Business Tools Blog

According to Wikipedia, Learned Helplessness is a psychological condition where a person believes that they are helpless in a particular situation, even when that person has the power to change the unpleasant or even harmful situation.

I have my own Learned Helplessness Theory - aka Why change management fails.

Remember when you first started your job?  When something didn’t make sense you asked, “Why do we do it that way?” or you asked, “Isn’t there a faster, easier way to accomplish the same objective in fewer steps?”

But then (I’m theorizing now) some big nasty manager came along and handed you a process map … and told you that people who were much smarter than you figured out the best process and that if you wanted to keep your job, you would just learn the process and follow it.

So now it’s 3 years later … and you know the big hairy process inside and out.  You’ve even trained a few new hires.  When people ask you why things are done a certain way … you tell them “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”  If they continue to probe, you fall back on the “people much smarter than you and me, figured this out a long time ago” shtick.

This is what I call Organizational Learned Helplessness.  It’s when we follow a process without thinking.   Someone bullied us into never questioning why a process is done a certain way.  Think of all the time that could be saved if we Unlearned Helplessness.  What if we came to work every day, asking, how can I make this process more streamlined?  How can I save time and company resources? How can I make my job more fun?  How can I improve Revenue and EBITDA so we get a better commission or bonus payout.

I’m sad to report, that I’ve noticed Learned Helplessness at Zayo.  We are integrating a lot of companies that each had their own way of doing things.  Changing processes is inevitable and a desired goal.   I can’t tell you how many times I hear, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” as an explanation for the question, “Why?”

Even more interesting, when we try to change a process, some people will continue doing things the old way.  Sometimes, people will even do double work - the old and the new - just because they can’t seem to unlearn.

So how do we unlearn and become that same person we were on our first day of work?

I wish there was an easy answer, but all I can promise is that at Zayo we will listen to an adopt new ideas with enthusiasm.  Not all ideas can be implemented right away, or at all.  But I hope that everyone will keep thinking about improving processes and keep making suggestions.  If you encounter a “no”, keep probing.  Escalate, if the answer is “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Imagine how fun work could be, if every day was like the first day.