Production Tracking - Don't Be a Dry Monkey

Put a few monkeys in a cage with a ladder that has bananas on top. One monkey immediately goes for the bananas.

D. Brown Management

September 13, 2018 2 minute read

Cold water sprays on the others.

Field Productivity: Don't Be a Dry Monkey. Know the Why behind production, know the how of troubleshooting and know the when and the who for escalation of production problems.

One more monkey might try to go for the bananas again after they dry off and forget. The cold water sprays the others again.

All of these original monkeys are now conditioned to not go for the bananas.

Replace one of the monkeys and the new one immediately goes for the bananas but the others stop him because they don’t want to get sprayed with cold water again.

Replace another of the original monkeys and the pattern repeats itself.

Replace all of the original monkeys until no monkey has ever been sprayed by water yet the group think conditioning remains so no monkey will ever be allowed to go for the bananas.

This behavior keeps us safe in some ways but in many more ways it simply stops learning and innovation.

When it comes to production tracking don’t let anyone on your team be a dry monkey. Always encourage learning and smart risk taking by leading the way to find a better way.

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