The biggest obstacles in your organization are ones that you can’t see.
We call it Organizational SCRAP.
Organizational SCRAP is the Structures, Culture, Rules, Assumptions, and Processes in your organization that no longer serve your purpose or that get in the way of success. SCRAP is a powerful force that underlies nearly all kinds of change resistance, and it is a major contributor to every change failure that we have experienced.
It’s been hidden for a long time, but now, it has a name.
Organizational SCRAP = Structures · Culture · Rules · Assumptions · Processes
SCRAP is not all structure, culture, rules, assumptions, or processes. SCRAP are only the ones that no longer serve a purpose, or the ones that get in the way of success. It may have had benefits in the past, but because things change, it no longer does. SCRAP persists not because anyone chose to keep it, but because it has never been named, surfaced, questioned, or dealt with. It has never been treated as the enemy of change that it is.
In change, Organizational SCRAP answers the question
“What constraints prevent the desired behaviors or outcomes we want?”
Naming the enemy
changes the conversation.
When SCRAP is not identified, the people defending it become the enemies of change.
You end up having to go against colleagues, peers, leadership or even direct reports instead of the things that are actually blocking. They appear to be resisting change, but they aren’t. They are just following the structures, culture, rules, assumptions, or processes that are currently in place. They’re doing what they think is right, and what their organization tells them is right. The SCRAP has them.
When SCRAP is identified and named, the dynamic shifts entirely.
The executive whose initiative died in committee, the team buried in process they didn’t design, the senior leader who can’t get the org to move. They all have a personal grievance against SCRAP. Everyone has been its victim, including you and me.
When we name it, we can stop fighting the people defending SCRAP and start asking:
Can we overcome this together? Yes, we can.
You already know what SCRAP feels like.
Functional silos that disconnect everyone from success.
We separate people by function, which makes sense in a big company. But when we optimize the work of any particular function, we usually hurt the whole. And no one owns that, so we make decisions that we know are not for the best of the company or customer.
Transparency is a corporate value, but we can’t be transparent.
It’s easy to say that the organization and leaders value transparency. But when people are afraid to share actual progress and delays, we see the real culture come to the surface: “It’s not ok to say you’re behind.”
“That’s not how we do things here.”
A cultural norm enforced without anyone knowing why. The original reason we do things that way is gone; the behavior it produced remains as an unwritten rule we all operate by.
“Our customers won’t pay more for that.”
Stated as fact and never tested, held as truth because someone said it in a meeting ten years ago, it survived unchallenged. And now we decide not to build things we think they will pay for.
A planning cycle that produces decks instead of decisions.
Six weeks of preparation for a two-hour meeting where nothing is decided. The process is all about output, not outcome.
The SCRAP whitepaper
is coming soon.
A definition of the framework, how to sense Organizational SCRAP™ in your organization,
and why naming it is the first act of fighting it.
Leave your email and you’ll get it the moment it’s published.
You’ll get the whitepaper, updates as the book and tools develop, and no pitches.