Organizational SCRAP is the Structures, Culture, Rules, Assumptions, and Processes in your organization that no longer serve purpose or that get in the way of success. SCRAP is a powerful force that underlies nearly all kinds of change resistance, and it is a major contributor to every change failure that we have experienced. - Org SCRAP home page
SCRAP isn’t just any structure, culture, rule, assumption or process. It is just those that don’t serve our purpose or that get in the way.
There is no such thing as “good SCRAP” and “bad SCRAP”: All SCRAP is something we should consider doing something about, because it’s probably some kind of waste or problem.
An analogy
My wife, when she really started to “get” the idea of SCRAP, shared with me how she made sense of it. Here is her story:
I have a lot of clothes. They are valuable to me for different reasons. Over time, though, many things change.
- Some things go out of style
- my own preferences change
- clothes get old and worn
- I change jobs or move
- my size may change
And the list goes on. Any of these changes might make the clothes I have lose their value or no longer suit my purposes/needs. When that happens, those clothes to me are now junk.
- I have no use for them
- If I wear them I may look bad, be uncomfortable, or have other kinds of problems
- They pile up, take up valuable closet space, and get in the way
SCRAP is for organizations what junk is for my wardrobe. The similarities go further, and these similarities point to ways we might treat SCRAP (separate thread will discuss this further)
- What is junk for me may not be junk for others - think about donations and secondhand stores, or people who have jobs that I no longer do
- Or I may still have other purposes that the clothes ARE useful for (so I can repurpose it).
The more of this junk I have, the more problematic it is and the more I need to do something about it.