Business is not about combat

I know that these are figures of speech, but I believe that aggressive combat terminology has no place in an office environment (and I’m a combat veteran myself).

The worst offender is the phrase "In the trenches." If you are in business, the last place you want to be is in the trenches. If you are, actively seek a recruiter or find another line of work. The trenches were plagued with rats and disease, stress, mustard gas and only one way out, which was over the top into machine gun fire. Nothing was accomplished in the trenches. It is our job to fill in the trenches once we have stormed the machine gun nests and cleared the barbed wire from no man’s land.

When I took up the challenge for Lean and Process Improvement, I was also coached, that business is not war, it should not be. Yes, there can be resistance to change. But internally, when working on a product, project, program, or service everyone should be working together for the benefit of the whole. We’re not working against each other as in battle. There are no customers or suppliers - there are only team members with whom you are in a shared partnership.

I truly understood this after a conversation I had with a friend of mine that pointed out the fact with this question: "Why would you want to be in business with someone that wants to constantly refer to your life’s work as anything as cold and destructive as a war, a battlefield or being in the trenches?"

Why would you want to spend your time with that kind of stress and fear? You should only be in business for the sake of doing what you truly enjoy and surround yourself with those you trust and want to be able to experience the journey with you.

This is one of the reasons that I love the first day of an event or workshop…especially when you are pulling amazing teams together that have worked with each other in process for years and have never met face to face, disregard each other, blame each other, are going in to the event prepared to destroy pointing out all their evils and show them a thing or two.

Each team contributes with the best of intentions. They understand their part of the process and have generally done well in identifying how to make their part of the puzzle work. The biggest problem is usually a misunderstanding, a slight in translation be it in terminology or what the other team is experiencing or even lacking the knowledge of what the other team does. Even when teams hold daily virtual stand ups, exchange emails or phone calls; without the full extent of process description or walking through their routine does one see how or what the other does affect the whole of the process. Frustration mounts and without a facilitator, things can get heated, communication often stops, egos flair and process explodes.

This is when the war terminology starts to fly. It is my belief that it is our responsibility as process excellence leaders to transform the environment into something more positive. At least we can try. We can make this happen by bringing the vision from isolated silos into a unified process and show how each team is actually part of the whole.

One of the first steps is to change the terminology, especially in the use of aggressive combative expression. Remove the doom and gloom, remove the arrogance and ego.

A workshop should have some conflicting points of view. We should be able to have an open environment where we feel safe to air our points of pain and have the meaningful conversations that allow each team member understand the others point of view. Discussions of this nature are healthy and when we are running an event, it is our job to keep the environment as one that any of the members shouldn’t have to feel as though they need to don riot gear or arm their muskets. I am not suggesting we hold a campfire sing along, though sometimes it might not hurt. In the spirit of the holiday season, who doesn’t like a bit of caroling?

Then again, you could offer them a grilled rat with a bit of stale tea...but don't be surprised when they go elsewhere.

With that, have a safe and happy holidays with a joyous, prosperous and healthy New Year!