More Cowbell
In a famous Saturday Night Live sketch, Christopher Walken plays a music producer who's solution for improvement while in a recording session is to constantly ask for more cowbell. The brilliance of the sketch reaches far beyond the inept producer who doesn't know what he's doing and goes straight to the heart of managers who often propose equally ineffective solutions to problems, simply because it's all they know.
I know of one CEO who believes that his best solution to grow his company is to simply spend more time "training" his employees. In spite of a changing market, having everything to do with the company's need to alter its strategic direction, the CEO instead believes that his employees are simply not good at their jobs without accepting an ounce of responsibility for the direction of the company. In his case "training" is really more like blaming them for a changing market. In effect, more cowbell.
Maslow's Hammer, or "the law of the instrument" is the over-reliance on a familiar tool, is a rather simple concept that if you give a child a hammer, it will bang the crap out of everything. It becomes the solution to every problem. The french use the term "déformation professionalle" to describe looking at things from the point of view of one's profession. Regulators see a need for more regulation and so on. To a trainer, the solution is always going to be that the employees need more training.
In business, I often see managers simply applying the same solutions to every problem over and over without any awareness that their solution is no longer effective. We tend to apply what we know because it's often easier rather than to seek out new solutions to actually solve problems. The request for more cowbell is intellectually lazy. This is in part what causes some founding CEOs to plateau early in a company. They think the solution that fixed a problem in their early days will always work. They simply stop learning new solutions to their bigger problems. They still believe that what was effective when the company was smaller will still be the solution, regardless of current size and the company stops growing. Rarely do they ask what they are personally doing wrong but instead insist on more cowbell.
I visited a company that was in trouble about five years ago. The company had very big problems with creditors circling like vultures and angry shareholders about to call for his resignation and every time I'd ask the CEO about how he was addressing his problems, he'd pause then show me the features of his product one more time. I'd ask about his run rate and he'd find some way to circle back to a product feature. He was trying to raise more money to solve his problems yet he couldn't produce any projections, or anything that an investor would require. Instead, he'd show me a mechanical feature that he recently engineered. While his product was beautiful, without him addressing the real issues of his business, he was guaranteed to go nowhere.
I always try and sort out how management is growing with the company and the headroom of the senior team including the CEO. If the CEO hasn't evolved with the business to become a better leader, to in essence change hats to meet the needs of the business, chances are the business will plateau with that CEO along with the senior team. They can't see past their own request for more cowbell. Great leaders continue to learn and evolve with the needs of their company. Outstanding CEOs constantly seek new methods and have the gift of introspection, rather than constantly reinforce their belief that the solution is more cowbell.
It seems like most of the people who cruise the self-help section of a bookstore are not looking for new solutions to problems but instead looking for anything that supports what they currently already believe. They are looking for the book that reinforces the notion that more cowbell is the right solution. They are then forever stuck in a tight circle where they know something needs to change, but as long as they reinforce not changing, the loop continues and the problem's never solved. Necessary change is often very uncomfortable, and often requires new and different solutions, and thus I completely understand people avoiding it. It's the unknown; what will happen, will it work, will it fail? If you are stuck and can't seem to move your business in the right direction, it could be because you're still applying the same solution you tried before when it's time to try something completely new... yes, with less cowbell.
And now, SNL More Cowbell... http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145