Hidden Problems
Ernesto Sirolli tells a lovely story in his book Ripples from the Zambezi
In the 1970’s he worked for an Italian NGO that provided aid for the people of Zambia.
One of their projects was to teach the Zambians about agriculture and how to cultivate food.
Ernesto tells how they arrived in a beautifully fertile valley on the banks of the Zambezi river. The climate was hot, but not dry, the soil was amazingly fertile, it was a perfect environment for growing beautiful Italian tomatoes and courgettes.
The Italian aid workers quickly set about cultivating the soil and planting their seeds.
The locals (who were clearly lazy) had absolutely no interest in joining in; so the aid workers started to pay them to help with their endeavours and from time to time they would show up to collect a wage, but they were at best sporadic about it.
As the months passed the Italian’s crops flourished, the tomatoes grew to the size of footballs and the courgettes… Well I will leave that to your imagination.
The aid workers were amazed by how fertile the valley was, and even more amazed that the Africans were not remotely interested in agriculture.
“Thank God we are here” they thought “We will save the Zambians from starvation”.
Just as the plants were ripening and a week or so before it was time to harvest them a bloat of hippopotamuses emerged from the river and ate everything.
It was a disaster. The Italians wailed at the Zambians “My God, why didn’t you tell us about the Hippos?” The Africans replied “You never asked”.
Was it any wonder they weren’t interested in cultivating the valley?
The moral of Ernesto’s story is clear
Don’t impose your solution, listen to people’s problems before you try to help them.
Something that is worth remembering before you roll out your next management panacea:
- Lean
- Business process re-engineering
- Performance management
- Outsourcing
- Big data
- Risk management
- Management by objectives
- Customer relationship management
Pick your poison.
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Watch Ernesto Sirolli at TED
Image by RayMorris1
Good story; to me, this points to a type of Ego problem that people in authority – especially upper management – are susceptible to… hence end up learning the hard way on many occasions.
Get the facts! Ask those who are doing the job and have done the job many times what works, what doesn’t work and what might be improved. New managers who swoop down and “impose solutions” before doing research and a little leg work generally alienate employees and create a poisonous work atmosphere as opposed to employees working in harmony towards common goals.
p.s. Kaizen style management goes a long way towards solving this workplace problem.
Joe, you are so right. Unfortunately most of us managers see our lack of knowledge as a weakness and would never dare admit it.
Thanks for the comment
James,
Love the story… this applies to both change management and design… change management shouldn’t be forced on the employee, while design ought to be done with the customer, not to the customer.
Annette :-)
James,
Your post reminded of a group that used to be called ITDG but they are now called Practical Action.
Here’s a bit about them:
Practical Action was introduced more than 40 years ago by radical economist, philosopher and author of Small is Beautiful, Dr EF Schumacher. The charity’s ethos is that the right idea – however small – can change lives, create jobs and improve health and livelihoods. The tools to reduce poverty may be simple or sophisticated, but to provide long-term practical answers, must be placed firmly in the hands of local people.
http://practicalaction.org/
I think they do exactly what you suggest and I wish the Italians in your story had come from there :)
Adrian
Thanks for the link, I think the Italians probably wish the same
Hello James,
This is one of the TED talk’s that really stands out for me. It also reinforces and vividly brings to life the fundamental insight that each and every human being’s actions are correlated with the way that the situation (world) occurs of that human being. Here is how Werner Erhard has put it:
‘Your way of being, your occuring world & your actions are all correlated . Your actions are correlated with what occurs to you. You way of being, way of acting, are correlated with how life occurs to you: the way things are perceived by you, registered by you.’
Therefore, next time you/i are confronted by some behaviour we do not understand, we would be wise to suspend judgement and invoke curiosity. Ask ourselves this, ‘How must the situation occur for this person for this behaviour to be a fitting response?’ With this way of approaching the situation we might just learn something! And it is hard.
At your service
maz
I have this problem right now Maz, a massive opportunity and a bunch of people who are too obstinate to take it. What am I missing?
James