Smells like punk spirit

But whether it was the raw, angry sound of the Ramones in the 70s, or the more polished and accessible pop punk of Green Day in the 90s, the real spirit of punk was never the music or the look. It was the message: we don’t agree with your way of doing things.

A key tenet of the movement was a DIY ethic, which encouraged people to create their own music, art and fashion. You never needed permission to be part of it.

Continual improvement riffs to the same tune. It should be about challenging the status quo, taking risks and pushing back against “the way things have always been done”.

Rebel with a cause

My own professional rebellious streak started when I applied for my ﬁrst job and was told I had to be clean-shaven to be seen as trustworthy. I grew out my beard and haven’t touched it since.

In my ﬁrst call-centre role, I questioned why my performance targets rewarded a scripted, three-minute call that often achieved nothing over a 10-minute conversation that could actually solve a customer’s problem. I was promptly moved to analytics, so I would stop upsetting the box-tickers whose way of doing a good job meant simply chasing performance targets.

As an analyst, I came face-to-face with more frustrating and outdated processes that wasted time and money. My team spent hours producing sprawling Excel dashboards only for stakeholders to pick out two numbers and add them to their own reports. When I tried to push back, I was met with resistance. They’d always produced that graph. How dare I take their comfort zone away?

Fast forward through a decade of service management, and I’ve never toned down my punk spirit. The ideals that shaped the music and fashion I love – deﬁance, authenticity and nonconformity – have given me the courage to break the rules. To be disruptive, curious and innovative. To turn “f*** the system” into “ﬁx the system”.

Defying convention

Continual improvement, when it’s done right, works the same way. When people feel empowered to challenge traditional or accepted ways of working, when we welcome experimentation and failure, that’s when real progress happens.

I often carry a notebook that says on the cover “Things I can’t say out loud in meetings”. It’s a reminder that I can and should say the uncomfortable thing. Because some systems exist for a reason, while others are only hanging around because no one’s challenged them…yet.

Rob Simms

Never mind the blockers ▶︎

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