Monday, April 6, 2015

THE BYSTANDER PROBLEM IN ORGANIZATIONS

Ballu came over late afternoon.  Summer was now at its peak and the fellow generally lazed around my home most afternoon's.  The curtains were half drawn to prevent the scorching sun rays from heating up the room.  Ballu started off…yet another narration.
The year was 2005.On a crowded platform at a suburban railway station in Mumbai a huge crowd was waiting for the next local train to arrive.  A traveler was sitting on one corner filming the maddening pace of activity and the popular morning frenzy on the platform with his new camcorder.    People were anxiously peeping over the platform edge to see if the train was arriving.  And suddenly on the screen of the camera the traveler noticed a training arriving and one of the contraptions fitted to the train knocked down a man who was bending over to get a view of the train at the edge of the platform.  The man fell bleeding on to the platform.  The camera captured this silently and surely.   The filming continued.
 

Meanwhile the man lay there bleeding for several long minutes.  The man continued to film the busy platform, the fallen man and the several hundred people watching from the side lines.  The traveler must have captured over 15 minutes of recording after the incident.   No one seemed to come forward and attend to the injured man.   Finally help arrived more than half an hour later.  By the time the fallen man was taken to the hospital he had lost his life.  The bleeding was too much for him to survive.   Perhaps, if he could have been taken to the hospital earlier he might have been saved. 
“So what happened Ballu”, I asked.  “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Well, well”, said Ballu. “Several hundred people including the traveller who was filming the incident saw the man fall after being hit by the train… But No One Came forward to help”.
Staring at the window I asked, “So why didn’t anyone help”
“You see”, said Ballu,   “Each one thought that someone else would help the person and in the process no one actually went forward to help”   This is like a freezing point,  things just don’t move then.  Everyone thought that someone would come forward and no one thought that no one would come forward.   So the most important thing that needed attention went unattended.   This we call the “BYSTANDER PROBLEM”.
“Now tell me”, said Ballu “Does this happen in your organization too?”
“O I see”,   It began to dawn.   When at times we wonder why the same problem gets no attention.  It keeps lingering.   There is a lowering of morale due to issues not being addressed and month after month there is nothing done.   HR thinks ops will own and solve the problem,   Ops thinks someone else is there to address that problem,   and Managers think that team leaders will address the problem.   Team Leaders are just not sure who would take up the problem to address and so on a so forth.   Meanwhile employees start getting frustrated,  some quit and some start showing signs of slowing down and so on.  
Well it was getting terribly exciting …. How does one solve the BYSTANDER PROBLEM?  I shouted out.  
“Let me come back” said Ballu and ran away through the main door.   I was wondering and continued for a while.....  Was it the absence of people,  No.... I realized... it was the presence of people around that was the real problem.   Had the person shooting the film been the only one around would he actually have just stopped filming and started paying attention tot he injured man?
Lets address this issue in a later post.

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