Year of the Ox - Time to Deal With Sacred Cows

I haven't been blogging over the holidays. There were some emergencies and unexpected travel that kept me out of the blogosphere. But now that we're well into the new year, it's a good time to reflect on the challenges that the new year will bring and the skills we need to face those challenges. It's a good time for thinking as we contemplate a new year, a new administration in Washington, and an entirely new business environment.

I've taught a course in institutional change, and the first rule of change is simple: It isn't easy. We're comfortable with the way things have been, especially coming out of the last decade of economic growth and a bubble of real estate appreciation and false security fueled by sub-prime mortgages and credit card debt.

Here are a couple of catch phrases that have helped students understand the need for - and the difficulty of - change. They come from Paradigms a book by Joel Barker.

Your past success is your worst enemy is an essential idea in understanding the difficulty of making changes. We're comfortable with the skills and experiences that made us successful in the past. And we're confident that those skills and experiences will be successful despite the fact that we may be operating in a very different world. It's just human nature. Like Pavlov's dogs, we exhibited a pattern of behavior in the past and we were rewarded. And now we have learned the "trick." But, like a one-trick pony, that trick probably won't work in a new environment where the rules have changed. Who moved my cheese?? If you need an example of the folly of following past success, consider General Motors. They were operating under the rules of an outdated "conventional wisdom" while the Japanese were changing the manufacturing model and the world was changing the norms and expectations for transportation excellence.

Sacred cows make the best burgers is a phrase that reminds us to put everything on the table for review. In good times it's possible to "wink at" programs and policies that have been around, unquestioned, forever. In tough times, we don't have that luxury. It's especially hard to deal with programs that have political supporters, loyal constituencies, and staff that may end up getting displaced. But, for the health of any organization, shedding unproductive appendages is critical to organizational health. Think Darwin: evolution or extinction? I'm familiar with tourism in Hawaii, and this is the time to review duplicated and unproductive structures, budget allocation methods, market selection practices, and a host of other sacred cows.

January saw the start of a new year and the beginning of a new administration in Washington. January is also Chinese new year, and 2009 will be the year of the Ox. Like the Ox, we need to be untiring and focused as we pull ourselves out of the mud of 2008.