Kill Dumb Policies
Kill Dumb Policies
by Damian Heffernan
“The Red Hulk was angry. Kaizen had failed, fallen flat. Why?”
Relatively new into an organisation I ran a workshop to introduce the concept of Kaizen, the Japanese management technique for improvement, and start an improvement working group. Not only did the session feel like it had fallen flat but there was no interest in further work around improving. I was stumped. I couldn’t work out why as this had worked well in other Companies. For context this was not a technology Company, indeed IT consisted of only half a dozen people. My session had been with policy experts, Administration, Executive Assistants and HR.
Reflecting on this with a colleague we thought perhaps the fact that it was IT heavy and using all the “Agile” terms we were so familiar with such as Kaizen, Kanban etc that this might be actually counterproductive. It felt like it was creating a barrier to the message and outcomes we were seeking.
So I stripped out everything ”Agile” and replaced all the “barrier” words such as Kaizen with the actual words, such as improvement and change for the better. We called it the Kill Dumb Policies (KDP) working group. I bought a bunch of pastries and lollies and invited everyone to come and see why the Red Hulk was so angry. The Red Hulk was on my keyring and made a fun poster image - pure marketing! I had about 6 people turn up.
I said “You know all of those annoying policies that have been around forever and make no sense now or are clunky as hell to use? Well now is your chance to kill them or change them.”
The first comment was, “But you need GM and Senior Executive Team (SET) approval for most changes”.
I said; “Well, I am a GM and I can take things to SET, and I’m here, so tell me what you need”.
“But what about Board approval?”
I said “Well let me call in the Board Secretary”, she was another GM.
She came into the session and was totally onboard with changing dumb policies and taking them to the Board.
So having removed the barriers we then we made a list (a backlog for you IT people), setup a regular meeting to discuss progress, posted it on a visible board where everyone in the Company could see it and set about killing policies.
Some of these policies were out of date, overly approval heavy, or just didn’t make any sense anymore, like not having digital signatures - only physical, black pen signatures on papers. They’d been there forever so it was just accepted, but we said “No more! “ and killed them.
I’m glad to say the KDP initiative went so well we’d killed half a dozen policies within a fortnight and new people started turning up to the KDP sessions bringing their Pet Peeve Policies (PPP), with them for judgment.
It even evolved into Kill Dumb Processes and the Red Hulk was unleashed on those too.
What had we learned?
Talking to people understanding how to fix their problems in their terms and language is far easier than asking them to leap a hurdle of knowledge first. Swapping out the unfamiliar barrier words was the first step in engagement.
Visible real change was powerful. There’s nothing more affirming that things CAN be improved than to see actual policies being killed on our visible boards.
And in case you’re wondering what happened to annual performance reviews; they’re in a nice quiet corner, with lots of shade and a small respectful plaque; call me if you’d like to visit.
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Damian is a SENIOR AGILE COACH and CONSULTANT, TECHNOLOGY LEADER & PRODUCT MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST at ReBoot Co.
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