One thing I know from experience: when people are given a chance to participate in creating something good, solving a problem, and play a role in adding value through the use of their mind, hands, and heart, good things happen. Indeed, morale increases and a type of magic takes place – a feeling joy can be seen in people’s faces.
When I lead Kaizen and encourage others to participate and, over time, as I take a smaller role and “allow them to increase while I decrease”, I have seen people blossom. Indeed, experiencing humans develop is a very cool thing and I’m so fortunate to have helped others grow.
I found this poster on someone’s wall.
For the record, I don’t agree with the its message. But, the poster is an indictment of most businesses and organizations that preach one thing, but behave completely contrary to the development of the individual and team.
The poster is a satirical commentary on most businesses; a dilbert-ian commentary on what you and I experience in world of work.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? What is your experience?
Related Posts:
Become a Lean Six Sigma professional today!
Start your learning journey with Lean Six Sigma White Belt at NO COST
James Considine says
My take – thinking by employees is vital – thinking differently than leadership is dangerous. Employee happiness seems to be rather unimportant to most of the leaders I encounter around the office.
Michael Lombard says
Pete, I would like to echo your feelings of joy when seeing another person develop in front of you. Being able to play a small part in that process is an honor and a privilege, and is the reason why I seek to make a career out of being a Lean coach.
Unfortunately, the leaders of so many organizations have either never felt that joy, have forgotten about it, or are distracted from it by short-term concerns. I say that because so few leaders seem to show that love for developing people.
Tim McMahon says
Well, that is what Mark Graban would call L.A.M.E. I prefer to think of TPS as the Thinking People System. So I agree this is all wrong. I can’t believe that was posted somewhere.
Anna says
I couldn’t have said it better myself – it’s magic – both growing yourself as well as see other grow. I just whished it happended more often..
Erik Scholtes says
It’s magic to see the most defensive people change once they are given the responsibility to think and decide within changes.
A bigger plus is if the are feeling heared; in that way the biggest NO can turn into an even bigger YES.
Michael Lombard says
I hesitate to even bring up how extreme this “check your brain at the door” mentality can be in the construction industry. I’ve known construction managers who have supervised construction crews for months on end without having a real conversation with anybody except for maybe the team leads. They often blame it on language barriers or something lame like that, but I think it boils down to lack of respect for the employees’ ability to say something important. So sad that so many people toil away for years on end and are only known as “strong-backs” or “warm bodies.”
Mark Graban says
That’s clearly a joke poster (the heads are characters from the show Futurama).
That said, it’s no joke that many organizations tell their employees to check their brains at the door. This is usually never said explicitly in a modern workplace, but the message gets through anyway.
I heard “check your brain at the door” sentiments in the auto industry (1990’s) and healthcare (the past few years). It’s sad in either environment.
I had a nurse tell me once how her bosses told her to quit trying to improve processes, just do your work.
What a waste.
Ankit Patel says
I 100% agree. The factors that atually make people happy and motivate them don’t include “mindless work”. I actually wrote about it recent article Motivating People Without Money:
http://theleanwayconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/03/motivating-employees-without-money.html
I love the posts!
Ankit
Venkatesh says
Software industry is considered as knowledge based industry and every one is expected to think and are expected to be knowledgable. However, I have seen that in larger companies heavy weight processes are created to reduce the problems and employees are forced to just follow the process. This would lead employees to check in their brains at the door
Sandi Longhurst says
I believe it was Ford who said, “why do I keep getting full people when all I want is hands.” This is an encouraging post as I believe we are seeing the re-humanization of the workforce. Creativity, passion and connection are increasingly more important in our complex world. In a lot of ways companies still need to transcend the industrial revolution’s heritage in terms of recognizing employees.
Joy says
Thank you for this article. I’m currently a temporary employee, and going brain dead at my assignment. The work is mindless and tedious, and I get depressed as soon as I begin my day. Actually, I get depressed just at the thought of having to go to work, so it’s constant. I’m unable to focus and it’s taking me forever to finish because I can’t tolerate the boredom. I thought I was being too picky, and perhaps too proud because I know I’m capable of so much more. (And, I was trying to \straighten\ out my bad attitude because I should be grateful to have a job.) But, I am an intelligent woman who needs stimulating and challenging work!! I called my agency and told them to replace me. I know this will sound foolish, but I’d rather be homeless than do mindless work. So, yeah, I guess I agree:)
Narayan says
This comment is perhaps too late. That poster is obviously a joke. When it is used in a environment where the understanding that this is a joke is not obvious, it can be counter productive.
I should add to this from my observations on suggestion schemes. When you start a suggestion scheme, unless you limited the suggestions to the employee’s functional area, you will find them suggesting things in all area’s of their company’s operation except their own area. Every one must focus on thinking in their area of responsibility and accountability. When they are invited to contribute ideas in other areas they can do so. But to keep thinking of ideas every where all the time, to the exclusion of their own area is a problem. Once they give such suggestions, they would start having grievances about its consideration, implementation etc, when those responsible have their own reasons. The rejection of their pet thought becomes difficult to every one. If some one were to crib a lot to me in this context, I may very well tell them to shut up and do their work.
dennis says
I work on a demoralized team that is like this. I dont know why but i have become fascinated with what makes people happy and unhappy at work so rather than get depressed like them i somehow have managed to replace that feeling with curiousity and analysis on the mechanisms that make employees feel this way. I think this is funny, because im just an IT worker, not some HR type person, its just interesting.
I find on my team at least, we have some very smart people that have this attitude, and some others that are not so bright that have the attitude. For the very smart people, the reality is, they are smarter than their boss, and generally have learned from dealing with him that they are ‘fighting city hall and have no chance of changing things, and have instead developed this cynical attitude. It is actually a shame, because they are so valuable, they SO CAN CHANGE THINGS IF GIVEN THE CHANCE.
On the flip side, there are some people who are more or less not so smart and the feeling of a loss of voice or brainless day to day work really comes down to one of two things:
– The general core of the person disagrees with the management, and in these cases, the worker is generally wrong or is missing knowledge of the overall goal or big picture.
– The worker cannot communicate effectively with decision makers or peers to actually implement or foster change necessary to fix a problem. This is usually because they have no clue how to fix the problem, they just know that it is messed up. Unfortunately the others involved in the process look to them to fix the problem. …not blame management.
So it is an interesting issue. From a generally happy person at work that gets frustrated by inefficiencies and such, I tend to side more with the disgruntled than the managers although I get the good bonuses and perks. The reason I do, is because as a leader and manager they should be able to work out this dynamic themselves, they get the big bucks for their bullsh!t decision making capabilities, so its up to them to source the smart people for change and ideas, and fix the issues with uneducated employees. So i put this problem squarely on management where it belongs — listen to your smart people and dont let small problems become epidemics by ignoring them — stay on the ball.
Jon says
Maybe the correct phrase should be “a mindless worker is a hard working worker”. I recall watching a documentary about factory workers on a huge production line and the only way they can manage the workout is to become robotic. They cannot even step away for loo breaks as if one link fails the whole line goes into chaos. There are some pretty shocking jobs out there still. Are they happy? No, they cannot be. I think therefore I am? A hard working employee has to close their mind off to all distraction, stop thinking, stop being!
monesh says
Yes of course A Mindless Worker is a Happy Worker but it is part of industry and it decrease or not adding any value in favour of organization.
so every employees must have to participate as per their capacity and give his/her output, so it is beneficiary for both organization as well for employee.
Craig Miller says
Since lean has been introduced into the company in which I work we have an ever increasing number of mindless workers and an ever decreasing number of happy workers. Lean events are common and do nothing but create more paperwork resulting in less productivity. I will confidently predict that lean will be the death of a once great company.
Ankit Patel says
I know Mark has heard this before but in general about 75% of any change fails the first time. Lean is great but you still have to address Organizational Behavior concerns and challenges or else you get L.A.M.E (Mark Graban’s Lean As a Miss-guided Effort).
Mark Graban says
Craig, that sounds like “fake Lean” that’s being introduced in your company, sadly. I hope your leaders see the light and start getting things turned around to what Lean is really about.
http://www.leanblog.org/lame
Meme says
The next question is – if you are someone who is supposed to ‘check your brain’ … how do you change the mind set of the company you work for? How do you show them that you have potential and can do more than ‘check your brain’?