Unbreak the System: Diagnosing and Curing the Ten Critical Flaws in Your Company

By Josh Rovner

When you're an executive leading a company that isn't performing as well as it should financially, there is tremendous pressure to find out why and fix what's wrong. If you go searching in the obvious or familiar places for the root cause, you likely won't find the answers you need.

That's because the critical flaws hampering your company's performance lie just beneath the surface of where you're looking. What makes these flaws so hard to detect is that most people don't even know they're there, let alone how deep they run.

In Unbreak the System, Josh Rovner shows you how to cure the ten critical flaws that are killing your company. In doing so, you can achieve extraordinary business results and scalable, sustainable growth. Your customers will enjoy greater satisfaction and be more loyal to your business. Your operations will become more efficient and effective, and your employees will be happier and more engaged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781544505701

Book preview

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Copyright © 2020 Josh Rovner

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-0570-1

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Contents

Introduction

Trouble After School

Flaws

Politics

Blind Spots

Scapegoating

Unclear Goals

Doing Too Much

Dysfunctional Infrastructure

No SOPs

Fixing the Unfixable

Legacy Technology

Chasing Shiny Objects

An Ounce of Prevention

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Introduction

It’s that time again.

You just got the P&L from last quarter.

You jump right to the bottom line.

Down compared to last year.

Same thing the quarter before. And the quarter before that, even though the results were slightly up compared to last year, you didn’t hit your budget. You felt pressure to do better.

It’s hard to keep coming up with new ideas for how to improve. There’s a lot going on.

You know you’re about to be under the gun. You think about the first question you’re going to be asked. You know what it is.

The first question everyone is going to ask you is: Why are we down?

* * *

Sound familiar?

Of course, you’re going to give them an explanation. But it’s going to be superficial.

You’ll call it high level. But really that just means you don’t know for sure—or there are too many variables, and you had to come up with a few key areas you think will satisfy them.

You’ve tried a lot of different initiatives, but they haven’t driven the results you need. You know that underneath the superficial explanation of market segment A and revenue stream B are down, there is something else you can’t put your finger on that’s holding back your company’s performance.

In order to do better, you know your company needs to change. And it needs to change fast. But that’s just not happening.

You may think the reason your company is struggling is because there’s something wrong with your culture. But that’s not it. And you don’t have bad people either, even if you think you might.

What you have is a broken system created by common but critical flaws. These flaws exist all around you, working together like a bad infection to hold your company back and kill it.

You can feel them and the symptoms they create. They cause pain for you, your employees, your customers, your shareholders, and all of your families. Yet they’re invisible.

They’re what you can’t put your finger on.

Until now.

How This Book Can Help You

This book is a radically different approach to transforming your company.

This book is about changing your company’s situation.

Because when you change the situation, everything else follows. From that entirely new situation comes the improved financial performance you are so desperately seeking.

This book explores the ten critical flaws in companies that lie under the surface to kill performance. The flaws are universal. Fixing them does not require experience in your industry or a deep understanding of your business.

The ten critical flaws are:

Politics

Blind Spots

Scapegoating

Unclear Goals

Doing Too Much

Dysfunctional Infrastructure

No Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Fixing the Unfixable

Legacy Technology

Chasing Shiny Objects

This book will help you understand these critical flaws. It will teach you how to identify them in your company and what you can do to get rid of them.

I’ve discovered these flaws based on twenty-plus years working in corporate America. I’ve held positions at many levels, from unpaid intern to middle management to senior leadership. I’ve been a business leader directly responsible for financial results, and I’ve been a consultant. My background is in management and leadership, learning and development, communications, organizational effectiveness, human performance improvement, and process improvement. I’ve experienced what it’s like to be held back by these critical flaws. I’ve seen what happens in companies when they take hold and when they are corrected.

I want to share the flaws with you and help you cure them, so you don’t allow them to stay hidden in the shadows, quietly killing you and your company.

I hope this book will help you see things in a new way and enable you to change your approach to how you run your company. By doing so, not only will you be better prepared to answer the question, Why are we down?, but you may improve your results so much that you never have to answer that question again.

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Trouble After School

I once worked with a company that provided after-school care for young children. As part of the program, there was dedicated time when the kids were supposed to do their homework. And yet, very few of the kids actually would.

Instead, they would all get up out of their chairs and start talking to their friends, which was very noisy, and which they were not supposed to do (and they knew they were not supposed to do it, but they did it anyway).

The program staff decided that the kids were rule breakers. So they decided to give them assigned seats, both as a punishment and to prevent them from talking to their friends, which was always too loud and disruptive. They also asked teachers (who were not part of the after-school program) if they could give the kids more homework. That way, they thought, the kids would be busier and not have time to goof off.

But the teachers said they couldn’t do that. They were already giving the maximum amount of homework allowable. The situation did not improve.

The company leaders told me about the problem. I organized a meeting for a few days later with all the people involved. My first question was, Why aren’t the kids doing their homework?

They just have a lot of attitude, and they don’t want to listen, the program leader told me.

Have you ever asked any of them why they don’t do their homework? I asked. Blank stare. No answer. Obviously not.

So we brought in one girl, who the leader said was one of the better ones. After establishing with the girl that she does her homework at home once she leaves the after-school program, I said to her, Help me understand. Are you saying that you avoid doing your homework here even though you have plenty of time to do it? And instead you choose to do it at home when you could do any number of other things that are more fun?

Uh-huh, she said.

Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

Me: So why don’t you do your homework in the time that’s allowed during the after-school program, especially if that’s what you’re supposed to do?

Girl: Because it’s way too noisy in the room. I can’t concentrate at all.

Me: OK. Well, that makes sense. So what do you do instead of doing your homework?

Girl: Well, I usually just sit there. But sometimes I also go talk to my friends, and sometimes I get in trouble for that.

The after-school program leader was stunned at the girl’s answer. Her reason had never occurred to her.

I recognized, in the words of Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the great book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, what looks like a people problem is actually a situation problem.

I turned to the leader and asked, Have you ever thought about what you can do to make the after-school room quieter? Or potentially give the kids a quieter place to do their homework?

Immediately, the teachers and the program leader started brainstorming. And they found lots of ways to fix the situation. Working together with the school teachers, the program leader was able to secure a different classroom for the kids who wanted to do their homework quietly.

For the kids who didn’t have homework, or once they were finished with homework, this was another problem. According to the program leader, they didn’t want to play with the games the staff had provided. The leader rattled off all the games they had put out for the kids.

And then she said, scornfully, We give them all these games, and yet they just won’t play with them.

Once again, I knew that the issue was not the kids even though she was framing it that way. It was the situation. The environment. The games. The games were not fun for the kids even though the program leader thought they were fun.

I asked the girl, Why don’t you and the other kids play with the games?

I guess we just don’t think they’re that fun.

What games do you like to play? I asked. The girl named a few.

And bang. The program leader and the teachers in the room lit up. They said they could easily get those games—and they thought of several more, which the girl agreed were cool. They talked about how the kids could easily play the games with their friends in groups, which both the leader and all the teachers said was a great thing.

Wait a minute, I said to the leader. I thought you said you didn’t want kids talking to their friends. Aren’t you worried that the volume is going to be too loud if they are playing games with their friends?

Both she and the teachers jumped in immediately. Oh, no, they said. When they are playing an appropriate game with their friends, then the noise level is fine. It’s only bad when they’re just socializing with their friends and don’t have anything to focus on.

So then do they really need assigned seats? I asked. I mean, if you’re saying that the problem is not actually talking to their friends but, really, it’s talking to their friends in an unfocused, purely social way, then it doesn’t seem like having assigned seats away from their friends really has anything to do with the problem. In fact, it seems like it might be causing other problems—like kids getting up out of their seats to go talk to their friends. You said that’s a problem, too, because the kids often ‘give you attitude’ when you tell them to go back to their seats and stop talking to their friends.

Wow, the leader said. I never really thought of that.

After the meeting, the program leader decided to take away the assigned seats and allow the kids to sit with their friends when they weren’t doing homework. She and her staff made sure to give them fun games that the kids liked that allowed them to play with their friends in a group. This actually helped the kids focus and learn, which was the real goal of the after-school program. And it kept the noise level reasonable.

With these few tweaks, everything about the environment and the success of the after-school program changed. That change cut through the politics and animosity between the program leaders and the teachers. Previously, some of the kids who originally weren’t doing homework would wander the halls inappropriately, which led the teachers to believe that the after-school program staff were incompetent, while at the same time the after-school staff thought the teachers were just trying to cause them trouble.

Just by meeting together as we did, the program leader and the school teachers were able to show each other that they really do want the same things and that they respect and support each other. They also got buy-in from the girl we involved, who agreed to be a champion to help her friends do better.

Notice that these significant changes did not take any large-scale change management initiatives. They did not take putting the staff through leadership development programs. There was no additional training necessary. And none of the people changed.

All these changes came from one simple meeting, properly facilitated, with the right people in the room, that lasted less than an hour. And all the problems the program was dealing with previously were really symptoms that had been caused by clear misdiagnosis and clear mistreatment.

Obviously, not every problem in your company may be that easy. You may be saying, I’m a top executive at a major company. What does this have to do with me? This is a story about kids, schools, and academic organizations. That’s not my industry. That’s not my business. Those aren’t my people.

But you’re wrong. Your company’s situation is really very similar to this. As Bob Pike, a pioneer in the training world, says, Adults are babies with big bodies. And the after-school program company was a for-profit company with many stakeholders, just like yours.

Lessons Learned after School and from the Doctor

Let’s look at the general lessons this story gives us that you need to apply when you are working through the critical flaws in your company. We’ll look at the doctor/patient relationship as well, because it’s a very helpful framework when dealing with your critical flaws, which are very much like a disease in your company.

Diagnose Properly

Just as with the story above, and just like any successful doctor/patient relationship, turning things around in your company starts with a proper diagnosis. Without proper diagnosis, you may apply the wrong treatment. If you misdiagnose and apply the wrong treatment in your company, no one will actually die, but the problem will continue.

Not only will you not solve your problem, but, like the story above—or like a doctor giving the wrong medicine to a patient—you may cause other problems. You may do any or all of the following:

Create new problems that didn’t exist before

Exacerbate existing problems

Break a process that’s working

Waste peoples’ time that doesn’t need to be wasted

Spend money where there is no ROI

Treat Directly and Aggressively

One of the best pieces of advice when dealing with a critical flaw is to make sure you hit it head-on with direct and aggressive treatment. If your doctor has diagnosed you with a bacterial infection that could really harm you, he or she will give you appropriate antibiotics to treat the particular type of infection you have. Your doctor will choose the best and most direct treatment for your condition to ensure you get