The Perfect Face Plant

You can see the disaster coming.  It seems to be happening in slow motion, yet you’re paralyzed.  You know something should be done.  But you can’t stop it.  The train wreck unfolds its destruction majestically.  Then the gawkers gather to marvel at the carnage.

I’m not speaking of a physical train wreck.  I’m thinking of the disasters that companies inflict on themselves when everyone saw them coming and they could have been avoided.

In our business we get called in to help clean up these messes.  Wouldn’t it be better to prevent them in the first place?  You would think that it should be possible, because when you do the postmortem on these disasters, everyone says they could see it coming. 

The causes for these disasters are as countless as political consultants.  However, one cause pops up frequently enough that you need to know about it.  Maybe you will recognize what’s happening so you can do something when it happens the next time.

The initiator for this particular type of catastrophe is usually a management decision that the company’s procedures are too lax.  They don’t provide enough specificity, which means that processes aren’t repeatable.  Or there are procedural gaps, where employees apparently get to do whatever feels good at the time.

So the edict comes down from on-high that “We need to tighten up these Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).”  (the We means you)  This is not a bad idea.  Of course you need to standardize how you perform repeated processes.  The question is, how far do you go?  So, a frenzy of writing and training ensues.  Our recipe for disaster is nearly complete.  Only one more ingredient must be added.

Now that everyone knows what the rules are, the implications for everyday activities sink in.  “Wait a minute!  This SOP won’t work when the tab is bent.  It won’t fit into the slot.”  A dedicated employee, thinking they’re doing the right thing, bends the SOP a little, just to get production out the door.

Management eventually gets wind of this and declares that there will be no exceptions to the SOPs.  That employee must be disciplined; made an example of; marched off in front of her colleagues to be retrained; head on a stake; bodies twisting slowly in the wind.  They’re all the same.

Now you have it; a company executing a perfect face plant.  The next step is as inexorable as next month’s mortgage bill.  Employees will work-to-rule.  Nobody will take responsibility beyond what’s spelled out in the SOPs; and, as extensive as we’ve made the SOPs, there still is no possibility of creating an SOP for every situation! When employees encounter a circumstance for which there is no SOP, everything comes to a dead stop.  Output will slow to a crawl.  That’s when the fingers start pointing.

Let’s look at this situation in a much simpler context, so we can easily understand the structure of the mess.  When I took Physical Education in high school, one of the segments was gymnastics.  The teacher drilled safety into us with military precision: 

• Mats must cover the floor under all stations. 
• There must be at least one spotter at every station
• Only one student on the equipment at a time. 
• Most importantly, the spotter must attempt to break the fall of any student who dismounted awkwardly – not an uncommon occurrence

I don’t know what made me look across the gym to the horizontal bar station.  It seemed to happen in slow motion.  Greg had done… something.  All I saw was that he had left the bar.  His body was above head height and falling fast.  What was odd was that he was horizontal.  My friend, Dick, was a spotter, located near Greg’s feet.  As Greg hurtled by, Dick instinctively lurched out and grabbed Greg’s ankles.  Greg executed a perfect face plant into the mat.  SPLAT!

In a second Greg was up in Dick’s face.  Dick backed off, trying to explain that he had only done what he’d been told to do.  Somehow that didn’t mollify Greg.  However, we did find out that his ego was damaged more than his face. 

Ok, so what’s the point here?  The point is that blind compliance to your written procedures will cause your operation to execute a perfect face plant.  Greg would have been much better off if Dick had done nothing rather than blindly follow the procedure.

You need to recognize that although you need SOPs to control your operation:

• You can’t write an SOP for every situation.
• Your SOPs need to be complete and spell out all the important steps in any given task, yet not overwhelm the user with too much detail – a difficult line to walk, but still possible.
• You need to understand your technology.  When you run into the limits of the knowledge provided by your SOPs, only your understanding of your technology can save you.
• Management must be willing to step up when the SOPs don’t cover the gap and take responsibility for making decisions.

The key to making the system work lies with the talents of management.  That talent consists of knowing how much freedom your employees are capable of handling.  Management has to create a culture that delegates controlled authority to the employees.

Enlightened managers know that when they delegate controlled freedom to their employees, they are also giving them part ownership in the franchise.  The motivational implications are clear.