT has done a lot to improve design, but can be criticized for ignoring wider structural issues and the politics of organization. At other times, even if more parts are considered, there is the danger that they are all viewed from the same perspective.
ANALYTICAL OR PIECEMEAL APPROACH may end up in failure. This also explain why some organizations end up in chaos after spending huge resources trying to fix systematic issues. The good news for organizations is that with SYSTEMS THINKING APPROACH being institutionalized in their organizations, they would be able to resolve all their lingering systematic issues. This is because it sees the entire organization as primary and does not try to break down organizations into parts in order to understand them and intervene in them.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Has there been a time quick fix solutions paid off in your organization? If NO, what are you going to do differently?
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