Frog, Toad and bureaucracy
The other night I was reading my 3 year-old a bed-time story from one of our favourite series of childrens' stories, Arnold Lobel's "Frog and Toad" collection, when this little exchange between the two got me thinking: {Frog's List has blown away in the wind} "Hurry!" said Frog. "We will run and catch it." "No!" shouted Toad. "I cannot do that.! "Why not?" asked Frog. "Because," wailed Toad, "running after my list is not one of the things that I wrote on my list of things to do!" This resonates with so much of business life; procedures, workflows, instructions, audits, filling out forms. We all have lists of things to do, from our (largely ignored and occasionally conscious-pricking) task lists, to those procedures. We need to realise that we can make the choice between "merely" following the procedures to the letter, and rehumanising them. Naturally, this all applies to the bur