[perfect]

Take three monkeys, put them in a room. Place a ladder in the room and a bunch of bananas at the top of the ladder. Eventually, one of the monkeys will climb the ladder to the bananas. At that point, take a high power hose and hose them all down. Do this until they do not climb the ladder anymore.

Replace one of the old monkeys with a new monkey. The new monkey will start to climb the ladder and the two remaining old monkeys will beat the new monkey senseless because they don't want to get the hose. Do this until the new monkey doesn't go up the ladder any more.

Replace one of the oldest monkeys with a new monkey. The new monkey will start to climb the ladder and the two remaining old monkeys will beat the new monkey senseless because they don't want to get the hose. Do this until the new monkey doesn't go up the ladder any more.

Replace the last old monkey with a new monkey. The new monkey will start to climb the ladder and the two remaining old monkeys will beat the new monkey senseless because they don't want to get the hose. Do this until the new monkey doesn't go up the ladder any more.

Now you have three monkeys in a room, all afraid to go up the ladder but have never seen the hose; they just beat anyone who goes up the ladder because that's the way it has always been done.

Anyone else feel that sometimes companies and people do things just because that's the way it's always been done and never examine WHY they are doing things?

[ThreadKiller]

yup, worked for a large company (150,000+ employees) for 12 years. there were things repeated there evey day that made no sense, and no one knew the origin.

[sleipnira]

Originally Posted by perfect

Anyone else feel that sometimes companies and people do things just because that's the way it's always been done and never examine WHY they are doing things?

absolutely!!

That is part of why I walked away from the big company I was a manager for. I started with them in MA, they moved me to TX ,then to NC
each time to clean up stores that were a mess..I did a great job..but then they refused to keep any of the changes I made..& things went right back to how they were in the 1st place.
Much better being self-employed.

[Atoyota]

yeah but on the other hand, even though you don't know the "why", it still exists.

I understand the dilema, but training makes sence, you just don't always know why. It's important for us to know why, but not neccesary and sometimes even that won't satisfy you.

Now I have examples of things that worked fine but were changed, and the resulting change created huge costs in manhours and maintenance, but management did it anyways. Then started complaining about manhours and productivity... when the new policy was the cause.

Where I work has litterally hundreds of these examples.

We used to be a family owned/operateed business, and now owned by a Dutch holding firm. They have no idea what they are doing, and the business is slowly going downhill.

[Grex]

Sounds...vaguely...familiar...*remembers sigil customer service* hmm monkeys beating eachother....