Do people in your organization say things like:

If they could just execute, we’d be OK Why are they moving so slowly?” Why can’t that team keep its commitments?”Do you see the problem here?

Actually, the problem is a bit more insidious that that. That other team (or department)

is standing in the way of certain success! Right?

I see this frequently with regards to software development groups. “The Business” keeps asking for faster, the builders keep trying to please (being loyal and pragmatic problems solvers)

, complexity increases, and suddenly the builders are viewed as unresponsive. Trust and confidence drops.

All that work that added complexity…was it worthwhile? Did it generate the expected ROI? Did anyone even measure that?

Chances are, those perfect plans weren’t always perfect. They contributed to “the problem”. This is a capital “t” Team sport.

Stepping back, we often talk about continuous improvement. But pay very careful attention to the subtext in your organization. Is it a case of…

Do you see the difference?

Are you sending the message that the team is inherently good (and looking to get better), or that the team is inherently broken and problematic, and just needs to be fixed?

Are you looking for the silver bullet?

They just need to ________________ If only they could _______________If so, you need to work hard to change this thinking. You may have contributed to the problem. THEY may need your help. And there will always be new problems to tackle.

A culture of continuous improvement is about always striving for better to stay competitive and keep challenging ourselves. So we win together.

Yes, if you’ve let one part of the business struggle (or that part of the business happens to be insanely complex and hard), you may have a bottleneck. That bottleneck may be in another part of the organization. Or YOU may be the bottleneck, and you just assumed it was somewhere else. It doesn’t really matter.

An organization that establishes safety as a prerequisite and experiments together, will improve together, and win together.