Why people do the things they do

So I'm thinking about the person who was proud of making people cry when consulting. Let's call her Jackie.

Jackie comes in with an idea of how people should be doing thier jobs. If th people aren't doing their jobs that way, Jackie's assessment is that the people are incompetent.

There are actually lots of reasons a person--or an entire department--may not be doing things way Jackie thinks they should:

Rewards.
People generally do what they are rewarded for. So if they are rewarded for doing A most people will do A. I consulted to an organization once where the production support group was measured on keeping the environment stable and driving down costs. Every change costs thousands of dollars (long story that I won't go into here). It should come as no surprise that they were not highly responsive to changes.

Organizational systems.
The way people are organized may drive the way people do thier jobs. There may be policies, procedures, processes, job descriptions, or service level agreements that drive job-related behavior.

Mental models.
Each of us has a mental model of how the world (our company, our department, etc) works. People act in a way that's consistent with their mental model. People tend to notice data that confirms their mental models and not see data that doesn't fit--and it's all unconscious.

Lack of experience or training.
People generally choose the best option they have avaible -- the problem may be that they don't have a rich enough array of options. That's fixable with training, coaching, and experience.

So rather than assume people are incompetent and make them cry, it's more helpful to find out which of these factors are at play and work on those.