Usually, disruption in business is a good thing. We should try to solve old problems in new ways.
But it’s not that simple. If decision makers aren’t careful (if they are not aware of Verschlimmbesserung), they may create more problems than are solved.
That’s why I’m excited about learning this word from this Inc. article. “Verschlimmbesserung,” a German word with no direct English equivalent is best summed up as, “by trying to improve something, you made it worse.” I’m not only excited about a new big word to add to my German vocabulary because I personally am a Germanophile, but because I am often hired to help avoid Verschlimmbesserung.
“Verschlimmbesserung,” a German word best summed up as, “by trying to improve something, you made it worse.”
Leaders need to look at situations from various perspectives before moving forward in the decision making process. This is why even the lowest level of employees should be brought into the conversation when you are thinking about making big changes – whether the changes may be to your internal business culture, a platform used by the team, a product you sell, etc. You need to be sure you are asking the right questions and talking to the right people to avoid making decisions that will have unintended consequences, which waste valuable time and resources, causing more work, and probably annoyance, for your staff.
I find myself assisting professional associations with this very issue on a regular basis. Associations often have an online community that isn’t growing or engaging in the way they want it to, so they want to make changes to increase activity. That makes perfect sense. Some kind of change is needed. However, just because your online community is not very active today (and maybe you have staff who grumble about the technology being used) does not mean the best course of action is to move to another platform. You should avoid that type of large-scale, expensive, and painful project at all costs, especially since it is no guarantee that your community will be any more engaged, or staff any happier, once they’re on a new platform.
You should first exhaust your options with your existing tools and platform by doing comprehensive research: talk to all staff who use the technology, get to the core of their issues, also interview a variety of community members to understand their feelings toward your current community and what they want. Then, think through low-lift and low-cost options that are available: build a training for staff so they can learn to effectively use the tools they have; improve member onboarding and education around the community. Make sure people know how to use the features available to them, and what direct value they will get from using them. Reach out to your platform provider and ask for assistance – maybe they offer resources to assist. Submit feature requests and work with the platform provider to improve your front- and backend user experience as much as possible.
If that’s not moving the needle enough, or if those tasks are too time consuming to take on internally, that is a clear indicator that it’s time to seek out external expert help. Instead of trying to navigate the complexities of the project on your own, rely on someone who knows the ins and outs of the industry and can help you avoid common pitfalls and mistakes. That’s where I come in: to go through the appropriate steps of the process by determining what core issues might exist and propose viable options to address the issues, starting with the lowest lift, so we can save your organization as much money as possible. I will help you examine and test each solution to find the best fit for your situation. In this way, you can save your association time, money, and stress by not making decisions that have unintended consequences and get back to having engaged community members and happy employees sooner.
If that’s not moving the needle enough, that is a clear indicator that it’s time to seek expert help.
