Everything Decays

From Manager's Tools

One of the things we've noticed is that managers like having a solution which solves their problem forever. We suspect you've felt this way. In the rare instance you've found the solution you thought would solve the problem forever, you've probably also discovered it's not true. The problem has come back because the situation changes. The people change. The knowledge changes. The need changes.

The fact is, everything decays. For our technical readers, it's just entropy. At work, every problem, every meeting and every relationship is decaying, right now. Now matter how good a meeting is now, in six months, left to its own devices, it won't exist (the ultimate decay) or it will be a lot less effective. The process that you've been working so hard on, and finally got just right, in six months will either be OBE (Overcome By Events) or will need significant rework. You may not have understood, up till now, why good processes that worked before begin not to work. The answer is, the situation, systems or people changed and the process didn't. Entropy. Everything decays. It's not just YOUR stuff that decays, because you're not a good manager. EVERYBODY'S stuff decays. Always.

Mark used to teach interview candidates that all interviewees remember their highest point of energy in an interview, which is in the first two minutes. He taught, as well, that interviewers remember the energy at the end of the interview. Even our energy in an interview decays! The solution is not to try to spike the energy at the end of the interview. Rather, the solution was for the candidate to remind themselves every five to ten minutes to keep their energy up. If you were to graph the energy, it would look like a sawtooth.

The solution to the decay of all things is to manage them. Assess the status of processes and change them regularly. Assess the effectiveness of the meeting periodically and adjust accordingly. Reach out to your friends more regularly than you do.

Did we just create more work for you? In the long term, we think not. The amount of work required to fix a broken process or a destroyed relationship is much bigger than the little work required to maintain those things along the way. If you've ever tried to get a referral for a job from an old old friend who you haven't kept in touch with, you'll know the regret of not keeping in touch, as there will be no energy in your relationship for him to help you solve the problem.