Most people know next to nothing about horses. Many know simply kick to go and pull to stop. Some of them have been on those vacation, dude ranch trail rides. There's probably a string of 20 to 20 horses that are ridden twice a day for four hours each time as the resident cowboy leads them on a trail. If you have been on one of these, then you will probably remember what happened when the horse in front of you got a little too far ahead. Without your permission or awareness of what was going to happen, your horse decided to hurry to catch up with the horse in front. Once caught up, your horse returned to his previous pace.
Who had control of that horse? Certainly not you. Your horse may as well have been carrying a pack of camping supplies for all you mattered to him. The only person in control of this follow the leader show was the cowboy guide. Its a nice, safe way to see the country side that you would not see from your car window. Please do not confuse this kind of experience as having any relevance to riding horse to accomplish any other kind of job. You could just as easily have stuck a quarter in the electric one at the grocery store.
Seeing horse and rider connected as a team is eye opening. The rider that has the notion that he's the boss and the horse will do what he wants or else is the rider that will never achieve all that is available from any horse. What the rider should be searching for is way beyond compliance. He should be looking for the volunteer effort. He gets the voluntary effort when he is considerate of the horse.
Let me illustrate it this way. Horses can be herd bound. That simply means that they get overly concerned for their safety and well being when they are physically removed from their herd. This can be a dangerous situation for the horseman. There are two ways to handle this. The horseman that is concerned for the horse might just listen to his horse and say, "Okay, we'll do what you want." He just lets the horse go, and they gallop back to the herd. The horseman concerned with breaking this behavior will pull all sorts of disciplinary antics in hope of breaking the horse's will to be with the herd. In so doing, does he gain the trust of the horse? Not even close.
Consider horse and rider as an analogy for interactions between the organization and the manager. The manager is the rider and the horse is the organization. The two are going to attempt to get some job done. I don't care if its selling insurance, running a chemical plant, building a bridge, etc. The manager's approach to it will either garner trust and a voluntary effort or minimal compliance with his expectations. I submit that every manager would do a lot better if he gets with his or her organization to work together to accomplish their purpose.
I know it is better. I've employed just exactly this approach in several organizations that were behind schedule, over-budget, operating unsafely, and/or missing milestones or production commitments. In each case, milestones were met ahead of schedule, production commitments were exceeded, projects came in under budget, and the safety metrics improved dramatically. In a couple of cases, I felt that if it was possible to wade across the Amazon that my people would have carried me. It is a very satisfying experience.
Integrating lessons learned from ranching into engineering
