In too deep ….

“Now I know the mermaid kin

I find them bound by natural laws:

They have neither tail nor fin,

But are deadlier for that cause.” – Robert Graves

In the weird but sticky description of the change management quadrants – the story goes that one person is trying to convince another to make a change. There is a big pot of gold at the top of the mountain. The change management setup is to convince the person to make the effort to get this pot of gold. Trying to convince others around us to pursue a change is a measure of our success, specially when implementing a new way of thinking. The positive of making the change is the pot of gold at the top of the mountain, the negative is the fear of crutches in case there is an accident climbing up the mountain, the positive of no-change is personified by a mermaid that the person being convinced is attached to (cannot take the mermaid up the mountain) and the negative of no-change is an alligator waiting to bite….

Three of the quadrants are somewhat logical and driven by a rational pursuit of opportunities and avoidance of risk – the mermaid is an all-together different kind of situation. Kelvyn Youngman recently pointed to this quadrant as well in his insightful articles on change. There may be elements of reason and cold hard facts (please do read Should we bet on a losing cause) with the benefits of not changing but it does appear that the mermaid is not always a thing of enlightened reason. It has to do with the psychological pursuit of stability, of comfort with “fast thinking” rather than “slow thinking”, of addictions and coping mechanisms, of not getting in too deep where one feels trapped with a loss of options – even bad options. Is there a more clear way of thinking about the mermaid?

The mermaids in mythology, exercised a magnetic attraction and waylaid the sailors from their goals. This allure of the mermaid, is like the sensory attraction to stimulus, subtle and pervasive. In the change management effort that we in TOC (Theory of Constraints) implementations are trying to make – this is the attraction to conflict, to assigning blame, to instant gratification, to silver bullets of technology, visibility, discipline. In an organization faced with long standing undesirable effects rooted in persistent conflict, there are many coping mechanisms in place. Ways to manipulate the system to earn rewards and avoid punishments. Each and every one of these “habits” represents real experience – a real investment in memory, a real mermaid. From a psychological point of view these are habits, attachments and sometimes addictions. They keep us from looking deeper into the reality of things. They are moh-maya. They keep us from achieving the goal.

In a recent consulting engagement I was working to try and improve a dysfunctional supplier relationship. The supplier S provides a critical service to company C. The service is not the core competence of company C making it natural to keep out of the company. There is plenty of variability in the demand making it hard for the supplier to be reliable. There is constant negotiation pressure exerted by C to reduce costs. On the other hand S is in a low margin business – working with minimum wage workers with high turnover trying to squeeze profits out of the situation. Over time most competitors have left or been swallowed. S is in a monopoly in most cases a duopoly in some.

What are the mermaids here – on the part of the supplier S it is the ability to manipulate the situation with the variability – to bid low and make money on changes. This creates extreme dissatisfaction for company C. They feel they are being manipulated and exploited with little to no recourse. Their mermaid is the belief that the vendor is “bad”. They are cheaters. They need to be controlled with more and more visibility and strict punishments in the contract. This has resulted in detailed negotiations around every action, pricing based on man hours estimated and endless negotiations on the hours and cost per hour. With no real improvements in performance or costs. Most of you who have been exposed to the projects environment are familiar with this coping mechanism – a real mermaid that distracts from the goal. The assumption that “people are bad” gets in the way of making any real progress. It waylays us with the temptation to manage behavior – to gain control of the situation by managing in more and more detail.

So here we are – the mermaid on one side is a coping mechanism that allows the supplier S to maintain its profits by manipulating the variability to its advantage, on the other the mermaid is focus on transparency and control – driven by the assumption that “people are bad” and the vendor is acting out of bad intentions. The result is a lose-lose relationship with poor performance, high costs and low value. Ripe for a Theory of Constraints like intervention – to change assumptions and break the underlying conflict, focus on managing uncertainty with buffers, induce high flow and create significant value that both sides could benefit from. But the mermaids are significant barriers to creating this new reality….

How does one tackle this situation? I certainly have struggled to convince people to drop the assumption that “people are bad”. It is often a deeply held belief backed by many years of experience and scar tissue and to assume the opposite that “people are good” would be naïve and foolish. People have huge sunk costs in this assumption. They are in too deep with this mode of thinking to just give it up because they now see the light. Changing this assumption is not an easy thing. Even if the pot of gold is big, the alligator is threatening and there is a well-tested path forward – the allure of the mermaid is irresistible.

Is there a good process to overcome the allure of the mermaid? Probably no easy way. People have struggled with the attachment of moh-maya forever. The approach of “killing the mermaid” though direct and forceful is unsurprisingly not very popular. When we are in too deep it is scary to even consider that option. It appears that a better option is to do a bit of judo (thanks to Rami Goldratt for suggesting this analogy). To tackle the “desire for control” not by contradicting it but by leveraging it. Technology can create transparency and visibility … around the new rules. Use the mermaid to develop a systems including Information Technology that ensure subordination to flow. A way to use the instinct for control to instead create flow in a sustainable way. “Do NOT trust and verify” may slowly give way to “Trust but verify”. At least it allows the transformation process to begin.

If you would like, do share your experience ideas with tackling mermaids in the comments section. Misery makes for good company…..😊

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