Some of you who have attended CORE training recently have probably heard me mention the greatest cartoon ever made – the old 1950’s Warner Brothers cartoon with Ralph and Sam. Ralph was a coyote (played by Wyle E. Coyote) and Sam was a sheep dog. The episodes always began with Ralph and Sam meeting each other and walking to work together. “Morning Ralph”, “Morning Sam”, they’d say and they would ask about each other’s kids, wife etc. Then they’d finally get to work – and this is where the fun started! They would each punch in to the SAME time clock then go to work. Sam’s job was to guard the sheep and Ralph’s job was to steel the sheep. Of course what follows is ten minutes of slapstick mayhem and violence – Ralph always at the receiving end – like falls from cliffs, explosions and anvils landing on heads. It’s the good clean fun we expect from those great old Warner Brothers shorts. But believe it or not, there’s a message for us in these brilliant cartoons.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced times where our team or department seems to be at odds with other parts of the organization. Perhaps it takes the form of a process that is so cumbersome it becomes a major performance blocker or maybe it’s an attitude (implied, inferred or actual) that says “that’s not my job”. Whether these problems are intentional or unintentional they have the same effect: they get in the way of us being truly effective.
At one of my previous companies we would refer to the accounts receivable department as the “sales prevention” team. While it was purely unintentional, their processes were very customer “un-friendly” to say the least. Ironically, one of this company’s stated aspirations was “let’s make it easy for our customers to do business with us.” Frankly, the A/R team made it easier for our customers to do business with our competition!
My example may be extreme, but can you think of anything we might do that conflicts with other parts of the organization? Are we ever guilty of self-inflicted “catch 22’s”? Do we ever feel like we’re our own worst enemy? It sounds very simplistic, but I think the key to avoiding the “Ralph and Sam” syndrome is to keep the big picture in view. One of the risks of departmentalizing is “nearsightedness”, where we lose the ability to see things that are farther away. Our focus becomes our own group or department sometimes at the expense of the larger objective. The more we can do to help our teams understand the big picture, the more agent buy-in we’ll have. That means “Ralph and Sam” will actually be working with each other instead of against each other.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced times where our team or department seems to be at odds with other parts of the organization. Perhaps it takes the form of a process that is so cumbersome it becomes a major performance blocker or maybe it’s an attitude (implied, inferred or actual) that says “that’s not my job”. Whether these problems are intentional or unintentional they have the same effect: they get in the way of us being truly effective.
At one of my previous companies we would refer to the accounts receivable department as the “sales prevention” team. While it was purely unintentional, their processes were very customer “un-friendly” to say the least. Ironically, one of this company’s stated aspirations was “let’s make it easy for our customers to do business with us.” Frankly, the A/R team made it easier for our customers to do business with our competition!
My example may be extreme, but can you think of anything we might do that conflicts with other parts of the organization? Are we ever guilty of self-inflicted “catch 22’s”? Do we ever feel like we’re our own worst enemy? It sounds very simplistic, but I think the key to avoiding the “Ralph and Sam” syndrome is to keep the big picture in view. One of the risks of departmentalizing is “nearsightedness”, where we lose the ability to see things that are farther away. Our focus becomes our own group or department sometimes at the expense of the larger objective. The more we can do to help our teams understand the big picture, the more agent buy-in we’ll have. That means “Ralph and Sam” will actually be working with each other instead of against each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment