ICDH - a mysterious virus?

It lies in the nature of consulting, whether on a strategic or operational level, that it is concerned with change processes.

When we are talking to clients and making suggestions on how to tackle problems, we are nearly always confronted with what we internally refer to as the ICDH Syndrome. It’s completely different here. Somehow reminiscent of the American “Not invented here.”

The other day we were talking to somebody from the health care industry; it was about an administrative process improvement project. As usual, the project had been triggered by a departmental head calling for an increase in staffing levels. He said, “We cannot cope with our workload any longer, we need more people”. Naturally, the employer took a completely different view and commissioned a study to look into the requirements. We were called in.
On such occasions I always think a few teasing questions might be in order. ‘How many more people do you need’ – ‘Well, I think four or five.’ – ‘I see; why not ten?’- ‘Ten is too many, but we definitely need four.’ My question as to why precisely four, mostly triggers a response along the line, ‘I have discussed it with my staff.’
This clearly shows that in many administrative areas there is no capacity planning because people don’t really think about it. When asked, people tend to say, ‘You can’t do that here. Perhaps that’s possible in other lines of business but not here.’ ICDH.

Some time ago we conducted a number of strategy workshop with the top management of a medical technology enterprise. The team was rather mixed. A number of road warriors from sales who had worked together for 20 years were facing a team of managers from development, production, and marketing, and also the CEO. We discussed the concept of core competence and other basic strategic models. We cited examples of international companies which everybody is familiar with, and also of local firms, but it was to no avail.

At the end of the workshop, one of the salespeople – he had a proven track record of sterling service for the company in the past – said that those examples only applied to the consumer goods industry. Things were completely different in their line of business. ICDH.

The list of such incidents could be continued ad infinitum. In conversation with fellow consultants we have often toyed with the idea of publishing an ICDH anthology.