Alex who was working on a specific project got bogged down when he found that one of the senior person in the organisation has escalated the problem on which he was working on. The senior person did not realize the impact and blissfully thought that in the pursuit of excellence and acceleration, he is doing a favour to the organization. In fact, by not understanding the ground level details and shooting out note did consume avoidable time of leadership which could have been well spent on the progressive realization of worthy goals that organization is pursuing as he could not have done anything beyond what was being done. Alex also felt let down and demotivated.
This reminds me of a famous story which goes as follows :
One fine day, a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops, a few people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well. At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, "Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
The driver was five feet three, thin, and basically meek... Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't happy about it. The next day the same thing happened -Big John got on again, said "Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down. And the next day, and the one after that, and so forth.
This irritated the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of his size.Finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for body building program, karate, judo and all that good stuff. By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; So on the next Monday, when Big John got on the bus and said, "Big John doesn't pay!" the driver stood up, glared back and screamed, "And why not?"
With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a Bus pass."
Alex story is not just an exception, however, it happens in many organizations. At times what baffles me in the corporate world is in the name of collaboration, taking people along performance get compromised and we tend to lose precious commodity that is time. At times to touch a tree which is just few inches away, you need to do a lot of dance around it before touching it which increases the lead time which could have been avoided.
We should keep this story in mind and make sure that there is a problem that exists before working hard to solve it. This will save hell lot of time for the organization.
Well a brilliant article I would say. Sometimes the problem itself contains the solution but people take it really seriously and get themselves tangled in problem which not even existed.
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