Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Question: Why don’t we address this situation? And I suggest one solution.

Note the clever use of the summary as question and the title as answer. Maybe that isn’t so clever, but I find the actual question and accompanying answer common.

I was recently reading about how engineers and computer programmers might be fungible, i.e., interchangeable. One is just like the other, so if a less-expensive person comes along, fire the more-expensive person and replace the other. Why not? Well, persons are not interchangeable. They have unique qualities that better suit one person for a specific job. So, we know this, why don’t we act like we know it? See title of post.

Our organization has many problems. The root cause of most problems is that persons won’t leave their cubicle, walk 50 feet across the cubicle farm, and talk to another person. Why not? They don’t know how to address situations well. We know the problem, we know the solution…train they so they do know how. Why don’t we train them? See title of post.

I suppose I could continue here with examples of problems for which we don’t implement the known solution. The title of the post explains why we don’t.

Here is one solution: bring in an outsider who does these difficult things for a living. As an outsider, they don’t care if persons don’t like them. That is an overstatement. More accurate is that they don’t have the emotional investment in the persons across the cubicle farm and don’t have the accompanying risk. Low-risk persons are more apt to tackle difficult situations.