The idea for this article came from my desk lamp. It is one of those halogen lamps, and every time a bulb burns out, my heart sinks. Anyone who has one of these lamps will know what I am talking about. Or at least I hope they will, because if they don't, then I am the moron that this lamp makes me feel like. It is not impossible to change these bulbs, but it is extremely difficult for someone with only two hands who is not on heavy-duty steroids. There is a serious design flaw here, and it got me thinking about other things that don't work.
Things that don't work fall into categories: products, services, systems, processes and people. The least interesting are the products like my lamp, although I am pretty interested in knowing what the packaging people have in mind when I buy something that can only be opened with a blow torch or the Jaws of Life.
When systems don't work, we usually focus on a person who has screwed something up. Somebody must be stupid for things to get so messed up. Case closed. But it is not closed, because in my experience, stupid people are not the reason that things don't work. It is more complicated than that. I recently worked on a project at an institution of higher learning. Everybody I dealt with was "smart." Many had Ph.D.s. None of them were crazy or weird. Yet they were presiding over the most dysfunctional and toxic organization I have ever seen.
How is that possible? I wish that I had a solid answer to that question, but I do not. Forrest Gump's explanation, "Stupid is as stupid does," is accurate, but it doesn't get you very far. Normally in these columns, I discuss a problem and suggest some approaches that have been successful in resolving them. In a broad sense, because of my work with organizations, I know what I am talking about. Here, I'm not so sure, and I would welcome readers' responses to these ideas.
Why don't things work? Let's start by defining what it means for things to not work. Here are some descriptive terms: It doesn't do what it is supposed to do, poor quality and poor service, unfinished and half-done work, waste and fraud, dangerous conditions that are allowed to persist and no follow through on commitments made.
There are places where things work and places where they don't. Understanding the places that work helps us to understand the reasons that others don't. For example, I have lived next to Central Park in New York City for most of my adult life. There was a time when the park was dangerous, barren, in disrepair and mostly empty. Today, it is the premier urban park in the world. It works. How can you explain this transformation? The simplest explanation is also the most obvious: money, lots of it. Conservatives have always denounced throwing money at problems, unless they were military, but it's always seemed to me to work pretty well. Money may not solve all problems, but it is usually a prerequisite to solving them, and it sure does help.
Chicago has long prided itself as being the "city that worked." When the mayor of New York was talking about wiping out poverty, the first Mayor Daley of Chicago famously said, "Somebody has to pick up the garbage." Most European cities work well because a lot is invested in them, but as always, it's not that simple. If we look at island communities in the Caribbean, some clearly work better than others. Barbados, the French Islands and a few others come to mind.
Most people would put the U.S. Virgin Islands in the "doesn't work" category, based largely on the quality of government services, poverty rates, crime, indifferent customer service and over-development. My experience is that this judgment is mostly correct, although there are numerous exceptions, things that do work well.
Demonstrating that things don't work is easy. Explaining why they don't work is a lot harder. Before you can begin to solve a problem, you should understand it. During the presidential campaign, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that she didn't know if global warming was caused by human activity, but she and John McCain would eliminate it. Hmm. How could you fix something if you didn't understand the cause? At some point, it is important to ask the "why" questions.
Next week: some thoughts on why things don't work.
Editor's note: Frank Schneiger is the president of Human Services Management Institute, a management-consulting firm that focuses on organizational change. Much of his current work is in the area of problems of execution and implementing rapid changes as responses to operational problems.
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