Accidental Light

I meant to write about this last week but got tied up with other things. I came across the article When deviants save the day in an issue of The Times last week - most appropriately, given the subject matter - which had been left in the toilets. Not because the subject was worthless and good only for toilet paper but because it is a prime example of bottom-up management.

The article talks about the work of Jerry Sternin who asks us to look for the “deviants” in our company the “nutters” who sit in the corner and asks …

… if the unorthodox methods employed by these people were a more effective way of solving problems than you are using at the moment? What if the nutters were actually doing a better job than you?

Nutters can be nutters, right, but they can also be people who do not conform, people who are more interested in getting the job done right than in looking like they are doing the job right. If one believes in bottom-up management then these people are to be located and cultivated but the trick remains: how does one spread this new nutter-derived practice (technical term) to the rest of the organisaton. Here is what Sternin advises:

… deftly to give those who need to change “ownership” of the process so that they are motivated and enthusiastic about what is happening.

By which process the organisation can be seen to heal itself. So we have a bottom-up based discovery of best-practice and a bottom-up practice of making it common usage (although engineered it must be said).

Top-down imposition of best practice rarely works - like planting a seed in concrete and then shouting loudly at it “Grow you BASTARD!!!”. It will never work and it is foolish in the extreme to blame either the seed or the concrete.

As in the Sternin example, allowing people who need to change to own the process of change means that that change is not being imposed from the outside but being grown internally. People are generally not stupid and in Investment Banking we work with many people who are extremely bright but bright, stupid or merely average people always rebel against diktat and imposition. The trick, if that is what it is, is to make the best practice visible to the organisation - not to keep it hidden away in the corner. Bright people will change themselves when confronted with something that works and is transparently better than what they do currently. And they will also change quicker if they are empowered to change and given ownership of that change.

This is only one of the reasons that I hate consultants.