Chapter 5 Ignore the Context at Your Peril 67
expertise. As these people work together, they have their unique world- views reinforced. And when it comes time to lead change, their own knowl- edge and comfort is where they focus their attention. They miss the woman with the umbrella.
W. Edwards Deming, a guru of the quality movement in Japan and the United States, said that over 90 percent of all performance problems were systems problems—and not the fault of individuals. Yet, individual performance management plans persist like summer colds.
Focusing on individual performance permeates much of what we do. When we read mysteries, we look for “who done it.” In sports, we want to know who was the MVP (Most Valuable Player) in Sunday’s big game. In the world of business and politics, we want to know who to applaud and who to blame. And, of course, a hero can turn into a villain overnight.
But this attention on the individual or the single cause for success or failure misses the point. Everything happens in context.
In 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. Pictures appeared of laugh- ing prison guards torturing prisoners. We wanted to know how this could happen. And who was responsible. We found her. Her name was Specialist Lynndie England. She was photographed holding a leash that was attached to a prisoner lying in a hallway. Specialist England, along with approxi- mately eleven others, were court-martialed. England and one other soldier were sentenced to prison while others received dishonorable discharges. The general in charge was demoted to colonel.
Noted social psychologist Philip Lombardo was interviewed on CNN. The interviewer suggested that perhaps this scandal was just the case of a few bad apples. Lombardo said the problem wasn’t just a few bad apples, it was the barrel that was bad.
The dozen or so people who were punished were considered the bad apples and the scandal went away. Anyone thinking of building and run- ning prison camps in another country would do well to take Lombardo’s words to heart. It’s the barrel. If you build the same type of barrel, you are likely to get similar results.
Great organizations all tend to be pretty much alike in some funda- mental ways. They’ve got good barrels. Now, look at the context of your organization. That unique barrel creates conditions that support particular types of behavior. The context you are leading in makes a huge difference.