Let me illustrate the power of a closed paradigm. I once worked with the director of a regional telephone company to help establish a self-managed group of technicians responsible for telephone service repair in a western state. The managers who reported to the director were initially reluctant to try a self-managed group because they thought their employees were lazy and would take advantage of a selfmanaging environment. But a nine-month trial demonstrated that the self-managed team was more productive and did higher quality work than the traditional work team with a supervisor. In fact, the self-managed team completed a greater number of repair calls and had a lower rate of repeat visits. With these impressive results, I expected the organization to embrace the new method and expand its use.
I was wrong. Despite documented evidence of the self-managed team’s success, the managers clung to their old perception.Moreover, their stubbornness proved to be a powerful influence on the director, who dismantled the self-managed team. The data regarding the team’s performance were kept from the rest of the organization simply because the managers refused to update their beliefs or disturb the status quo. They still believed the employees needed supervision or they would not work. When reality contradicted their beliefs, they preferred to suppress the data rather than change their mental maps.