Improvement Insights Blog

One of the biggest impediments to quality improvement could be the “Hollow Easter Bunnies” in your organization. Here’s how to spot them and what to do about it.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].

“When you were a kid, did you get an Easter bunny and you were all excited because it was “chocolate chocolate chocolate”? Then you bite into it and you discover it’s hollow, right? It’s an external skin of chocolate but it’s not a chocolate Easter bunny, it’s a hollow Easter bunny.

“I was reading this book called “The Friction Project” and they were talking about how it was difficult to reduce friction in organizations. They found out it was because of what they called “Hollow Easter Bunnies”:

These are posers who jabber away at meetings promising to do key work and not getting it done. (They had some key things about these posers):

• They use promises as substitutes for action,
• They hold meetings to talk about it and just admire the problem,
• They have eloquent but useless talk (so they’re using jargon monoxide and it doesn’t help anyone),
• They have “mission statements” and “shared values” and lots of stuff there (or they badmouth somebody for some reason),
• They use training as a symbolic rather than a substantive response to the troubles,
• They outsource all their friction-fixing to consultants rather than actually do it themselves. (That way they can blame the consultants if nothing gets better.)

“Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve known a few Hollow Easter Bunnies in my life, and they’re an impediment to improvement. As soon as you detect one of these things – one of these folks – what should you do? Work around them. “John or Susie, just don’t worry; we’ll go work on this without you.” They’re relieved because they don’t want to have to be involved.

“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week… like not working with Hollow Easter Bunnies.”