{"id":4016,"date":"2015-03-29T09:41:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T09:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=4016"},"modified":"2015-03-29T09:41:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T09:41:56","slug":"over-egged-expectation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=4016","title":{"rendered":"Over-Egged Expectation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.improvementscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/FISH_ISP_eggs_jumping.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4022\" src=\"http:\/\/www.improvementscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/FISH_ISP_eggs_jumping-300x75.gif\" alt=\"FISH_ISP_eggs_jumping\" width=\"300\" height=\"75\" \/><\/a>Resistance-to-change is an oft quoted excuse for improvement torpor. The implied sub-message is more like &#8220;<em><strong>We<\/strong> would love to change but <strong>They<\/strong> are resisting<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Notice the <em>Us-and-Them<\/em> language.\u00a0 This is the observable evidence of an &#8220;We<em>&#8216;re OK and They&#8217;re Not OK<\/em>&#8221; belief.\u00a0 And in reality it is this unstated belief and the resulting self-justifying behaviour that is an effective barrier to systemic improvement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">This <em>Us-and-Them<\/em> language generates cultural friction, erodes trust and erects silos that are effective barriers to the flow of information, of innovation and of learning.\u00a0 And the inevitable reactive solutions to this <em>Us-versus-Them<\/em> friction create self-amplifying positive feedback loops that ensure the counter-productive behaviour is sustained.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">One tangible manifestation are DRATs: Delusional Ratios and Arbitrary Targets.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">So when a plausible, rational and well-evidenced candidate for an alternative approach is discovered then it is a reasonable reaction to grab it and to desperately spray the &#8216;magic pixie dust&#8217; at everything.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">This a recipe for disappointment: because there is no such thing as &#8216;improvement magic pixie dust&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The more uncomfortable reality is that the &#8216;magic&#8217; is the result of a long period of investment in learning and the associated hard work in practising and polishing the techniques and tools.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">It may look like magic but is isn&#8217;t. That is an illusion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">And some self-styled &#8216;magicians&#8217; choose to keep their hard-won skills secret &#8230; because by sharing them know that they will lose their &#8216;magic powers&#8217; in a flash of &#8216;blindingly obvious in hindsight&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">And so the chronic cycle of despair-hope-anger-and-disappointment continues.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">System-wide improvement in safety, flow, quality and productivity requires that the benefits of synergism overcome the benefits of antagonism.\u00a0 This requires two changes to the current hope-and-despair paradigm.\u00a0 Both are necessary and neither are sufficient alone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">1) The &#8216;wizards&#8217; (i.e. magic folk) share their secrets.<br \/>\n2) The &#8216;muggles&#8217; (i.e. non-magic folk) invest the time and effort in learning &#8216;how-to-do-it&#8217;.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The transition to this awareness is uncomfortable so it needs to be managed pro-actively &#8230; by being open about the risk &#8230; and how to mitigate it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">That is what experienced Practitioners of Improvement Science (and ISP) will do. Be open about the challenged ahead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">And those who desperately want the significant and sustained SFQP improvements; and an end to the chronic chaos; and an end to the gaming; and an end to the hope-and-despair cycle &#8230;. just need to choose. Choose to invest and learn the &#8216;how to&#8217; and be part of the future &#8230; or choose to be part of the past.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Improvement science is simple &#8230; but it is not intuitively obvious &#8230; and so it is not easy to learn.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">If it were we would be all doing it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">And it is the behaviour of a wise leader of change to set realistic and mature expectations of the challenges that come with a transition to system-wide improvement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">That is demonstrating the OK-OK behaviour needed for synergy to grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resistance-to-change is an oft quoted excuse for improvement torpor. The implied sub-message is more like &#8220;We would love to change but They are resisting&#8220;. Notice the Us-and-Them language.\u00a0 This is the observable evidence of an &#8220;We&#8216;re OK and They&#8217;re Not OK&#8221; belief.\u00a0 And in reality it is this unstated belief and the resulting self-justifying behaviour &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=4016\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Over-Egged Expectation&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20,22,24,26,28,32,40,42,45,46,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fish","category-flow","category-healthcare","category-improvementology","category-isp","category-metaphors","category-productivity","category-sfqp","category-how","category-what","category-teach","category-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}