Do you have any broken windows in your business?
The Broken Windows Theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signalling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behaviour.
The theory originated in 1982 from criminologists George Kelling and James Wilson, who suggested that minor disorder, like vandalism, acted as a gateway to more serious crime. Kelling and Wilson thought that focusing on smaller offences, often referred to as “quality-of-life” crimes, would cause a decrease in the number of violent crimes and other seriously undesirable incidents.
When he was mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani adopted an aggressive approach to law enforcement, focusing on what would once have been considered minor offences, to send a message that criminal behaviour of whatever sort would not be tolerated.
Graffiti was washed nightly from subway cars, subway turnstile jumpers were arrested and rubbish was regularly picked up.
Giuliani’s strategy bore fruit. Crime rates in New York dropped faster than in any other major city in the country.
In his 2000 book “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell describes the broken window theory as follows: “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”
In business, the broken windows theory has become recognised as influential and seen to act in a similar epidemic way as crime. When small things start going wrong, these flaws can escalate and be a sign of a weak company or poor management style. Management needs to take care of the small problems such as slow email responses, inappropriate language or poor manners. All organisations have “broken windows” in one form or another.
So how do you fight the problem of broken windows? Vigilance. You have to stay plugged in. As a manager, you can never retreat to your office and hope for the best. You need to be involved with your people. You need to spend part of your time in the trenches with them, getting rid of all the stupid obstacles that stop them from doing their work effectively. You need to build teams that notice and fix broken windows on their own.
It is very easy to let these things drift. We tend to think that it’s just a little problem, we will fix it later. We tend to think it won’t get any worse. But it can, and it often does. Do you want to build a great team? Do you want to do good work? Do you want to be a part of a great business? Start by fixing the broken windows.
April 2015