“Why the long face?” I asked.

“I just spent my annual training budget on a re-engineering consultant,” Omar began. “I knew that re-engineering would require a reasonable amount of training to be effective”

“And?” I asked.

“I was happy at the beginning, the biggest bottlenecks were at the top of the agenda. In the re-engineering meetings, everyone was excited and enthusiastic. It’s only now, after the project was shut down and I sent the consultant packing that the truth begins to emerge.”

“The truth?” I said.

“I intended this process to bring the team together, to create trust, cooperation,” Omar looked down. “Tackling the toughest workflow issues seemed admirable. Only now, I find out about the different agendas within the team, some of which were hidden agendas, mistrust, turf skirmishes and blaming behavior. The team is worse now than before.

“Sounds like you had two large agenda items you were trying to solve at the same time?” I prodded.

Omar was quiet. “I figured that solving our throughput problem, attacking the bottlenecks would improve the way the team works.”

“And what do you think, now?”

“I think, before we tackle the bottlenecks that we need to work on the team. And pick something small to get a win before we tackle the biggest problems in front of us.”
—
Premeditated Culture is available now on Amazon.