complexity
Whose Life Is It Anyway?
It’s absolutely fascinating how much leverage going green has gained. It’s hard to miss the marketing, packaging, and commitments that continue to grow and show. Many of us make green choices daily, some bigger, some smaller, and some to feel better, all with positive impacts. My observations are that, in consumer goods, the visible focus is on producing “from recycled” materials or from producing from benign components or processes. But what about all the really big stuff we build, produce, or operate?
The globe is dotted with far too many closed facilities, done with their productive lives, some nasty, awaiting a future that may never look green. Nobody likes them and they serve as reminders and warnings for decision makers. It is easy to presume sinister capitalists or overzealous weapons producers as the blame, but it is hard to escape that it’s a lot about economics and prosecution of the national will and multiple interests. Economics is a bit like physics in that processes will frequently follow the paths of least resistance. Similarly, extraction and harvesting economies have denuded the landscape, inviting regulation and in some sectors and countries, restoration efforts, but not yet without irreversible consequences. Getting to green may require multiple generations and someone to pony up on the costs. There is no Utopia, and the noble natives of the planet Pandora exist only in fantasies; and illusions that these harmonious societies ever existed are unsupported history. It’s challenging, because what got us here may eventually constrain us from getting there. What got us here was our capacity to solve problems and overcome obstacles, motivation notwithstanding. How we frame what are problems and opportunities drives important directional decisions.
After all, decisions are typically biased by the productive capability of what we make, build, or operate. What that means is that there is far more weight and attention given to the costs, effectiveness, and efficiencies of fabricating, constructing, and operating than to what happens at end-of-life. For lots of the big stuff, end-of-life is typically far into the future, messier to deal with, and makes the review and approval process more “difficult.” I’ve tested this hypothesis multiple times over many years, and the responses are consistent, end-of-life and decommissioning are not a big factor in the design discussions. Perhaps that is changing.
Over the last 50 years, some of the ugliness that we contend with as enterprises, governments, and consumers has to do with the direct costs and externalities ensuing from unplanned outcomes or effects at end-of-life. Granted, many plans and proposals have language addressing full life cycle costs, yet the evidence of subsequent actions have not aligned. A lens that I’ve found to be helpful is that what we get is precisely what our design, fabrication, and operation is supposed to give us. If it is not giving us that, then we have to investigate, the design fabrication and operation, where the errors or defects were generated that result in what we’re getting. It is as true for what we’re doing today as for what yet awaits us when we have stop or abandon the process. We’ve already designed, built, and operate with end-of life costs, to a good or poor degree.
The challenge ahead is not simple, simplistic, nor easy. Our economic systems create powerful forces and motivators. I really love the life that technology enables and don’t really want to give it up. I have many friends who build and operate some of the really big stuff and they are good, intelligent, highly principled, and ethical people. They care about the welfare of our world and their legacy as much as we do. The challenge is striking the balance between a more certain today and a sometimes very uncertain tomorrow. It gets really hard, when our positive economic rewards are about what we do in the present. They are immediate and positive, versus far into the future and negative. Which would you pick?
For visionaries, this creates an opportunity. The storms of growing public sentiment and distrust of some industries creates an awesome opportunity to design and differentiate with a smarter end-of-life offering. Smarter end-of-life creates value, reduces compliance burdens, fosters complementary lines of business, impacts investor perceptions, and can have a transformative effect on vision, values, and behaviors. For revisionists, a different family of motivators is often necessary. Carrots have longer lasting benefits than sticks.
Sometimes, the military does this well. The really good conquest and occupation strategies are done and executed against a well developed exit strategy. Forethought enables us to manage the present from the future.
“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” Sun Tzu
Who’s Not on Board?
Not that long ago, a major mobile phone carrier had an effective advertising campaign with a catchy slogan. Yet, I found their slogan troubling. It was troubling in that their banner, “We have fewer lost calls” left with me an impression that “we’re not as bad as the other guys” was written with the intent to establish a positive differentiator of quality and reliability. My reaction then was that the goal was to be the best of the bad, or cream of the crap. Upon reflection, I realized that the problem was with me, and in fact, the carrier’s message was the right one. This carrier was actually speaking the language of quality, not of spin (as I confess was my reaction). Quality is measured by the likelihood of failure against a specification. In their case, our case, it was a message that what mattered to the customer was continuity of service and there is a probability that that service will be interrupted, and the best do it fewer times. The carrier must have studied Dr. Noriaki Kano and realized that in some cases, the best can mean fewer defects, and failures against a basic requirement can only bring dissatisfaction. For the basic requirement of service availability, a service unavailability measure is the right metric and satisfaction is not achievable, that is, zero defects can bring only zero dissatisfaction.
This last week, we witnessed what appeared as truly bizarre behavior from Apple. The new flagship, the iPhone 4, has a troublesome performance problem with the reception. The very beautiful phone integrated the antenna into a smooth metal casing, creating a problem when the phone was held in a particular, albeit very normal, way. Some would argue that the decision process for the product launch suffered from an unhealthy bias wherein form trumped substance and engineering warnings. It’s saddening, coming from an exciting and innovative producer of form and substance. What was befuddling was the chairman’s response to the defects. It began with hubris with what appeared a dismissive tone that trivialized the problem …. Customers don’t know how to hold our phone properly, what’s all the fuss about; it’s the bad media at play. As the evidence mounted of the reception calamity and the web took over, sharing the data, the next stage of responsiveness focused on an attack on the competition, asserting that other smart phones shared the same problem. From here it sounds like it’s about “my” product and brand, not the customer pain. That strategy was a big boo-boo. Motorola, HTC, and RIM did not remain silent, each stating that their designs did obey the laws of physics and sound engineering, after all, customers wanted continuity of service.
Today’s connected world is a dangerous place to forget that respect for the customer and respect for the competition are essential for sustainability of brand value and economic goodwill, just ask Toyota. I’ve always loved Apple’s creativity in form and substance. I also believed that Toyota put the customer first. Funny how often bigger does not beget better. It’s called entropy, another engineering insight often forgotten.
On reflection, I wonder how much of the problem had to do with poor engineering and how much with a culture of “enforced optimism” or some variant of the “emperor’s new clothes?” The evidence to date on the catastrophic BP oil rig explosion and the subsequent environmental opening of Pandora’s Box seem to support the dangers of “enforced optimism” leadership behaviors.
How often does the “enforced optimism” show up in planning (pick any type), budget sessions, objectives, progress reviews and reports, investor sessions, group decision making, scheduling and commitment setting, …., other stuff?
Thoughts?
Truth or Consequences?
I heard someone on the news use the term “oil tsunami” to describe the river of oil currently sweeping across the gulf and the devastation it is delivering to those in the water and on shores. It is an interesting analogy in imagery, but it misses the big point, this growing glob of pestilence was triggered by man, by many people making a whole bunch of choices and decisions. The complexities of how it began and the complexities on how it may one day end are still unraveling. The forces of nature that have been unleashed still defy our technology, techniques, and even our collective confidence. Sadly, it does illuminate a darker side, not new, about the economics of the process. Responsible economists articulate the importance of incorporating the impacts of externalities into decision making. What that means is that what we do can have an adverse impact that transfers the burden, costs, and consequences of dealing with the mess to someone else. In the broadest sense, the total costs of what we do are bigger than our accounted costs and subsequent prices we charge.
This is not only about oil, it is about lots of stuff, including many of the apparent bargains we grab at the supermarket and the fast food chain; or other apparent benefits from subsidized markets . In retrospect, the people that are responsible for perpetuating the calamities like the oil spill can appear as sinister, sometimes a true characterization, but they are seldom so in isolation. To a great extent, the engines we put into play, as consumers demanding lower prices, and as investors expecting greater returns, create value systems with biases, meaning skewed or unbalanced. The levels of bias or balance are important dimensions of good or poor decision making. My oversimplification is that historically we are rewarded by one system, economic, and are constrained and sometimes punished by another, societal and public. These systems are not equal and have never been balanced, primarily because of one set of these consequences is pretty immediate and the second set is improbable and if so, in the distant future.
We, as individuals and as enterprises, are very cognizant of these consequences. Our perception and expectations of these consequences are big, really big drivers of behaviors. Lots of research by very capable people has validated this relationship between consequences and behaviors. Let’s not expect balanced behaviors from unbalanced consequences.
We, when in pain, will exercise economic consequences, but often as a reaction to harm done. On the flip side, our efforts to regulate and control some of these “big” behaviors are sadly oversimplified, undernourished, and in systems that are unattractive to the clever, talented, and ambitious among us. When we overlay on this system the behaviors of those focused on reelection and keeping their local economies well fed, we already know what happens.
Interestingly, this week, squeals are emanating from across the big “pond” about the economic impact that pensioners (investors in BP) are feeling from the precipitous drop in the value of, and anticipated dividends from BP. Posturing and deflected blame, insinuated bias on the part of the US press, public, and politicians as a cause for the externalities. Consequences are driving these behaviors as well.
Messy and complex, isn’t it? Thoughts?
When is the Exam?
Ever been caught in a situation for which you were not prepared? Ever dream where you forgot to attend a certain class at school, did not go for months, and then remembered, and the exam was to be in one hour, forgot the room, hadn’t studied, and then … panic? It can be unnerving. It evokes a very special anxiety, an unforgettable sensation. This type of anxiety is different than a surprise calamity that came from nowhere and it was something you could not have prepared for. The anxiety that comes from being unprepared is different because the consequences are typically very severe, sometimes disastrous, but very possibly preventable, had we prepared for it or to be surprised. It is but one dimension of the cost of unreadiness. That cost of unreadiness is terrible, nightmarish, fraught with self doubt and remorse, and becomes overwhelming when it is basking in the public eye. Sometimes, others suffer because of our unreadiness.
Unreadiness has different faces; the most distinguishable differences often exist between those that serve the interest of shareholders and those that serve the interests of the public. There are events of unreadiness that are shared among sectors. One that is hard to escape is capturing our attention because it painfully highlights a frightening level of apparently ubiquitous unreadiness. One indicator of the issue is the overwhelming amount of rhetoric and buzzing about from spectators to visible execution from those jumping into the fight as ready and agile gladiators.
The current crisis with the river of oil gushing upward in the Gulf of Mexico is a behemoth that resists constraints and carries dimensions of destruction that will change economies, lives, careers, communities, and perhaps the lens through which we view ourselves. It behaves much as Pandora’s Box, opened and releasing unbridled and irreversible calamities. There are overlays of causes, inclusive of a stated strategy to reduce dependence on foreign oil, one that may have created or perpetuated cozy questionable regulatory behaviors with the offshore drilling permitting and oversight process. There will be plenty of time for blame to be delivered. Right now, however, it is a distraction from the priority plugging the spewing hell.
Plenty of pundits are weighing in with “who is in charge, which is guilty, how much should we punish ….” Yet the still small voices of, “we can help, we have experts, I will lead, follow me lads” can’t be heard or remain silent. When no one is ready, everyone is guilty. It comes back to the eternal conflict between decision making systems, values, paradigms between the world and rules of economics and the world ruled by the rules of variability, uncertainty, the laws of physics, today’s engineering, and yesterdays science. It is very much about yesterday’s science and yesterday’s patterns applied to tomorrow’s problems. We create black swans from white ones, by the decisions we make (might want to read the book … “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) and what we chose not to consider in those decisions.
David Brooks, the columnist, has articulated several times that extraction of energy resources (oil, gas and coal) continues to have costly risks, albeit acceptable by consumers so far. The laws of physics make that undeniable. The coal mine disaster, the current oil geyser, Somali pirates hijacking tankers, refinery fires; there are many. Yet, energy is essential to life as we want it to be and as we need it to become. Our current demand is not likely to drastically change anytime soon, but maybe our strategic objectives should. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is too big to avoid. What we are witnessing are the secondary effects of harvesting and extraction economies and technologies. All extraction and harvesting sources have to be converted and that process leaves scars. Whether lumber, pulp, agriculture, food, minerals, fuels, all leave scars.
So our gorilla wonders about our choices. Do we set the same standards across the choices? Do alternatives share the same decision hurdles? Do they share the same oversight and regulatory burdens? How does the consumption immediacy of today reconcile with tomorrow’s predictable constraints?
Consider one example. If oil and coal had to meet the yoke of regulation from cradle to grave that the nuclear generation alternative endures, we would have very different behaviors. Today, the cleanest and safest choice is treated like the red-headed stepchild, a behavior not shared by the rest of the technologically literate world. We unknowingly or passively take on the risks of oil spills and mining accidents, but howl at the thought of a geologically sound repository site for spent fuels and continue to foster an onerous permitting process for new generating facility construction. It’s a tough one to reconcile. Balancing the laws of economics with the laws of physics is tough enough, but when mixed with the laws of political electability, it can become next to impossible. This issue is more about tomorrow than about today.
But the nuclear debate did not get us Pandora’s Gusher, unreadiness did, cut corners did, questionable regulatory behavior and integrity did, poor situational awareness did, and maybe some hubris did. There seem to be some choices, and none are cheap, fewer easy. Raising the standards of readiness call for a different way to plan, manage, and reward. It means ensuring with preparedness and responsiveness rather than insuring with financial instruments and distributed risk coverage. The risks and consequences are radically different. Again, we can pick the laws of physics, build agility, and respond; or the laws of economics, acceptance of fragility, and react. There are differences between managing from fear or confidence.
The 800 pound gorilla wonders about how we will decide. When we have tough choices, do we seek affirmation or confrontation? What will be the costs of our unreadiness tomorrow?
“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.” Sun Tzu
Thoughts?
A Gulf of Inconvenience
The oil well disaster events of the last weeks have been nothing short of ugly. In the background, the echoes of simplistic politicians ranting “Drill, baby, drill!” strike discordance with the fears and unavoidable harm playing out in the Gulf and spotlighted on the nightly news. Congressional hearings into the events are fraught with finger pointing at those called to testify and between those testifying with blame becoming the volleyball, destined to be set up, passed, and slammed until it hits a score. In the meantime, on-the-fly brainstorming is generating and testing ideas to stop the river of oil spewing from its lifelong imprisonment below the surface of the sea; and has rendered predictable disappointments. There are lots of spectators watching, pundits blasting, gladiators battling to survive the ordeal, and some hiding from repercussions.
In the ensuing panic and spotlight, another scary dimension reemerges, how ready are we to tackle what we have not experienced before? Executives of the drilling operations confess, in retrospect, inadequacies in the analysis, evaluation, and preparation for the failures leading to the explosion and the current river of oil. It is messy, the oil spill, the accompanying chaos, and the level of activity to assign blame from the bleachers and the court of public opinion. There is one huge problem with the court of public opinion; it is typically concerned with assigning retrospective blame and exacting a full measure of justice. Often that justice comes as punishment for the convicted and increased regulation for everyone else. On the other side of these events, we will have to contend with choices about getting less and paying more. I wonder what the real cost of our current energy enriched lifestyle might be? I believe we all may experience some level of repugnance and disapproval of these energy extraction accidents, indeed very ugly, but are they a dark side of the convenience we enjoy? These events could have certainly been less likely, with different choices by the operators, their leadership and our shopping demands.
I want to be safe and comfortable, living the convenience that energy provides, but may be reluctant to bear the total costs. I don’t believe that I am alone. An interesting aspect of this scenario is fundamental to situations many industries may be facing. Do we create strategies with aggressive goals that lead to optimistic planning and biases in risk analysis? How much does the business strategy influence the science of decision making? Specifically, how are the random surprises of the variability in Mother Nature considered? When Mother Nature does not want to behave according to plan, do we change tactics? Do we change with deliberation or desperation? After all, when any of us are running behind schedule, the rise in anxiety and fear of failure is inescapable! How then, are choices made? Where do we anchor our thinking and decision making? How far do we explore the expensive options that Mother Nature may present, particularly when behind schedule and sunken investments are climbing!
What happens often is the juxtaposition of goals and decisions driven by the laws of economics and the subsequent actions driven by the laws of physics. We run the business with an economic lens, but Mother Nature can only behave with the physics lens (we can add the other sciences like chemistry, mathematics, geology). Sometimes we have to guess about what Mother Nature is going to do, and we’ll be wrong to some degree, sometimes really wrong. It happens to most of us, but we don’t necessarily think about it when things are going well at the well. As this plays out, we will discover poor decisions and we may be tempted to assign sinister or evil behind them. Right or wrong, we will seek blame and justice. Ugly positioning, influence peddling, legal battles, insurance nightmares and extended stalling strategies await us … these are driven by the laws of economics.
I want to be careful and keep the broad brush of judgment put away. I believe that regulation will constrain future actions and better protect us from harm, at a price. I still wrestle with my, or our, lifestyle and business decisions against this backdrop. Do I have the right scale when I choose? So, what price are we willing to pay and what risks are we asking some to bear?
How wide is the gulf that separates our convenience?
“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” William Jennings Bryan
Thoughts?
What If?
There may be a really big storm brewing. It may be a signal from a political barometer, or positioning, real outrage… not sure, but the thunder is increasing. The last few months have stoked the fires of outrage, anger, frustration, and deteriorating confidence from a public that may feel that they may have been too trusting. Mine disasters are prompting a more diligent review of whether laws were broken and whether responsible regulators did not regulate, or were distracted when they should have been focused. The oil spill disaster is challenging the process of due diligence and the veracity of permitting submittals, leaving people scrambling to solve the should-have-been foreseen or explicitly considered in operational risk assessments. The financial crisis and the ensuing Goldman Sachs nightmare is ringing lots of alarm bells around the public service halls, prompting the questions of, “Did we do enough? Were we diligent in our responsibility? Where will the light of review shine next?” I suspect that readership will skyrocket for Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that have been ringing the bells for regulatory reform, transparency, accountability, and better oversight for many years. The scary part of a pendulum swinging is that it often has an axe attached at the end. The court of public opinion is a feeding frenzy for responsible and irresponsible media.
The challenges ahead are not easy, simple, or clear insofar as right or wrong, the role of government, and the balance between protecting the public trust and preserving an environment that is economically fertile for business. The polarity of positions makes the task of finding societal answers that are workable frighteningly complex, requiring agile minds, principled players, and strategic balance. The ravages of unemployment and a riskier economic outlook may stoke the fires for those in search of the guilty. Anger and the search for public justice enjoy a history of harming too many innocent in search of the guilty.
For those enterprises where compliance is a large economic investment or burden, consider getting ahead of this storm. For those who were doing “just enough to get by,” change is likely around the corner.
Compliance brings three categories of costs:
• The Cost of Non-Compliance. That is all the bad stuff that happens when someone is caught and held accountable for breaking the rules.
• The Cost of Compliance. This is a really big number that captures all the activities and costs associated with understanding the rules, complying, or doing whatever is necessary so as to not be found in non-compliance. This usually has many, many more hidden costs that the explicitly budgeted costs.
• The Cost of the Fear of Non-Compliance. This one is very nasty as it captures all the unnecessary, just in case, better look it over, get more reviews, run it by the lawyers, get lots of extra approvals, let’s have a meeting, and endless tons of costs and constraints heaped on because we are afraid of getting in trouble.
Far too many of the assurance and compliance systems rely on “detect and correct.” The unfortunate consequence of control and contain systems that rely on downstream checks and inspections is that they will always fail to some degree. That means that sometimes we learn that we’re dead before we learn that we’re sick. Yep, failure is what tells us that something is wrong. The smarter folks are applying the principle of “predict and prevent.”
Now, what if the yoke of regulation and compliance is about to get heavier, and those who are responsible for guardianship of the public trust are under greater scrutiny, might they also be thinking about their own fear of non-compliance? What’s the cost to everyone else if that is true?
Where are our enterprises? Is this something to think about, or something to think through?
“A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.” Winston Churchill
I Can’t Hear What You’re Seeing
For many years, the term Voice of the Customer has been a source of incalculable confusion and a hazardous source of misdirection. The reality of dealing with a cacophony of voices that can often come from the many interfaces and service points is daunting for some. Discerning the signal from the noise fosters subjective simplification and can and too often yield risky and sometimes shallow insights carried forward into our delivery of services. We make decisions about requirements without clearly understanding what creates value for our customer. The simplification can put much more focus on the past at the expense of consequences that await the future.
Some reasons may be:
- Understanding the processes, players and decision-making in the initial contracting process. The customer we see and hear often is not the customers we will serve. Tom procures and Mary operates. The functionality (and different points of view) is currently unavoidable in the public sector and lives well in the private.
- Asking the customer for requirements and then setting quality specifications for our outputs. The customer is limited by what they believe you do, could do, or can’t do. Lost opportunity results from the filtered data.
- Poor differentiation between transactional satisfaction and customer loyalty. There are often very different reasons for staying, renewing, or leaving.
- Equating meeting delivery requirements with delivering value. One comes from walking in our own shoes, not in the customer’s. Walking and hearing are very different.
- Limiting knowledge of service costs to the price the customer pays. The cost dealing with us can be too high as the relationship ensues past the start up.
There are many, far too many others. Over the years, I’ve concluded that the analysis yielding the better insights has come from seeing the world and what is truly required through the customer’s lens, looking forward, always forward. Many years ago in a conversation with Dr. Noriaki Kano, he shared the importance of “Customer In” versus “Product Out.” He’s been right all along. The levels of insight (le mot juste) delivered through lenses versus voices is paradigm shaking. In the movie Beyond the Sea, Sandra Dee says to Bobby Darin, “Bobby, people hear what they see!” She was right.
So,
- How do we decide what our customer wants or needs?
- Do we know if we’re right?
- Do we rely on surveys to look forward with our customer?
- Did we lose a customer by surprise?
- Did we add value?
- Do we rely on surveys and complaints for our lenses?
Thoughts?
Think About It!
Have you ever thought about how we think, particularly the kind that leads to decisions? What drives important decisions? How do we know if we made the “right one”? As we enter into the New Year, how will we decide how to navigate ourselves and our enterprises successfully?
How we approach this tends to fall into two major categories (with some dangerous variations within). First, there’s the type of thinking that comes from experience. We observe and experience, develop some pattern describing the experience and tuck it away for reference. When we believe we recognize the pattern, we pull that memory out and make some conclusion about what is in front of us. Some people can store lots more patterns than others, have longer memories and can capitalize from that. It’s called inductive thinking and people with “good” inductive thinking can market that as experience. Hiring practices validate that the marketplace places a positive value on that. Experience is not always good, nor is experience a sure bet, so some further prodding and poking is usually a good idea. There are some areas where inductive thinking can be very valuable, particularly when there is little time available for decision making. It is a subjective realm, nonetheless.
There is another kind of thinking that has to do with the world of math and data and science (real science, not the subjective pretenders…). It requires evidence that is measurable and leads to the quantitative practices where many people will reach the same conclusions when presented with the same data. This kind is deductive thinking and there are lots of professions and methodologies that are built upon deductive thinking. It’s very powerful, learnable and very scalable. It too has limitations in that the person who engages in deductive thinking must learn how to do it correctly and not all of us learn or remember well. Experience here is important insofar as we can use it to demonstrate competence in the applications of the rules and tools. It is supposed to be the objective realm, subject to our ability to measure correctly. Memory also plays a role here. I would be challenged to apply much of what I learned in engineering school decades ago with any confidence.
Variations of the two types of thinking, comingling, and the influences of biases are always at play, so certainty or absolute correctness is elusive. There is however a dangerous type of thinking we may all be subject to. It’s called wishful thinking. We know it well and if we are practitioners in it, we now it’s capability to disappoint. We bring to bear what we have in deductive and inductive capabilities and we put the right bit of optimism and conjure really great scenarios. Sometimes wishful thinking blinds us to lots of really good inductive signals and deductive facts along the way. Some misapply the meaning of positive thinking to the process and don’t survive to tell about it.
So what is the right mix for the upcoming year? We know that there has been a lot of change amiss. The financial rules of engagement have been rattled by poor inductive, pseudo-deductive and far too much wishful thinking so as to create a fair bit of timidity. The way we are interconnected and interdependent in a multi-polar world present us with new data and rules as to what may or may not work. So how do we decide?
- Are we planning for a good year? Why so? Why not?
- Is uncertainty scary or energizing?
- What opportunities does a new playing field present?
- What do we induce, deduce or wish for 2010.
Happy New Year and Good Hunting!
Simply Speaking with Albert Einstein
Years ago I was visiting a financial services regional office and conducting an informal “walk-through” prior to deciding on whether to pursue business development with them. This particular division serviced auto loans. As I went around the workstations I noticed a desk with a very large stack of mail, a very large stack. One individual was opening and sorting each envelope. I asked about it and was told that the individual was the accounting manager and they were the only person in the facility authorized to open incoming mail. I tried very hard to mask my reaction as I asked why that rule was in place. “Well, a few years ago we had an individual steal some money from a payment envelope, so we implemented this improved control so that never happens again.” Flashes of Humphrey Bogart and strawberries in the “Caine Mutiny” suddenly appeared.
I’m certain most of us have countless similar stories. I’ve long held that given enough time, today’s problems generate solutions that eventually become tomorrow’s problems. In fact, most controls have an inherent constraining dimension; they want to keep something from happening. When they are good controls, they attack the current causes and then adapt to changes in inputs or causes, but for many controls, not often enough. Controls become part of the paradigms of “how we do it around here.” Sadly, poor controls tend to punish the innocent in search of the guilty.
Albert Einstein is well known for his genius and insights into the nature of the cosmos. He cracked the nut around what gravity is, something Isaac Newton described as an attractive force, but could not explain. Genius notwithstanding, many of his enjoyable insights have survived in quotations that serve us well in life and business. Constraints that we encounter in our processes are often invisible to our eyes because they are consistent with the way we think or have been trained to see. We are empirical creatures who observe patterns and ascribe meaning to patterns. When we try something and it appears to work, we store that bit of information and draw upon it over and over. We call that knowledge and experience and it gives us and those around us comfort and confidence, even when that knowledge and experience is the cause of current calamities. Albert would say, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
There is unquestionable merit in reducing unnecessary complexity and inappropriate controls in or work and lives. In fact, Albert would say, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Many have assumed that simplification is the way to go. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend to make simplification the objective of improvement, potentially at the expense of quality and consequences. Years ago a good friend explained that where they grew up, calling someone “simple” was very uncomplimentary …. I understand why. Simplification does not mean simple.
Our auto loan example likely dealt with dishonest behavior, but at a huge price to flow and bandwidth. It did not address the root causes that were likely to be more complex and likely to emerge in other behaviors.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
The Net, Gear, and Route to Tears
There are few experiences that are more aggravating than unmet expectations, particularly when failure occurs at multiple points. I seldom list organizations by name, but this one is earned.
Our business is growing in our use of the power of the web. We are holding better meetings, avoiding unneeded travel, collaborating, and improving the customer experience and convenience on the shoulders of the wonderful electrons we can direct. Today we can deliver and share so much more, constrained only by our bandwidth at times. Upgrading makes great sense and so we embarked to muscle up.
After tripling our connection speed, we decided to match our router capabilities to the pipe outside. I decided to investigate, ask around and then buy a new router. We decided on the top of the line Netgear WNDR3700 Range Max (max is good!) dual band (2 is better than one!) 300 Gigabit router with ReadySHARE storage access (usb drive capability). The box reads Push and Connect, brings an install disk, and has a sticker on the box with a big Windows 7 link. I have a new machine with Windows 7, but we also have multiple users with Mac, Windows Vista, and Windows XP operating systems.
- The first bit of bad news was when the install disk notified us that it does not support Windows 7.
- When visiting the website, no install drivers were available for download.
- The 24-7 support walked us through a slow and painful process of manually configuring the router.
- The process to connect with wireless added to the time and aggravation. While the rep put us on hold (again) to find out how to proceed, we ran Windows 7 troubleshooter and connected (on our own).
- The router install webpage indicated that new firmware was available for upload, so we asked the rep whether we should upgrade. “Yes”, he said. We backed-up the settings and forged ahead. (The rep felt that we could do that without his help and politely disconnected.)
- 30 minutes later, we lost all internet access.
- Next call to 24-7 consumed an incredible amount of time. First confirming that we had the upgraded firmware (said that that was good!), doing diagnostic Q&A, resetting the router, and going through a new entry of settings (some different). We finally reconnected.
- The connection was great until 9:00 AM this morning when we lost all internet and router access.
- Next call to 24-7 involved two different reps and more hours. We were told we should not have upgraded to the recommended firmware because it was only in beta stage. New reset and restoration to prior firmware, new set up again. Add hours.
- All in all around 28 hours between initial attempt and current state (it’s working right now).
- I had to reschedule three events, inconvenienced and likely aggravated others …. After all, they could wait with me …. and Netgear.
Was the release of Windows 7 a surprise? Should our loss of productivity be forgiven, forgotten or ignored, all in the spirit of the season? This is not just about a router and a disappointed customer, is it? We have all had our version of this story, or been the perpetrators of the calamities. We’ve arrived early on a flight then waited for a gate when others were available, received mail promotions that the phone center did not know about, sales advertised with no inventory or store awareness, on and on…
Many years ago I learned that organizations typically fall into two modes of operation:
- Product out, then Customer
- Customer in, then Product.
There is one rule that I have always recommended, “Never let the customer become your quality inspector.” Today can add, “Don’t learn about problems from a blog.” We don’t want to learn that we’re dead before we learn that we’re sick.
