POPPOP – hen or egg?

Even if one agrees on the goal, the discussions can be loud in a management team on how to
to create results. It can often seem strange that there may be such disagreements about
Procedure. A common reason is that we see things differently: where someone sees a half-full glass
water, others see a half-empty. Most people are aware of this and when you get to know
each other in a management group, one finds out differences in way of thinking. "She's always
optimist!" and "You're always so pessimistic!" are repeaters. But it is often also
patterns – or mental models – that are more challenging to identify and understand.
One of them is about the chicken or the egg...

One of our most commonly used mouthpieces about who came first, the chicken or the egg, is not just about
order, but used to point out what leads to what. And then we are at the heart of a business:
Managers can have very different views on whether results are created by acquiring people who
motivated to perform, or if the results are created by inspiring the people you have for
to perform.

This can be illustrated by a palindrome – that is, a word that can be read both from the left and from the right
and give the same meaning. Here we have at least an abbreviation that can be read as follows: POPPOP.

The abbreviation stands for "people", "organization", "process", "product", "objectives" and "performance".
Or in English: People, organization, process, product, objectives and performance.

Stephen Covey has coined the phrase "begin with the end" - or the more thoughtful "begin
with the end in mind' - pointing to the importance of first creating a picture of what we want to
achieve. If we do that and then take a step back and think about the saying "all roads lead to Rome", we can
fish the POPPOP sticky note out of our pocket and analyze the discussion going on around us.
One common way of thinking is:
People ← Organization ← Process ← Product ← Objectives ← Performance

We define a desired achievement, set goals for this, describe what should be delivered to achieve the goal,
design a process to create this, build an organization that can drive the process, and ultimately
We're recruiting the people who can operate this.

We cultivate this outside-and-in-thought pattern by dreaming of the entrepreneur who has a
fantastic idea for a very concrete purpose, but that needs people to put it into action.

But there is a diametrically opposite way of thinking:
People → Organization → Process → Product → Objectives → Performance

We have the people in the business that we have, but how can we organize them better,
design good processes that deliver targeted products and then set goals for what we should achieve in order to
be able to create achievements?

This inside-out thought pattern is based on the fact that some people are together and in
communities develop ideas that they realize through targeted structure or process to create
desired results.

Once we have come this far in our thinking and have identified that there are multiple - and perhaps
contradictory - ways of thinking, it is not far to see that the ideal is probably that it "goes a little
both ways":
People ↔ Organization ↔ Process ↔ Product ↔ Objectives ↔ Performance

And that is precisely why this abbreviation is a palindrome - something that makes sense no matter which way we go
reading it.

Want to talk more about this?
Feel free to contact Bernhard Rikardsen on 976 47 464 or bernhard.rikardsen@sariba.com.