This is a plea, continued...

Shortly after I wrote the last entry, about tools that get purchased and not used, I realized that I hadn't really described the reasons why this happens. Sure, there are reasons like insufficient training, inadequate tools for the problems at hand, or organizational ownership and politics. But the most common reason is far more human and harder to mitigate: apathy.

A friend of mine is a Six-Sigma and Toyota Process expert. He knows and understands quality and process control methods inside and out. I asked him about the barriers to organizational adoption of these practices. His answer was very telling. It wasn't money, time, tools, training, or anything measurable. Instead his answer was very simple -- because people don't like being told what to do.

There's a parallel here. Unless a tool, process, practice, or even idea fits within someone's world view, they simply aren't going to adopt it. It's even worse if they feel like something is being forced upon them, rather than being an engaged participant. Even if they feel invested in the tools, good old fashioned apathy can take hold.

Why? Incentives and consequences. Its just tremendously easy to become apathetic if there are no incentives or consequences to our actions. Many times after J9 consultants find a problem with a customer's application, we hear rumblings of "oh yeah, I wondered if that was a problem." Easier to turn a blind eye then to invest ones self in learning a tool, exploring a problem, and coming up with a solution. Especially since in so many organizations that live by firefighting, volunteering is akin to accepting blame for the problem.


So, the guiding points here appear to be:

1) It's imperative that all types of users are included in the selection and implementation process so that they feel invested.
2) Management has to continually communicate intentions and uphold the standard.

On this second point, here's a really example of how this can be done in a way that emphasizes the point yet stays away from simply giving orders. Say for example it's a Monday morning triage meeting and an outage that happened over the weekend is the topic. The questions isn't simply "What happened?" but also "What did the tools tell you happened?" This is a means of continuous communication about the expected tools and the expected method, plus a means of continual assessment of the value proposition -- if your tools are proving less than useful, then perhaps there is a legitimate reason why they aren't being used.