Digital Common Sense

In a conversation today a colleague and I talked about this old analogy. It left me thinking about changing corporate culture and the impact of institutional memory, so I’m sharing it here again as a framework for thoughts.

Picture 5 monkeys placed in a cage. A new community is formed. From the ceiling of the cage hangs a bunch of bananas. A stepladder is placed under the bananas. As the first eager monkey rushes up the ladder, a firehose knocks him off and hoses down all the monekys. Shocked, they sit back and regroup. Later another moneky tries, with the same result. It make take repeated attempts by each monkey before they become conditioned (socialized really) to not climb the ladder.

At some point, the lesson has been learned by this closed culture and controls how they respond as a community. Then one monkey forgets and steps onto the ladder. But the firehose doesn’t have time to react. The other four monkeys grab the offender and beat him senseless. They’ve learned that in this society, you don’t climb the ladder.

Now the process of attrition and replacement in the society begins. One of the original monkeys is removed and a new monkey is added to the group. He spies the bananas and leaps onto the ladder, only to be dragged down and beaten by the rest of the group. After several attempts, the new monkey learns.

Another original monkey is replaced with a new monkey. And the same process follows. Then another and another and another. Soon we have a group of five monkeys who’ve never been soaked by the firehose, but won’t climb the ladder. This learned behavior was socialized into the group over time.

It no longer matters how many generations of monkeys follow. The new behavior is that a monkey climbing the ladder will be dragged off and beaten. None of the monkeys in the cage has ever been knocked off the ladder with a firehose. None have been soaked down. They don’t know what the consequence is because it’s been replaced by group behavior. They can’t remember being soaked. They don’t know why they do what they do. The accepted norm for this closed community is to beat anyone who tries to climb the ladder.

Isn’t that a lot like institutional memory? We don’t know why we do what we do. We do it this way because we’ve “always done it this way.” The real end consequence may no longer exist. It may not matter. It may have vanished. But we don’t climb that ladder in this cage buddy. It just isn’t done. We don’t operate that way here.

Today’s conversation led me to recount a seminar and book from several years ago (about 1990 or 91). Teaching the Elephant to Dance by Jim Belasco. That sent me on a quick Googleventure because I didn’t have my copy at hand.

“But, we’ve always done it that way,”

This is a warning sign, a symptom of impending disaster for any organization.

Shackled, like powerful elephants, to the past, organizations rob themselves of the ingenuity required to meet new competitive challenges and escape the “re” dimension trap of “re-engineering, re-organization and re-structuring that concentrate on short term fixes rather than long term solutions.

Elephant is a practical, hands-on guide for creating the right change in any organization, large or small, corporate or governmental, manufacturing or service based. Filled with illuminating case studies, it shows how to devise new corporate visions and strategies… how to overcome inertia .. and how to form labor-management partnerships. Clear, authoritative, practical and inspiring, Elephant provides a step-by-step guide for making the impossible happen.

One of the things Jim said in the small session he led that I attended was a simple tenet of business and change, but one that so often escapes managers.

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll continue getting the results you’ve been getting.

I was pleased to see a quote from Stephen Covey on Jim’s web page. Jim’s approach to changing corporate culture is one that’s stuck with me ever since. I still have his book. I still refer to it.

Why are the obvious lessons still so hard for some organizations to learn? Change is a fundamental principle in our universe. The rate of change varies widely, but change is everywhere. Permanence is an illusion.

I don’t have an answer, nor do I seek one. I do observe that those who embrace change have an easier time of life. Those who go out and court change…embrace change…drive change, have fun and enjoy. If you resist change, well, as the Borg would say — resistance is futile. Only when we become the agent of change do we have any control over the direction change takes. Isn’t it better to steer the course and set direction than to strive to hold a straight unchanging course. Isn’t progress like sailing, constantly tacking against the winds of change? And if you insist on ignoring the wind of change, don’t you deserve that “jibe ho” just as the booms swings around to knock you into the drink?

Filed by Ken at 7:37 am under General