There is a classic situation in business where everyone realizes that there are significant (but often relatively minor impact to today) long-term problems that need to be fixed. Often time the new service provider is brought in with a goal of fixing those problems for the business – usually while also delivering services against the needs of today. It’s safe to say that rarely do the long-term problems get solved in this solution.
I was reading an article this morning on Medium about why a founder shutdown his startup even though there were active employees and investors encouraging him to move forward. His reasoning resonated perfectly with me and I’ll summarize it as: His solution solved a huge number of long-term customer issues but customers were not actively engaging in the product because it didn’t do anything for them today. He couldn’t figure out how to overcome the hurdle of getting active usage today.
As an independent, outside consultant to the companies that bring me in I often see a number of things that could improve the business – but they require the current team to change the way they do things with no discernible immediate benefit. It is nearly impossible to make people change their current behavior without:
- Making their work notably easier today (and you can’t just take away one difficult task and replace it with another for a net zero change).
- Dictating from the top down that a change will occur and then enforcing it every single day.
- Monetarily incentivizing them to change (often this is still tied to #2).
Outside of those three things it is rare for long-term positive change to occur. Where it does you typically find a superstar A player on a team that has a strong desire to advance their career by proving themselves to the business. If this happens take care of that person.
What is most common is that as the outside party we are asked to help a company move from where they are today to a better future but they aren’t willing to commit to any of the 3 conditions above. Ever wonder why simple technology systems end up with bad data? Because they were put in place with none of the 3 conditions above. Everyday there are employees doing things that drive no long-term value to the business but continue to do them because no one has told them to stop and change. Momentum is one of the most powerful business conditions.
Sometimes the only thing you can do is look to the future and see if you have a path to get you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. If there is no viable way forward it is time to step back and reconsider what you are trying to do.