Oh my goodness … oobleck - managers should not make changes so dramatic that staff have trouble handling them

Physician Executive, August, 1994 by Richard M. Burton

Bartholomew, aide to the royalty, witnessed a king who was bored with the usual types of weather. Rain was boring, sun was boring, and snow was boring. The king wanted something new and demanded of his wizards a never-before-experienced weather phenomenon. Thus it was that the wizards conjured up a large green cloud that rained a new, equally green substance (known as "oobleck") down on the kingdom.

Oobleck appeared delightful and innocuous at first, but it was soon found to have one major drawback. It gummed up everything it dropped onto or into. In the presence of oobleck, things stuck together, machines stopped, people were glued where they stepped. The kingdom came to a grinding halt. For a while, it looked as if the kingdom would perish under the torrents of oobleck ... until the king spoke the magic words, "I'm sorry." The king's having shown some remorse for the condition he had created, the oobleck stopped and faded away.

The lesson is fairly simple. Managers may, in an effort to do something useful, generate their own forms of oobleck. The process goes something like this: The manager or leader is "bored" with the status quo. Rather than making small, step-by-step adjustments that improve the system (otherwise known as continuous quality improvement), the manager decides to make some sweeping changes. Ideas for sweeping changes are often brought back from a seminar that "awakened" the manager, but staff is totally ignorant about them. The manager's oobleck rains down on the people "in the trenches," who, naturally, are confused and get gummed up in their jobs. The manager can't understand why no one can see what he or she saw and orders even more oobleck. The oobleck torrent paralyzes the staff to the point where production stops.

The Oobleck Phenomenon doesn't require huge systems changes or even multisystems alterations. It may involve an important change in only one step. Work flow goes well up to the point where work hits the "oobleck event." At this point, a bottleneck, redundancy of work, or confused direction appears and hinders productivity.

Of course, managers shouldn't cause the Oobleck Phenomenon in the first place. When they do, they should be quick to realize what they have done, stop the oobleck, and go back to an "explain-and train" mode before creating more oobleck.

When the Oobleck Phenomenon occurs in a system, it is a sign of both bad planning and bad communication on management's part. When managers and their wizards conjure up "new weather," they should make sure they pass on to the troops WHAT the changes are, WHY they are making changes and Why the changes are important, and HOW to handle the changes effectively and efficiently. (*) Dr. Seuss (Geisel and Geisel). Bartholomew and the Oobleck. New York, N.Y.: Random House, Inc., 1949 and 1977.