“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” – this is a phrase I’ve heard so much in the past several years. Initially, it seems that it made sense. Why bother working on something that is not broken? Why spend resources on things that doesn’t need attention? Makes sense, right?
If you think this through, you would realize how short minded this statement is. Yes, it would save you on resources ‘now,’ but does it support a sustainable operational model? A little bit of time saved today can cost you a much longer, more expensive setback in the future. That investment of time and effort today may prevent your company from fade into insignificance.
It may be true that nothing is broken, but that is not the only reason to make changes. In my opinion, there are three main reason to change: (We’ll go over each one on a separate post)
- To fix
- To improve
- To adapt
Change helps the organization adapt to new markets and environments. Leaders of these organizations need to recognize what lies ahead in their industry. Sheer hard work and know-how are not enough to be successful at this. A leader must have the vision and creativity to anticipate change. On top of that, these leaders need to know how to inspire folks around them to do the same.
I’m not proposing that leaders learn the art of divination. It’s not that often that a brilliant idea happen in a vacuum. For the most part, these ‘overnight successes’ and transformational changes happen as a result of a sequence of events and changes leading to it. We simply need to be constantly moving and improving our business.
Individuals—"I’m not broken, why fix me?”
To get ahead and to remain valuable in any organization, we all need to constantly retool ourselves. On top of constantly honing the existing tools in our toolbox, we also need to acquire new skills to take us to the next level. To remain relevant in an ever-changing organization that exists in an every-changing environment, you’ll need to move along with those changes. You simply can’t rely on your previous skills to get you ahead. You’ll need to develop new skills, improve your existing skills, and work on your weaknesses.
This practice, of constant learning and personal redefinition, can be classified under the terms upskilling and reskilling. We’ll talk more about those two terms on the next post, but here’s a teaser…
Both terms, upskilling and reskilling, describes the act of learning new skills. Often used interchangeably, but each have distinct purposes and context. Again, more on these two terms in my next post. (Perhaps #65)
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” simply does not work. In his book, “Thriving on Chaos,”Tom Peters, who also co-authored “In Search of Excellence” and “Passion for Excellence,” reframed this phrase to a much better context. It directly urges us, the ‘fixer,’ to work harder in finding ways to improve, to innovate, and to adapt.
“’If it ain’t broke, you just haven’t looked hard enough.’ Fix it anyway.” – Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos
Back to organizations
Please allow me to qualify my point here. Yes, there is a place (and time) to simply move forward, accept what we have now, and say ‘this is perfect enough.’ However, there are appropriate instances to dig deeper and find improvements. For instance, if you have daily processes in your operations, perhaps it’s not appropriate to constantly spend time to find improvements on a daily basis.
There is a point when you’ll have to simply trust the systems that were created and have been running successfully. Constantly observing the process is necessary at this point, as well as structured practices, to review and recalibrate these systems, need to be in place to get into the habit of reviewing existing processes.
As an example, in our organization, we have scheduled monthly or quarterly reviews of our processes, systems, and procedures. We also incorporated expiration dates on our knowledge articles to institutionalize constant improvement and review of our knowledge base. This ensures that procedures are current and relevant, which extends its benefits to the end-users and the team members they serve.
We also have teams in our organization that are focused on looking at innovation and the progression of our target market and our industry. This allows us to be constantly conscious of our target’s preferences, behaviors, and affinities. Thus, giving us the opportunity to pivot in our approach and strategy, anticipating a change in the marketplace.
In companies like Google, they want everyone in the organization focused on working on new projects, ideas, and products. They encourage, if not require, each employee to spend time on a side project or to work on an idea outside of their actual work. This paved the way for many of the Google products we use today, like GMAIL.
If things seem to be running smoothly, don’t be complacent. Don’t ever think that you can keep doing what you’re doing, and expect to sustain that success. It’s healthy to be in a constant, but bearable, discomfort. You need to be constantly stretching yours and your organization’s capabilities. As race car driver, Mario Andretti, said, “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
Crowdsourcing FTW
Have you encountered scenarios when the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” was used in your organization? How did you respond to that? Were you able to stir away from complacency to constant improvement and progress? How would you suggest leaders could do to inspire their teams to do the same?