Why POSIWID is Killing Your Business and What to Do About It
This article is about how your business is getting the result it’s designed to achieve and what to do about it.
“I know I can win this time!”
You put another dollar into the machine. The claw goes down.
Once again, the claw arm drops, closes over your prize, lifts up, releases the prize back into the pit, moves over the chute, and delivers nothingness and despair.
What’s going on?
Aside from the 13 people who might actually know how to win carnival games, the claw-arm game is doing exactly what it’s designed to do:
Keep your money and deliver just enough hope for you to try again.
It’s delivering the result it’s designed to achieve.
The Result It’s Designed to Achieve
There’s a word for this:
POSIWID
An acronym meaning, “The purpose of a system is what it does.”
The purpose of a system is what it produces. Not what the idea-smith hoped it would do. Not what the designer intended it to do. Not what any outside force wants it to do. Not even what the mission, vision, or value statement says it should do.
A system’s purpose is, quite simply, what it does.
The purpose of claw machines and carnival games isn’t for you to win the prize. They’re for you to give the proprietor money (and maybe, if you’re in the right mood, have fun).
Let’s bring this to a business setting.
Take a department with high turnover. It’s supposed to be an entry level job that anyone can do. It has a high impact on customer satisfaction due to the nature of the job and frequency of interactions between the employee and the customer. But, for some reason:
New hires just don’t want to work anymore
It’s the other department’s fault
They were just another bad hire
Literally any other excuse you know
You could spend a lot of time working to understand what’s going on, but let’s quickly apply our new vocabulary word.
If you have a singular department that’s responsible for half of your company’s turnover, it could be a case of POSIWID. It’s been my experience that:
The purpose of high turnover roles is to create scapegoats and mask the real problem.
The system’s purpose isn’t to ensure successful delivery of the product or service the customer bought. The purpose of this system is to be a scapegoat for someone’s incompetence.
POSIWID.
What “systems” do you have your workplace that, in the quiet of the night when you’re honest with yourself, are working exactly as they’re intended?
Pick one.
Is it the constant manufactured chaos that keeps your team on their toes? The ever-compiling state of emergencies that keep you sucked into your phone, never able to get a moment’s rest? The revenue ceiling you just can’t break? The product that never seems to launch without bugs?
Truly.
Think of a system that works as it’s intended.
You’re taking your first step into recognizing reality.
What to Do About It
While flashes of reality strike us in our quiet moments, as leaders, we need something more than chance.
Define what success looks like
Understand the pieces necessary to achieve it
Compare reality to the dream
First, you must define what success looks like. As Stephen Covey’s second habit says, “Begin with the end in mind.” Let’s apply it to the story of the high-turnover delivery role. “I want a role that delivers my products and services with high customer satisfaction.” Great! But, what problems are you having? You have to make sure you apply the defined success to the correct issue. Successful deliveries and happy customers can still be the “end in mind,” but you must make sure you’re addressing the real issue: the department is responsible for unusually high turnover. So now what?
Next, make sure you understanding the pieces necessary to achieve it. It’s not enough to say you want happy customers. You can’t even stop at, “I want the turnover to stop.” What you really want is a competent team that can handle the tasks given to them. So, what training do they need? What kind of guidance do they have? What kind of tools and processes are missing to make sure they can perform repeated success? You will understand this better and better as you do the last step:
Compare reality to the dream. It’s not enough to say, “Yes, this is what I want!” and go on ignoring what’s really happening. You have to compare where are with where you want to be—and take action to close the gap. This isn’t a one-time endeavor, either. You must keep comparing reality to the dream so you can make sure you’re making progress in the right direction.
This last step is encapsulated in The Healthy Company Framework’s second part of the Two-Part Epoxy, Self Healing. You can’t just react to problems. You must also be proactive in preventing them from happening again. And while this may sound simple, it can be tough to maintain.
If you’re struggling to tackle these and other similar issues, get in touch with us. The Framework is a complete business methodology that equips you with a system, indeed a Framework, that allows you to tackle these problems yourself.
It’s easy to see the traps of carnival games. But what ‘games’ exist in your business that are working exactly as they’re intended to?