The Progress Paradox: Why Do We Feel Stuck When Everything Is Green? (Podcast)
It's a scenario any organization would embrace. Every department is hitting its targets. Performance dashboards are overwhelmingly colored green as goals are met or exceeded. Bonuses are out for jobs well done.
Lots of good things are happening within the organization, and yet ... lead times are growing longer, issues are escalating and frustration is rising. What is going on?
In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast hosts Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer explore the paradox of organizational success, where departments meet their targets, but the enterprise still feels stuck.
The culprit may be suboptimization. In other words, departments focus on their own metrics at the expense of the overall enterprise.
Saleh describes the phenomenon as “the illusion of excellence.” “It's a façade,” he says. “Local efficiency can quietly create enterprise waste.”
The two discuss how KPIs and incentives, both team and individual, can drive these “silo” behaviors, and they encourage the inclusion of enterprise-wide goals for leaders. Both acknowledge the challenge such change entails. Dyer points to promotions, for example.
“The conventional wisdom of the past has been I either need to make myself look better, my department look better, or make yours look worse. And that's the only way that I'll get ahead of you,” Dyer says. “We need to redefine that. We need to say … those leaders who are the most selfless, not selfish, selfless, and do the most to help the enterprise perform the best, those are the ones that we need to continue to promote within the organization.”
Dyer and Saleh discuss the need to rethink organizational structures, highlighting cross-functional teams and horizontal thinking.
This episode concludes with several questions for leadership, including:
- What metrics are you defending that hurt the whole?
- Where are you celebrating local wins that damage the overall health of the enterprise?
- Do our customers experience one company or multiple companies when they talk to us?