It's all psychology

Organisations often are governed by processes and procedures which make sure everything is done in a correct manner and nothing important is forgotten. How and why these processes and procedures turn into learned behaviour that is hard to overcome, is illustrated by the following experiment carried out by Stephenson (1967).

Ten monkeys are living in a cage. In a corner of the cage a rope is attached to the ceiling. Next to it is hanging a bunch of bananas. Also attached to the ceiling is a sprinkler installation, covering the entire surface of the cage.

Once a monkey climbs the rope to reach for the bananas, the sprinkler installation is turned on and all monkeys will get soaked. After a few of those incidents the majority of the monkeys will become tired of that and will prevent any other monkey to touch the rope. When this behaviour has become practice, one monkey is replaced by a new one. After some time the new monkey sees the rope and the bananas hanging there and he starts climbing. The orther monkeys grab him and beat him up. After that he does not even dare to look in the direction of the rope.

Then another monkey is replaced and the whole ceremony takes place again. This will be repeated until none of the original group of monkeys is left in the cage. None of the monkeys ever have experienced becoming soaked by the sprinkler. Still none of the monkeys dares to climb the rope, being afraid of getting beaten up. Why that thrashing takes place, no none of them knows... Like in many organisations: "That's the way we do things around here".