The more people I talk to, the more puzzled I become over the persistent ways that employers squash their employees’ creativity without even realizing they are doing it. In the name of efficiency, they invest heavily in tools (usually in large, expensive software applications) and expend tremendous resources acquiring the tools, adopting processes that are necessitated by the tool, adapting existing processes to the new tools, and then training people on how to use them.It is this reliance upon training, however, that usually squelches the ability of people to innovate and reinvent processes in order to bring about genuine efficiency. Like a highly efficient vehicle, we’re not looking to flat out eliminate the fuel we put into the car. Instead, we’re looking to accomplish the same, or more, effort with the same amount of input. A lot of effort is consumed in the workplace trying to drive people to behaviors that they aren’t naturally attuned to. Efficiency, when it comes to the workplace, is the ability to get people to extract more value from themselves.
Sadly, many employees do not realize that their greatest, intrinsic value is not maximized by knowing what button to push when, but by understanding what happens before, during, and after the button is pushed and, more importantly, why those things happen, and why the button is necessary. Here’s an example we’ve all probably encountered:
I was at the neighborhood pizza shop recently when the Point of Sale system went down. The counter help frantically pushed every button they could find to no avail. Then, the two people at the counter dug up a calculator and attempted to add up the bills and apply the meals tax of 9%. As they failed to add the tax correctly, the employees stated they didn’t know how to make the calculator do that. Now, I could easily point to the schools, or the parents, and say there’s something wrong with our educational system there. While there’s certainly some truth to that, the immediate problem rests, quite firmly, at the feet of the shop’s management.
While we’d like to hope that even teenagers working part-time at the pizza shop are capable of adding up a bill, and that their inability to do so probably means they need to pay more attention is school, I was particularly surprised that the shop’s manager didn’t do more than hand his help a calculator and tell them to “do the best that they can” before disappearing back into the kitchen. Then, the workers abdicated any ability to think for themselves and just tabbed away on the calculator in ignorance, hoping to get the numbers right.
Clearly, no one there remembered the customers and what they most wanted. We all understand that the systems aren’t perfect and that they crash sometimes, however, a different approach to managing the situation is all that was needed. Had anyone bothered to remember that customers want to walk in, get their food, pay and then leave as quickly as possible, I’m certain that a better approach to the situation would have resulted.
First off, instead of asking the less-than-able help to add 15.79 + 1.29 + 3.79 just round the numbers to 16+1+4. The difference between the two is a whopping 13 cents. Seems like such a simple solution. With the elimination of the decimal, addition gets easier and can be done with a pencil. No calculator needed and it certainly would have sped things up. Then, since there are no decimals, show the workers that multiplying by 1.09 adds the tax and let them decide if the calculator or something so low-tech as a pencil would allow them to work quickly and keep customers happy.
Instead, the focus was on using the tool (the calculator or the cash register) correctly, and knowing which buttons to push, and how. While this is just one small example from the local pizza shop, at the large, corporate level we see the exact same thing – heavy investment in learning the tools while the concepts behind why those tools exist is utterly lost. There are any number of vendors making a good living selling the tool, training on how to use the tool, upgrades to the initial release of the tool and, ultimately, a whole new tool when the last one becomes obsolete in a few years. In their hurry to become more efficient, most employers are generating the greatest waste: Lost human creativity. They have let go of their employees’ intelligence and ability to innovate and, instead, given them a button to push and train them on exactly how and when to push it. Sadly, the button can already push itself and will only increase in its ability to do so as technology grows. What the button can’t do, however, is think for itself, change the process to something better or adjust to changing circumstances.
We should all delight more in our humanity and the capabilities of people, and stop looking for a button to push. After all, in a world where programming enables the button to push itself, we’re wasting our own unique abilities to think, explore, innovate and create when we spend time doing nothing more than learning to push the button.
Copyright © 2011 David Kasprzak
