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Question: What do you feed a four  thousand pound grizzly bear? Answer: Anything he wants!

You have probably “fed the bear” a time or two, and just not known it. A two year old child who must have a specific toy before going to bed, a parent who insists on meeting your friends, or a boss who volunteers you for yet another project. In all these cases you are “feeding the bear” or giving in to something just to patronize the need or system. This goes hand in hand with futility and if you recognize the pattern you will actually laugh at the issues at hand.

I first learned to feed the bear as a young staff sergeant in the Air Force. I was in charge of turning in old computer equipment to the local supply warehouse. The military supply system is quite complex and was never designed to accommodate computer systems. Specifically excess or broken computer systems that needed to be turned in to disposal. The disposal process is fairly simple; they put all the printers or monitors on a pallet and auction them off at a big community auction. You have heard of these guys who go their and get a Ferrari for 10 bucks, well I think they end up having to take drums of toxic waste as part of the deal or something like that.

Anyway, here I am with a ton of computer junk that has to be turned in. It’s never been on anyone’s “account” so it won’t show up on a listing—something the supply people live on. I pull up, unload, and wheel the Grinch Christmas Sleigh looking pile o’ puters over to the guy who handles such things.  He hands me a form with about 50 carbons attached and mutters, “fill that out”.

I’ve always tried to avoid formophophobia (fear of forms) but this one was a whopper. It was only a half page long, but there was only one block in English, the date!  Everything else was some sort of gibberish code, as if I would know what the “RC/CC” was. I tried to get help from his highness over at the desk, but he began speaking in tongues much like the words on this form. “Is this PMEL?” he inquired. “Um..? PMEL..that would be…?” I spun my complete confusion hoping to get some sympathy. “Never mind, all I need is your site ID and I can do the rest. You did tag this stuff right?” he asked. “Why yes, it’s all tagged, see?” I pointed to the paper tags, carefully filled out, as required on each item, “monitor, 1 each, broken.” The site ID was another story, I didn’t have one, and wouldn’t know what one was if it were stamped on my hand.

I was about to feed the bear, and this guy would never know it.  I first tried to reason with the bear, which never works. “This equipment isn’t on an account, it’s managed differently, and I just need to turn it in so you can send it to auction.” I said confidently. “I need a site ID” he repeated with the same tone. My co-worker walked over and asked what was taking so long. I told him the story about the tags and how “rain main” over there wanted a site ID. He walked over and said, “This equipment doesn’t go through supply, we just need to..” he explained and was interrupted.  I knew what he had been told; just by the way he turned and looked at me.

“All right, what should we do?” I asked. My co-worker babbled on about the futility of our system. I said, “Do we have a supply account?” He said, “Yes we do, its 732XP”. This sounded like the language on those cryptic forms! I walked over to the rain man, and said, “732XP!??” He nodded in agreement, scribbled that down on the form and wheeled the equipment away. I was stunned!

That was it? All that fuss was about some code he just had to have? I had fed the bear, gave him what he wanted and the issue was closed.  Was this futile and stupid? Yes!  Did I accomplish the mission, yes I did.

I have run into a few bears in my time, the same principal with different players.  In every case, the resolution is the same. Just give the bear what he wants. You have probably learned to do the same thing. If you have been asked to fix a computer and the user tells you that they can get it to work if they click over here two times and then turn the monitor off and back on. Which of course makes no sense, but sure enough it works. They have learned to feed the bear and get around the problem. The idea here is not feed the bear but to get rid of him.

Sometimes it is easier to just patronize and accommodate, but the true goal is to remove the bear from the equation. He is in the way after all. Removing a bear is not easy and it is harder than feeding him, but if you feed the bear, he will return.

The next time I brought computers in for disposition, the procedure was the same. Only this time I brought the instructions we were given from our leadership on equipment turn ins. There was a paragraph in there about how supply should handle the equipment. The guy on the docks made a copy of it, and followed the guidelines described. He still required a form, but he now knew what blocks could be ignored. Thus the bear went away.

Looking at problems as a bear to be dealt with may give you a refreshing way to handle situations that others would simply walk away from. This is the heart of true problem solving and few managers or executives will take the time to fix things in this way. It takes longer, requires more initiative and upsets the flow of work for everyone involved. Several companies have found their processes to be more of a hindrance than the workers or production design. Why? Because something went wrong and someone began to feed the bear (a problem) as a solution to make him go away. And when he showed up again, they did what worked last time—feed him again. A pattern is set in place and a paradigm begins.

You can see systems like this everywhere you go. Go into a fast food restaurant where they have a serpentine belt to form the line in a tight space. It works great for long lines, but when no one is there you have to walk through this maze like system just to get 4 feet close to the register.

Have you ever pulled to a red light and no one was on the road but you? Had to sit there for 5 minutes while the system got around to letting you go ahead? Even though there was no reason other than a lighted timer to keep you there, you were a victim of process designed around something else, heavy traffic.

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