Improvising Business
by
Stevie Ray
September 29, 2011
The Third Deadly Sin: Complacency
I was conducting a workshop for about 300 employees at a conference recently. As I stood in the atrium as the attendees filed in, I overheard one woman say to another, “I hope this speaker is better than the last one we had.” Her friend replied, “I don’t care. I don’t want to learn nothin’ I don’t already know.” My first thought was to quickly switch my topic for the day to “How To Use Grammar So You Sound Smarter Than a First-Grader.” The saddest part of the experience was, I should have been surprised to hear that sentiment, but I wasn’t. Actually, I often have clients tell me, “You might have a hard time with some of our employees. Quite a few are just putting in their time to get a paycheck (or until they retire or until something better comes along).
Complacency is what leads us to consider good enough to be good enough. It is behind anyone who ever said, “Why can’t we just leave things the way they are?!” It is behind the employee who rationalizes doing poor work by citing the poor work of others. It is behind the manager who hides in his or her office instead of getting out among the workers, using the rationale, “If there is a problem, they’ll let me know.” It is why people now rely on SpellCheck instead of learning how to spell.
Complacency is sloth, or as Thomas Aquinas said, “a sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good... it is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds.” Complacency is condemned in every major religion. In Christianity sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. In Hinduism sloth is considered one of the five Vighnas, or obstacles in life. Hinduism claims, Procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness and sleep-these four form the coveted ship which bears men to their destined ruin… In the religion of Islam, Muslims will pray, “O Allah! I seek refuge in You from worry and sorrow. I seek refuge in You from incapacity and sloth…” In Judaism, time itself is seen as a valuable gift. To honor the gift of time is to eschew laziness, whether physical or mental. Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism all consider complacency to be a waste of life.
Why do so many beliefs focus on their energy on complacency? It is likely because they recognize how difficult it is for any individual to keep indolence at bay. As humans we are not entirely without willpower, but left to our own devices we will too often say, “I’ll get to that later” or “That’s good enough.” How often does “I’m doing the best that I can” actually mean “I don’t want to try any harder”? Laziness is the reason why I attend martial arts classes at a studio instead of practicing on my own. I know that having a class of like-minded students will push me to work harder than if I was at home in my living room. (Plus, my wife said if I broke one more lamp with an errant kick she would demonstrate her own karate techniques.)
Psychologists have identified three steps to changing human behavior; Awareness, Commitment, and Practice. You must first be aware that change is necessary. Second, you must commit to others that you will change or improve. Third, you must be able to practice the new skill or behavior in a safe environment to become familiar with it before employing it in the real world. Look at the second step; public commitment to others who can hold you accountable. This is why religious and spiritual leaders make complacency a target; they seek to instill the public commitment needed for change.
The brain’s least efficient function is information processing, which makes the act of learning painful, literally. When we strive to keep up on current events, learn new things, and improve ourselves, we push the brain to its limits. The brain’s most efficient function is pattern recognition. A hold-over from our evolution as hunter-gatherers is the ability to instantly discern patterns, this helps in developing energy-conserving habits. So our tendency toward mental sloth is not without cause, we have evolved to avoid change. That is why having others to whom we are accountable is important. They have the ability to ask us if we are truly working to our potential, if our best is really our best.
More than the first two sins of business, Ego and Fear, we make excuses for complacency. Complacency always leads to blaming the economy, the staff, the management, the ownership, the government. If you have spent the last few years blaming the economy, why are other companies within your industry growing and making profits?
Over the years, dozens of companies have warned me that “The union environment in our organization has made it tough to make any improvements or changes.” I don’t buy it. Yes, some employees want to take the easy route, and a bad relationship between union and management results in complacency and resistance. I have heard the war stories; from an HR Director who asked an employee why she was fighting to unionize the company and was told, “Because no matter how bad I screw up, you can’t fire me!” (True story) However, that employee wasn’t made that way because of a union. She came ready-made, most likely from a dysfunctional family or previous workplace. No one joins a union and is told by the steward, “Now that you are a member stop learning, stop growing, and get lazy.” I have had sessions where the union employees were just as eager to learn and grow as their managers. Simply labeling a work environment as “difficult” and giving up is complacent. The excuse of “These people don’t want to grow” must be replaced with the question, “What is getting in the way of us growing together? And what can I do about it?” Claiming that the responsibility lies higher up the ladder is lazy.
I have had numerous clients simply ask me to help them learn how to brain-storm better. Not to sell products more effectively, manage more easily, or communicate more clearly; just to come up with more ideas, and make those ideas into more ideas. When I ask why they want new ideas the bad organizations say, “Because if we don’t, our competition will think of them first and bury us!” Healthy organizations say, “Because that is what we should always be focused on, regardless of what our competition does.”
I am a fan of the television show Restaurant Impossible. Each episode involves the host, Robert Irvine, attempting to save a failing restaurant. He is given only $10,000 and two days to do the work. His design team remakes the décor while he works on the food, the service, and the management. In every episode, he will ask the restaurant owner if he or she has tasted the food. I am astonished at how often the answer is “No.” In one case, the head cook had actually lost his sense of taste due to an accident years earlier, and the owner still relied upon him to judge the quality of the food. However, even though I sit in the comfort of my home scoffing at the complacency of the restaurant owner, I have to dine on a bit of crow myself when I think of how often I don’t taste my own food. How rarely I put myself in the seat of my customer.
Theatre owners are told to sit in every chair of their venue and watch a production; not just for ten minutes, but an entire show. Restaurant owners must personally taste every dish on the menu. Have you walked through your building as a customer? Have you called your own company on the phone to experience the service first-hand? A former news anchor in my market used to personally review every broadcast, and was soon hired to anchor station that is ranked number two in the country. Do you review tapes of your presentations, sales pitches, or client meetings? Do you have colleagues review your work? In my work with educators I have discovered that one of the things that causes the most stress to a teacher is the thought of a principal or fellow educator sitting in and watching a class. Why do we all skip these vital steps to self-improvement? Because we are afraid the response will be, “You need to do better.”
In an episode of the television show The West Wing, a White House staff member asks the Deputy Assistant to the President why it is so important that humans travel to Mars. The Deputy Assistant says, “'Because it is next. Because we came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next.” Take space travel out of the equation and that sentiment expresses what American business must make its priority; what is next. Personal complacency leads to delivering average service; to work that only meets expectations. Organizational complacency leads to disastrous surprises; that wouldn’t have been surprises without the complacency.
Complacency does more than hinder an organization or an individual. It keeps us from what is next. So, every now and then switch from FM music to public radio. Watch the History Channel more often than American Idol. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Call a client or co-worker on the phone instead of using e-mail. Learn something you don’t already know.
First published in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. Stevie Ray is the longest running local columnist, and is now nationally syndicated in all Business Journal publications.
