This is my rephrasing of ‘The army is now fully prepared for the previous war’, inspired by John Gall [1], in his reference to historian Arnold Toynbee.
This is very relevant to our organizational world today. How many times we find ourselves rethinking, redoing, restructuring, reshuffling, reskilling and re-everything as if the reality had just stopped for us. Hi there! I am going to stop the time so that you can catch up. Look at all the benchmarking data, all the trend reports, all the rankings of the Most Admired, the Most Followed and the Most Saint of companies, do your re-something, and then, Me, God of Time, will push the button again
Really?
Many re-re of Product Development involve the refining of the machine, the addition of a better oil and the change of a few pieces here and there. Not many look at a new product development that may break the rules and jump the curve.
Many HR/OD/People stuff practices and processes still try to re-skill and hire for skills on an old skill set ( and competence system that seems created by a quantum physicist) that worked in the past. Being there, done done, come along and repeat with us’. Not many are courageous enough to look at what may be needed for the future, including people with zero experience in your area of expertise.
Many consulting approaches are still aimed at providing comfort to the client, (and the consultants’ bank managers) as opposed to providing restlessness; much more inconvenient and stressful. I make my best clients restless. I make the others comfortable [2]
Yes, I am afraid, much of what people do in organizations is to get the company fully prepared for the past.