Do you have a problem with Zombies?
Or, to be more accurate: do you have zombie problems; those problems you thought you’d dealt with or that you ignored?
And they…
Keep.
Coming.
Back.
To haunt you?
Maybe you’re just burying these problems and hoping they will go away. But they are persistent little… beggars.
Just putting them into a box in a locked filing cabinet on the fifteenth floor of the office building of an obscure government department whose workers are all working from home isn’t going to cut it.
You need to defeat them.
Permanently.
Often, these are seemingly small problems. They’ve become more irritating than obstructive over time, and people get used to sidestepping, finding a workaround and even just accepting “that’s the way it is”.
In the movies, zombies are something that must be suppressed and eliminated to avoid them taking over, and they’re a perpetual disruption to normal life. So why, in the business and industrial world, do we tolerate the proliferation of zombie problems that are constantly affecting efficiency, profit and wellbeing?
Some examples of the response from businesses:
- “Bill knows how to sort that out”.
- “It’s not such a big deal-we don’t get that many customer complaints”.
- “That was happening when my uncle ran the company. I assumed it was normal”.
- “The guys know they can always move their workstation if the rain gets too much”.
- “I can’t see why it’s an issue. If they don’t like it, they can do something about it-or leave”.
Recognise any of those?
Of course not.
You wouldn’t have any persistent problems in your business, would you?
(That last example had me seriously questioning whether I wanted to work with that attitude, and fortunately I didn’t have to, and neither is anyone else at that business)
In reality, there will be many seemingly low-level problems in many businesses which are leaching profits, time and goodwill.
What to do about them?
First call is to know about a problem. If you don’t know, you can’t remove it. Make sure every issue is logged.
Encourage your team, and your employees especially, to raise issues, and allow them to show if and how they deal with them. After all, they probably have the best ideas. Even frequent toilet blockages are an issue, especially if you have to pay someone to come in to rectify.
Once you have a list-and it’s rarely fixed – the zombies can’t hide. You’ll be able to consider just how much they’re costing you. Especially when your employees let you know how much it’s happening!
Of course, you can identify and resolve zombie problems for yourself, or you could get someone else to deep- dive into tracking down the zombies (even those in that hidden filing cabinet on the 15th floor) and permanently removing them, and I happen to know a really good #EngineeringDetective.
Don’t let the Zombies take over your business and steal from your bottom line.
Be alert! Be safe!