A Good Theory Saves You Time

You come back to the house after a night on the town and you flip the switch in the hallway…nothing happens; no light.  You remember that the light on the porch was still on when you came in, so you know you have power to the house.  The other lights work, so you know that the breaker box is probably functioning.  You switch the light bulb...

Voila.  You have light in the hall.  Problem solved.  Quickly!

You have, without even thinking about it, used the power of theory to short circuit [sorry] a lot of time and work to solve a problem.  Let’s think about how an alternative scenario could have transpired.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have no experience with houses, or lights, or electricity.  You’ve suddenly been transported from the 18^th to the 21^st century.  You have no idea what all these devices in a house do.  But someone has told you that when you flip that switch, that light is supposed to come on.  You flip that switch, no light. 

You think, ‘Maybe I got the wrong device.’  You try opening the closet door.  No light.  You try turning on the oven.  No light.  You could try all the other myriad devices in the house before you would stumble upon replacing the light bulb.

That’s what happens when you don’t have a theory for how your process works.  It’s both time consuming and expensive, especially if you translate this simple story into a business environment.

Having a good theory for your process is essential to expeditious troubleshooting.  But so often in problem solving, where there’s a lot on the line, we see teams fumbling around, randomly shooting in the dark, and throwing money away with pitchforks.

This seems so obvious when we think of the light switch example.  Why would anyone approach the problem any differently?  And yet, we see business teams waste truckloads of time and money trying to problem solve systems whose inner workings remain a complete mystery to them. 

They erratically stagger from one trial to another while customers wait, without once bothering to think about the inner workings of the process they are trying to fix.  Let’s call this the Fire Fighter Culture.

Of course, THE ADVANTAGE OF NOT THINKING is that it allows one to quickly rack up a huge list of expensive trials that can be shown to management.  “Look at all the work we’ve been doing.”

“Have you solved the problem?”

“No, but look at all the things we’ve tried.  The problem is intractable.”

“Well, it doesn’t make any difference.  The customer has fired us and we’re shutting down the business.”

The message to anyone in top management who might be reading this is that you can make money by ensuring that you have enough technical talent on the team that can really understand the fundamental process that makes that money for you.

You might ask, “What do I do with those people once they’ve acquired that knowledge?  It would be a waste just to have them sitting around.”

The answer is that those talented people are probably good at coming up with:

• Improvements to your business process that prevent many of those crises, or
• New products that will pay for that talent, plus haul in a nice profit. 

The bonus is that when the inevitable crisis hits, you can pull them off of those long term projects to put out fires.

Let’s call this the Fire Prevention Culture. 

They will be much quicker at solving those problems because they have a good theory of how your business process works at its most fundamental level.

Ok, what if you, Dear Reader, are not in top management?  You don’t have the discretion to hire and fire at will.  You can only manage your own time.  What’s the message to you?

The message is to allot yourself a certain amount of time periodically, maybe every day or week, to dive into how your business process works.  It doesn’t have to be so much that it visible delays your daily work.  It doesn’t have to be blatantly obvious, either. 

• Generate a little curiosity about your job.
• Ask your colleagues what they do so you can see how your work meshes with theirs.  They’ll be flattered that you asked. 
• Google your job or your company.

Slowly accumulate a fundamental understanding of your business process.  You’ll find that it makes your job a little easier and less boring.  Then ask your boss an insightful question.  You’ll be amazed at what happens next.

When the next crisis hits, you will be better able to diagnose and fix the problem.

If you’re interviewing a prospective employer, you might ask around and try to determine the culture that’s trying to hire you, Fire Fighter or Fire Preventer.  Which one is going to suit your personality better?  And which one is going to be around longer?

How about you?  Do you have a similar story?  What has worked best for you?  Comment below.