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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

I’ve discovered a new process design methodology. I call it “Six Stupid.”

Everyone knows that a group of people is dumber than its least intelligent member. Six Stupid is based on this insight. Unlike the better-known Six Sigma, Six Stupid requires the collaboration of at least six idiots, to design process flows that defy reason and preclude exceptions. To illustrate:

My wife and I ordered furniture on-line from a prominent multi-channel retailer. A few hours later we stumbled upon a better alternative at a much more attractive price.

The first retailer’s website refused to cancel our order so I called customer service, where a polite representative told me she couldn’t cancel it either. The reason? It had already been sent to the warehouse for processing.

When I suggested she contact the warehouse, she explained that it had no telephone number to call. Really. The only solution was for them to ship the merchandise and for me to refuse the shipment. When it arrived back at the warehouse, they’d restock it and credit my account.

Which is how it happened.

This wasn’t a case of customer elimination management. Quite the opposite — customer service took care of me just fine. No, this was an example of Six Stupid. Even if the merchandise had been picked and was waiting on the shipping dock, anyone with a gram of sense could have figured out that logging the shipment as departed, then rolling it directly to Restocking would have saved paying UPS twice to ship it back and forth. But policy, and the lack of telephone service, made sure everyone Followed the Process.

Then came the blizzard, and with it a Six Stupid airline experience.

It happened like this: I’d bought round trip tickets to New York City. A week after that trip I’d booked a long weekend in Florida.

Then plans changed and I had to stay in New York an extra week, which meant I’d fly to Minnesota Thursday evening so I could get on a flight to Florida the next morning. The fare rules, you see, didn’t allow converting two round-trip tickets into one triangle fare.

Then, the day before I was to return to Minnesota, the weather service forecast snow there, and lots of it. The airline cancelled my flight in anticipation and rebooked me for the following morning, to arrive a half-hour after my flight to Florida was scheduled to depart.

I called customer service, explained the situation, and suggested that under the circumstances, routing me directly to Florida clearly made more sense for both of us.

But the fare rules still wouldn’t allow it. The best they could do was to rebook my Florida flight to later in the day. I asked the guy on the phone to check with his supervisor, which he did. No-go: She wouldn’t or couldn’t override the system. “I guess I’d better speak to your supervisor, then,” I suggested. He connected me.

“I know you have complex fare rules that mere mortals like me can’t fully comprehend …” I began. Those were the last words I would successfully utter for at least five minutes.

The customer service supervisor scolded me … that’s the only accurate description … for (1) being disrespectful to the airline; (2) trying to game their fares to get a cheaper flight to Florida; and (3) now trying to cheat to get the best of both worlds.

I confess that by the end of the call I became somewhat testy. Anyway, the next morning I spoke to a different supervisor, described my previous attempt at resolution, and asked if the airline really wanted to fly me in and out of a blizzard zone when a simple and easy alternative was staring both of us in the face.

She told me the first supervisor had placed a red flag in my records. It said that under no circumstances should anyone help me out. She did anyway, routing me directly to Florida.

It was the opposite of the first Six Stupid situation: The airline’s process did allow for exceptions. But I caught someone in a very bad mood who insisted on Following the Process anyway.

The point of this week’s tiresome missive? There are two.

The first: Don’t use the Six Stupid methodology to design whatever processes you’re trying to implement. Make sure every process has a process bypass process to handle situations that just don’t fit.

And second, make this rule inviolable:

Turning a new process on does not justify employees turning their brains off.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Gravity, according to Sir Isaac Newton, is a force. Einstein’s general relativity describes it as curvature of the space/time continuum.

In the world of business, process is a matter of some gravity, and not only in the sense that it’s important. Gravity is why maintaining a healthy level of process so difficult.

With process, as with garlic, Vitamin A, and Will Farrell, more is not necessarily better. All, Will Farrell excepted, are examples of moderation being the right target.

Imagine an organization with no sense of process. It’s the ultimate results-oriented environment. Employees “do what makes sense,” based on the exact circumstances each faces, their mood, training, experience, and how each did a similar piece of work yesterday. The organization has no institutional memory, no consistency, and little ability to learn and improve.

Call it chaos.

Now imagine a different organization — one with lots of process. There’s a process for accepting work, for setting priorities, for determining how each and every task and responsibility is to be performed, and how to build a salad from the salad bar in the cafeteria. In this organization, employees don’t really evaluate situations. They mostly apply whichever policy or procedure seems least likely to get them into trouble. All that matters is following the steps. Results are the last thing on their minds.

It’s both the definition and root cause of bureaucracy.

Neither chaos nor bureaucracy is a desirable state for an organization. They are, however, desirable states for different sorts of employee.

Chaos is fun, exciting, and unpredictable — enjoyable for those with a sense of adventure and a low boredom threshold. Too bad it doesn’t work all that well once the work expands to a point where more than three people have to handle similar responsibilities.

Bureaucracy is stifling, choking, and delivers poor results, but for employees who don’t like to take risks and like coloring inside the lines it’s safe and secure. It has, however, the unfortunate downside of putting the entire business at risk.

Which is where gravity comes into the picture. Except that unlike physical gravity, which results from the curvature of space and time that occurs in the presence of mass, organizational gravity results from the curvature of preference that occurs in the presence of a mass of like-minded employees.

You can visualize the situation as a hill. The two plains flanking it on either side are chaos and bureaucracy. The peak in the middle is a healthy level of process that helps employees work more effectively while allowing them the flexibility they need to adapt to different circumstances.

If you, as a process-oriented sort of person, want to institute this moderate level of process in a chaotic organization you’ll be fighting gravity all the way. To the employees who enjoy things the way they are, you’re trying to make their work more bureaucratic and they’ll resist. Were you to stop pushing the organization up the process hill, gravity would pull it back down to chaos.

But you persist, and finally reach the top of the hill, achieving the optimum level of process moderation. You are to be congratulated — not many managers achieve this transformation. And so, satisfied, you rest.

At which point gravity takes over, pulling the organization down the other slope of the hill, turning it into a bureaucratic quagmire.

The same dynamic takes over if you start from the other side, too. Bureaucracy busting is hard and thankless (but worthwhile) work as anyone who has tried to do it will tell you. It can be done but it requires relentless attention, boundless energy, and usually a change in personnel as well.

If you push the organization up the process hill in this direction, to try to get it back into balance, you’ll also end up fighting gravity: Stop for just a few moments and it will roll right back down. Bureaucracies are notoriously self-perpetuating.

Whether you start with chaos or bureaucracy, if you stop too early the organization will fall back to where you started. Push too long, on the other hand, and it will keep on rolling, down the other side, to an end-state that’s just as undesirable as the one you started with.

As is so often the case, maintaining a sense of balance, which is the most desirable place to be, also requires the most ongoing effort and attention. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s due to gravity.

It’s built into the space/time continuum.

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