Over the last decade, television has had an ongoing love affair with the “reality show.” One of the more popular reality formats is the turnaround. The formula is consistent. It features a disastrously misguided individual / homeowner / family / businessperson. In the home/business turnaround versions of the format, film crews go in (often in hazmat suits) and poke their long lenses everywhere, just as we would poke our nosey noses into every frightening corner of the current state if we were there. Next, the turnaround specialist arrives, looks around the scene and questions a bit, in TV’s abbreviated version of “Five Why’s”. Usually there is some tipping point, where things look like they might not work out. In nearly every case, though, the turnaround takes hold. The future state is achieved. We exhale a sigh of relief as the credits roll and a commercial plays for the next episode.
The number of reality turnaround formats have mushroomed. There are at least half a dozen home improvement / decorating / cleanup versions out on the street. Personal styling and wardrobe makeover shows are a perennial hit, with programs like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, “Extreme Makeover”, and others. British audiences have been feeding nightly off Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares”, and the franchise was transplanted to America. Cable’s A&E Network has aired it’s version of the format, “Intervention”, for years now. Even CNN aired a season of “The Turnaround”, in which a struggling small business owner is given a makeover and a new lease on business life.
I don’t typically watch a lot of reality TV, but I have sampled a few shows over the years. I have noticed that all variations on the turnaround formula either show the actual hard work of the turnaround, or they don’t. Usually they don’t. Producers know that we like our stories to have three neat parts: situation, tension, and resolution. Editors know that they need to slash away miles of raw footage in order to satisfy our need for instant gratification. They know we want to gawk at someone else’s messy life, catch a glimpse at what they were thinking, feel our hearts race at some hanging tension point, then see the “Big Reveal”…all in about 22 minutes.
Only rarely do we see a reality TV turnaround show that accurately presents the hard work that goes into achieving and realizing the future state. For example, take any episode of “Nanny 911″. In this show, an Expert Nanny helps parents get control of a house gone mad. Invariably, children’s poor behavior is traced back to the parents’ poor behavior, and Nanny must change the parents’ attitudes and beliefs if they are to behave in a different way and achieve any hope for sustained success. In most cases, Mom or Dad clings tenaciously to their old beliefs and comfortable habits. We have all seen the same type of stubbornness in similar real life situations – perhaps in ourselves. Yet, in a miraculous turn, Nanny gets a dug-in parent to throw down their weapon and crawl out of their foxhole. They have changed their thinking. Everybody is happy. The program reaches resolution. All is right with the world. We sit in mute amazement at the Expert Nanny’s skill.
Wait, though. If you look closely at this point in the show you may occasionally see a continuity error. Mom’s makeup now looks fresher. The kids’ messy hair is suddenly not. In one episode, I actually witnessed a Dad’s shirt change color! What just happened?
In all likelihood, the show’s producers just stepped in to do the real, hard work of change. While the cameras were off for a few hours, a team of psychologists worked the old folks over like they were inmates at Guantanimo Bay. What ends up on the cutting room floor is real change leadership.
Reality turnaround shows are dangerous because they perpetuate a myth – the myth that simple, neat, and instant change miracles really do happen. Television edits out the hours of messy, slow, laborious, frustrating work and leaves behind only the neat plotline and instant gratification we have come to expect from our TV. Our televisions rarely show us undistorted reality. They usually just tell us stories. And in seeing those manicured stories repeatedly, it is easy and pleasant to believe that they are reality. They are not. Anyone who has been in a tough kaizen event with an entrenched team knows that there are no silver bullets to creating and sustaining a new behavior. What we see is entertainment. What we don’t see is the true face of change.
For example, on “Kitchen Nightmares”, Chef Gordon Ramsay hurls a stream of bleep-words at every 
episode’s incompetent chef while he confronts them with a plate of their own crappy food, often in front of guests and staff. Ramsay karate chops them right in their overblown egos. On more than one episode, the owner/chef storms out into the street, threatening never to return. And yet, two minutes and two seconds later when we come back from commercial, they are all sorry-like, ready to repent and buy into Chef Ramsay’s plan. Really? Just like that? No way.
After that guy’s volcanic eruption, I’m sure at least one good change leader worked for hours to peel him off the ceiling, and get him all stitched up. Then they sat down together. They let him vent. They listened to him. They communicated. They got him to agree how miserable he and his staff are. They tried approaching him with an idea..then they backed away. They gave him space. They acknowledged him. They reframed the problem. The presented another idea. They listened some more. They presented the idea a different way. Someone cracked a joke and they all laughed. They involved him. They communicated again. They agreed on a plan. They listened yet again. …You get the picture.
Too often, lean transformation events look like a reality show. Have any of your events come up short recently? If your answer is “yes”, see if you can spot some any of these common failure modes:
· Kaizen event leaders, team leaders, and their mentors may be well trained and very familiar with the business process to be improved or with lean techniques, but have little training or experience with human behavior and change leadership.
· The kaizen event leadership focuses on the event week, with relatively little leader attention paid to preparation or planning on the front end, or the critical weeks and months that follow. They are present during the event, but are nowhere to be seen afterwards.
· Senior leaders are present and attentive at the management outbrief, but pay little attention afterwards. Their “leader standard work”, critical to continuation of desired behaviors, is never established or is not sustained.
· The kaizen event rushes to get results, but, in the process, ideas are not drawn out from team members, team members are poorly engaged, consensus on solutions is poorly built.
· The team focuses on action items and a linear timeline, failing to circle back to check for team member agreement, address team member concerns, and maintain agreement on the move toward solutions.
How about your experiences? Have you seen other examples of “Reality Show Kaizen”?
