August 16, 2009 – 10:30 am
I am on my way to Disney for the Disney Institute 5-day program “Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence.” This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences and I hope to bring you an insider’s peek into what makes Disney so great and how you can translate that into real business results for yourself.
As I am typing, I am in between San Antonio and Nashville at just about 30,000 feet and I’m sitting next to a nice man named Terry who is a Regional Pharmaceutical Director. When I told him I was headed to Orlando to attend the Disney Institute, his eyes lit up. What a surprise to find that his company had the Disney Institute deliver a presentation about three years ago! Terry is a raving fan. Being me, I picked his brain. I wanted to know specifics. What made it so great? What did you get out of it? He told me that the materials and content were fantastic “of course.” But what really made the presentation so impactful was that the facilitator believed what he was teaching; the philosophies were part of his core. That combined with the facilitator’s energy and enthusiasm made the training an event to remember.
In fact, during the training, Terry had a truly epiphanous moment. He heard something that affected him so much, he wrote it on an index card, placed it on his office wall and has not moved it in three years. With a glimmer in his eye, he told me that the index card says, “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it achieves.”
At first glance, that statement seems pretty unremarkable. But take a closer look at it. Chew on it for a moment.
May I suggest an alternate way to say it?
“To Change Results, You Must Change the System That Causes Those Results”
If you are not achieving the results you want, something is broken. You might have to look deep to find out what it is or the solution may be obvious. In either case, the results will not change until you fix the right thing. How many times have you seen leaders throw “solutions” at a problem without addressing the core issue? Expecting results to change without changing the right systems is like continuing to put Freon in the air conditioning unit when the compressor is broken. The solution is not more Freon. First, fix the compressor; then check the Freon. It’s like changing the hubcap when your tire has a nail in it. It’s like installing new plumbing when the dishwasher is broken. It’s like… never mind; I could do this all day.
Seth Godin recently had a post that suggests we focus on the problem, not the solution. It is a great tie-in to what we are discussing.
I have not landed at Disney and yet I’m already learning from them. If this is any indication of what I can expect to learn over the next six days, I will have the experience of a lifetime.
Are your systems perfectly designed to achieve the results you want to achieve? Do you have any stories about nonsensical solutions to obvious problems?
(c) The Alicia Arenas Companies, LLC 2009
Photo courtesy of somegeekintn’s
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This is simple yet profound. I experience this in the training field all the time-people want to thrown training at a problem, but don’t look at what the core issue is. Nothing gets fixed.
Can’t wait to learn more when you actually get to Disney!