The “Left Hand, Right Hand” Problem Of Most Organizations

No one communicates that well.

Here’s a quick little story.

I tutor at an inner city elementary school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Yesterday I go over there for a 8:45am to 9:35am shift.

I go to pick up my second grade student.

His homeroom teacher is like “Oh no, you can’t do this time on Tuesdays anymore.”

“OK. Why?”

“We have this new program (name of program) and I need this time to execute it and use the computers.”

“OK, cool.”

I went back to the program I tutor with. They had no idea.

Some people who lead the school had no idea.

Now, ultimately I adjusted the Tuesday time and we good. It took all of six minutes.

But I kept thinking about this “left hand, right hand” concept.

Doesn’t that seem to define most of work in some ways?

What is “left hand, right hand?”

Jeff needs someone to work on Project A.

Tom feels Project B is the priority.

Everyone that comes in contact with Jeff and Tom for the next four weeks will be told something entirely different, even though they have the same title and work in the same department.

Jeff is the left hand.

Tom is the right hand.

Never the twain shall meet.

And everyone else gets run in 7,228 circles.

Why does this happen?

A bunch of different reasons:

1. Unclear priority
2. Too many stakeholders
3. Generally shitty management
4. Multiple bosses on every project
5. General lack of self-awareness throughout white-collar work
6. Silos
7. A lack of understanding around what the project objective of any given project might be

Can we fix this?