There are a lot of advantages for organizations that have long-time employees.  They can bring stability, knowledge, and understanding of the business’ organizational culture and they also have first-hand experience of their day-to-day processes and the products produced.  While there are many great things associated with long-term employees, there is one potential pitfall that needs to be acknowledged and watched for: this pitfall is accepting conventional wisdom and old assumptions that may no longer be, or may ever have been, true. 

We can easily get caught up in accepting and blindly following “the way” things are done. Remember, a lot of our wisdom and assumptions are based on the culmination of all our learned experiences, memories, and knowledge. But as our world, processes, products, and people are always changing, we must continuously scrutinize the best practices of yesterday against the current environment to ensure they are still the best practices. Failure to do so leads to a potential trap of problem-solving and decision-making based on subjective ideas of what we think is true versus what is objectively true. When we surrender sound scientific and problem-solving methodology to subjective thinking and ideas of one's conventional wisdom, we open the door to wrong decisions and actions. Instead, we should listen to the thoughts and opinions of team members while keeping a watchful eye on data and PDCA to flush out the correct assumptions and knowledge from the incorrect ones. 

Which do you use? Do you take what people tell you as a fact because they are experienced, well-trained, and can provide historical stories of years gone by? Do you take the time to discuss observations, data, and details with a cross-functional team in order to ascertain the facts? Remember, the goal is to challenge assumptions, opinions, wisdom, and common sense through hypothesis testing to move toward fact-based decisions that lead to positive growth for the customer and business.   The testing may lead to checking the current condition data against those assumptions or it may include team-based observation to validate that the assumptions from a year ago are still true today. Whatever the test includes, remember, at the end of it you will be left with a deeper understanding that can help to form new opinions and develop better assumptions that improve the organization. 

Having people who are experienced and knowledgeable is a wonderful asset and a strategic advantage for a company, but just make sure to ask questions to challenge all assumptions and opinions in order to make sure the time, energy, and resources spent on problems and problem-solving is focused on the right things. Things change over time, which means our conventional wisdom and perceived assumptions should as well. So, if you still think the same thing you did 3 years ago, it may be time to challenge the thought, assumption, or wisdom. What you think may be correct, or it may need to be modified. 

I hope you are enjoying this series from Peak Productivity. If you have any questions or additional thoughts about it, please share them in the comments section.