Organisational Blindness - The way it's always been done

We've all experienced that feeling after starting a new position, during the induction training learning the processes and systems, when the trainer has shown you a complex or convoluted process that appears to be a double up of something you were shown previously... you ask "Why is it done that way?"... we all know the response... "Because that's the way it's always been done!"

The humble or timid person makes a note on their pad about this process so they remember what to do, purely because it's so illogical there's no way they'll remember otherwise. The forthright and confident person will question it, ask if there's a better way and provide an example of an alternative... At that moment right there, the organisation has the momentous opportunity to change, to improve, to evolve and create time and cost savings. Yet, what normally happens? The organisationally blind trainer... or their manager... or the General Manager... usually dismiss the logical and 20/20 vision of the new person and reject the new suggestion for favour of "the way it's always been done"

I've always been a big advocate of encouraging new staff to observe the processes during those first couple of weeks and to feel free to suggest alternatives based on their experience. I've watch countless organisations miss out on amazing opportunities to reduce costs, reduce mistakes, reduce delivery cycles, increase customer services and reduce staff frustrations... all with relatively minimal investment, simply because of being too afraid to change. I've watched dozens of organisations spends tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on implementing whizz bang ERP and CRM systems to revolutionise their business, yet still wish to keep redundant and time wasting staff practices that could easily be automated. Why? Fear of change? Fear of the Unknown? Or... Organisational Blindness!

What is organisational blindness? Simply stated, it's the inability to see the obvious, an inherent culture of doing things "the way they've always been done". This culture can be caused by long term employees that just want to do their job, it can be caused by short sited middle management that fear change or innovation because it will affect their figures, it can be caused by C level management always pushing for quick profits and lacking emotional intelligence or foresight that is tuned to the needs of the customer and their staff.

An organisation with Managers as managers will invariably suffer from organisational blindness.

An organisation with Leaders as managers will usually have organisational awareness.

How can an organisation avoid a culture of blindness?

1. Create the ability to provide suggestions! Listen to the suggestions of the staff on the ground, the ones dealing with the frustrations. 
2. Make sure Leadership sponsor an environment and culture of change. They need to drive it and reward it!
3. Always encourage new staff to openly share their thoughts in those initial weeks prior to being absorbed in the way of the business.
4. Where possible, encourage cross job pollination. (What's that you ask?). Have staff spend "a day in the life of" other staff, training them in other tasks. Not only does this create succession planning, it also reveals flaws in processes and encourages inter-employee understanding.
5. Create a facility for ideas and suggestions to be tabled, discussed, debated, etc at company meetings.

No doubt there's a myriad of other suggestions here... feel free to share them!