💰 Bureaucracy Structures 💰

“I work at a bank” or even “I work at B of A” But B of A has nearly 140K employees, and I’d venture to say most of them don’t do anything specifically pertaining to banking.

It’s funny, most people have been trained to come to work in search of familiarity & competence. Work with familiar people, do familiar things, familiar tasks, familiar strategy & tactics, familiar feedback, from a familiar boss. Competence is rewarded.

Gross.

And I see this all the time. I watch people do a truly bad job for a long time all in the name of familiarity. Familiar feels good, doesn’t it?!

I have friends who will stick with a dying industry or job because it feels familiar. And familiar doesn’t have a prerequisite of good feelings.

Remember Blockbuster? They didn’t fail because their grand corporate strategy nor lack of technology (the top actually saw it coming). They failed because of bureaucracy that was filled with people who were really eager to do what they did yesterday.

Change is the unfamiliar, eh, Michael?

Change creates incompetence.

In the face of change, the imperative questions leaders must start with are, “why did people come to work here or buy this today? What did they sign up for? And are we fulfilling that narrative?”

And that’s why it is extremely difficult to change our school system, Jordan& Elana. Not because teachers & administers don’t care (they care SO much!). It is because changing the school system isn’t what they signed up for.

The solution is as simple as it is difficult: if you want to build a successful org that thrives in change (and on change), hire & train people to do the paradoxical: to discover that the unfamiliar is the comfortable familiar they seek.

Strongman like lifting heavy weights in a gym, right Martins?! Fly fisherman like being outdoors, right Mark W? That’s their comfortable familiar.

Does that make sense, Jason?