Episode 20: The Monkey Dome

When I came out of grad school and I started working my first real career job, my peer, I was kind of right alongside someone, his name was Matt.
Matt told me the following story, anecdote, allegory about the organization that we were part of.
So picture that there is a giant dome, and in the middle of the dome, there is a ladder, and there's a hatch at the top of the ladder that would let you, you know, in and out of the dome.
So researchers take 10 monkeys and they put them in the dome.
Then they take a bunch of bananas and they put them at the top of the ladder where the hatch is.
Obviously, the monkeys go to climb up the ladder to go and get the bananas.
When they start climbing the ladder, the researchers take a fire hose and hose them all down off the ladder.
Very painful, shoots them all off the ladder, can't get to the bananas.
Every time the monkeys go to get those bananas, the researchers do this.
They keep knocking them off the ladder, hosing them all down, until eventually the monkeys stop going for the bananas.
Then they take one of the monkeys out and they put in a new monkey, a fresh monkey, one that hasn't been hosed down yet.
They take those same bananas, put them at the top of the ladder.
That one monkey, nine monkeys that have been there, don't go for the banana.
The one monkey that hasn't been there goes to climb the ladder.
When that monkey does that, the researchers hose that monkey off the ladder.
But this time, they also spray the hose on all the other monkeys that didn't try to climb the ladder.
So all ten monkeys, the one new monkey, and the nine from before, all get hosed down.
This happens a few times, until finally, when that one fresh monkey goes to climb that ladder,
all nine monkeys grab that monkey, pull them off the ladder themselves, and beat them up.
Once again, we get to a point where none of the ten monkeys, the new one or any of the ones from before, go for the bananas.
Now, the researchers take another monkey from the original batch and swap it out for a new one.
That new monkey that comes in, of course, goes for the bunch of bananas at the top of the ladder.
However, this time, the other nine monkeys that aren't, you know, the brand new one, grab that monkey before it can even be hosed down,
pull them off the ladder, beat them up, keep doing this until that monkey also no longer goes for the bananas.
This process then repeats, where eventually, the researchers have taken out all ten original monkeys that were sprayed down.
And all that's left are monkeys that have never been sprayed with a hose.
And yet, none of them will go for the bananas.
They all refuse to even try.
But at this point, none of those monkeys know why they won't go for those bananas.
All any of them know is that if they try to start climbing the ladder,
the other nine monkeys will take them and pull them down and beat them up.
But at no point did any of these monkeys ever get sprayed by a fire hose.
The point of this whole story is really that as you're working in an organization or even just going through life or anything else,
you'll run into situations like this.
Sometimes you'll notice things that are a certain way due to some combination of tradition, past mistakes,
sometimes past experiences, all sorts of things that are a certain way but have not been re-evaluated in a long time.
I was also reading recently a book by a guy named Doug Hall who I had the pleasure of seeing speak at an event last year.
The book is called Proactive Problem Solving.
I'll put a link to it in the podcast description.
One of the sort of catchphrases, trademark pieces of this book is a phrase,
Stop the Stupid.
And it's sort of the counterpoint to this.
Not necessarily directly one for one, but in a lot of ways I see it as a other side of the coin.
The idea behind Stop the Stupid is that if, let's say you're working somewhere,
and every day you come in and there's a problem.
This small little problem.
Maybe nothing huge.
Maybe you come in and, you know, you go to log into your computer and there's some pop-up.
And it's annoying.
Not major, just annoying.
And every day, you come in, you turn your computer on, pop-up pops up, you close the pop-up.
And at first, you're looking at this and you're thinking to yourself, this is so dumb.
And then after a while, it fades into the background and just becomes part of your operating paradigm.
So every day, you're doing this one little senseless little action.
The idea behind Stop the Stupid is really that you should, as an employee,
you should be empowered to take control of that, take ownership over that problem and fix it.
Because if you're the one that it most closely is impacting, you are then, in many ways, the most qualified to try to chase down,
and maybe the most motivation to chase down a solution to that thing.
Now, obviously, an example of a small little pop-up, not the end of the world.
But think about your actual day-to-day life and your actual work environment.
You probably have dozens of these things that all stack up.
So it's no longer just a pop-up.
It's you come in and there's a pop-up and you close the pop-up and then your mail thing dings and your mail thing dings
and your phone goes off for a second and your phone blinks and then it comes back on.
And it becomes this stacked set of small little nothing issues that have faded into the background over the course of time,
just over time, that you don't acknowledge anymore.
It used to be a problem.
You used to think it was odd.
But now it's just a thing that you just do.
And you don't even know why you do it.
And no one knows why you do it.
And taking more, taking out a larger, you know, of course, there's larger examples of this
where people in an organization are told to operate in a certain way.
You know, you have to do X, Y, and Z.
So everyone comes in and does X, Y, and Z.
But no one questions whether or not you have to do thing Y or thing X.
Maybe you don't even need to do that anymore.
Maybe it hasn't been reviewed in years, maybe decades.
I recently found out that Matt, the co-worker who told me the monkey story,
I recently found out that he had died.
We weren't super close.
We worked closely together, but we weren't weekend friends.
We never had even gone out for a drink.
You know, it was just, it was a work.
Pure, you know, camaraderie kind of thing.
I mentioned that because I found that story to, while kind of silly and entertaining,
it holds a lot of wisdom.
That piece of wisdom still lives on in me.
And as well as to anyone else who I tell this story to.
And I do think there's a lot of,
there's a lot of depth of thought there
and a lot of lessons that we can take from that story
and apply in all sorts of things that we do.
So, next time you're doing something,
just take a second to think about it.
Something that you do every day.
And ask yourself,
is this necessary?
Should this be a little different?
Would it be better if it was a little different?
Am I accepting something that used to bother me?
That I should change?
And remember the monkeys.
What?
Going by out there.
I stroke it down in place.
I think you need to have a little bit lost on it.
mainly in the black valve the puppies.
And that means that I forget exactly theses.
And I have a little bit more.
But then I'll let it go on again.
So,
well,
let me go on a little bit more.
So,