Perfectly Designed

I've often talked about how we are creatures of habit and we can hardly get out of our own way in order to make better change. 1 out of 10 heart patients can't make lifestyle changes--eat better, exercise more, less stress, etc.--but continue to do the things that got them into trouble in the first place.

Today at a conference, friend and management guru Victor Aspengren from Prairie Capital Advisors created a corollary to Einstein's famous definition of insanity: "we are perfectly designed to get the current results." Our lifestyle habits are perfectly designed to give us the bodies we have now. In business terms, our organizations are perfectly designed to get the functional silos we experience. Our corporate culture is perfectly designed to get the politics, low productivity, low morale, high levels of confusion, distrust, destructive conflict and other maladies of dysfunctional teams. Our policies and procedures are perfect for creating the apathy, lack of initiative, and self-centered CYA actions we experience in our projects.

So if those aren't the results you want, it's time to redesign your organization, your culture, your policies and procedures.Otherwise, if you continue to do the same things over and over again, but expect different results, then you know what: you're insane.

Oh, and you might want to rethink some of your budgets and policies to really communicate that people are your #1 asset. (That's another challenge from Victor.)