“Follow the leader,” are words we have heard throughout our lives.  Leaders of large organizations are unable to hear each and every gripe or complaint.  Therefore, I propose the followers become the leaders and make a change from within the system.

A comment received in another article sparked an idea in my mind…lucky for you :)  Our first instinct is to whine when we disagree with decisions made by leaders.  We all have those rules we know should be followed, but everyone ignores them.  We create cultures that actually accept these behaviors.  What can we do to make a change?

I have seen this played out a hundred times in my life, “The book says to do this, but no one does.”  Most rules have a meaning.  Some are for safety or cost-saving, and some are just “sacred cow” traditions.

When you disagree with a rule, question it.  Ask your boss why this is done.  Get the bigger picture answer first.  If there is no clear answer, change needs to happen.  I ran a quality assurance program that required detailed reports to be typed and routed to seven different people, and it took two weeks to get completed.  Why?  No reason was given to me, and I digitized it.  Everything was done through email, and the turn around time was now between two to eight hours!

To be honest with you, I really would have rather complained about it and waited for the leader to wave his magic wand and solve all the problems.  In fact, at first I did just whine.  Guess what?  Not a single benefit was gained…I still had to track this stupid piece of paper for two darn weeks.

By changing this one little thing, my life got much easier.  All those in my command chain freed up a little time, too.  AND the programs I inspected were able to fix the problems almost immediately.  My leadership really was happy, and the next time I needed some help to fix a “whine” they were all ears to my suggestion.

What can we do to solve a problem together?