How many times have you looked at some administrative process and thought, “This is incredibly inefficient. We can do this so much better! Why hasn’t someone already fixed this?”
Often, the status quo is the status quo, however inefficient and wasteful, because someone benefits from the status quo.
If you’re going to exert any effort to improve a status quo process, first figure out who benefits. Benefits can include:
· Retaining control, or at least veto rights on decisions
· I don’t have to work harder
· It’s half my job, and if this goes away what would I do?
· Bureaucratic contentment with “we’ve always done it this way
· Forced alignment of conflicting agendas (and usually nobody is completely happy)
· No need to create a better data management system
· No need to involve someone I’d rather not work with
Once you’ve identified who benefits and how, you’ll need to showcase why your preferred process would yield better results and not trigger “inconvenience” excuses. There will be a switching cost. This took me a l-o-o-n-n-g-g-g time to figure out.
