Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Risk’ Category

There’s a natural hierarchy to work.  Your job, if you choose to accept it is to climb the ladder of hierarchy rung-by-rung. Here’s how to go about it:

Level 1. Work you can say no to – Say no to it. Say no effectively as you can, but say it. Saying no to level 1 work frees you up for the higher levels.

Level 2. Work you can get someone else to do – Get someone else to do it. Give the work to someone who considers the work a good reach, or a growth opportunity. This isn’t about shirking responsibility, it’s about growing young talent. Maybe you can spend a little time mentoring and the freed up time doing higher level work. Make sure you give away the credit so next time others will ask you for the opportunity to do this type of work for you.

Level 3. Work you’ve done before, but can’t wiggle out of – Do it with flair, style, and efficiency; do it differently than last time, then run away before someone asks you to do it again. Or, do it badly so next time they ask someone else to do it. Depending on the circumstance, either way can work.

Level 4. Work you haven’t done before, but can’t wiggle out of – Come up with a new recipe for this type of work, and do it so well it’s unassailable. This time your contribution is the recipe; next time your contribution is to teach it to someone else. (See level 2.)

Level 5. Work that scares others – Figure out why it scares them; break it into small bites; and take the smallest first bite (so others can’t see the failure).  If it works, take a bigger bite; if it doesn’t, take a different smallest bite.  Repeat, as needed. Next time, since you’ve done it before, treat it like level 3 work. Better still, treat it like level 2.

Level 6. Work that scares you – Figure out why it scares you, then follow the steps for level 5.

Level 7. Work no one knows to ask you to do – You know your subject matter better than anyone, so figure out the right work and give it a try.  This flavor is difficult because it comes at the expense of work you’re already signed up to do and no one is asking you to do it. But you should have the time because you followed the guidance in the previous levels.

Level 8. Work that obsoletes the very thing that made your company successful – This is rarified air – no place for the novice. Ultimately, someone will do this work, and it might as well be you.  At least you’ll be able to manage the disruption on your own terms.

In the end, your task, if you choose to accept it, is to migrate toward the work that obsoletes yourself. For only then can you start back at level 1 on the ladder of your own making.

If you’re working in a company you like, and you want it to be around in the future, you want to know if it will grow.  If you’re looking to move to a new company, you want to know if it has legs – you want to know if it will grow. If you own stock, you want to know if the company will grow, and it’s the same if you want to buy stock.  And it’s certainly the case if you want to buy the whole company – if it can grow, it’s worth more.

To grow, a company has to differentiate itself from its competitors.  In the past, continuous improvement (CI) was a differentiator, but today CI is the minimum expectation, the cost of doing business.  The differentiator for growth is discontinuous improvement (DI).

With DI, there’s an unhealthy fascination with idea generation.  While idea generation is important, companies aren’t short on ideas, they’re short on execution.  But the one DI differentiator is the flavor of the ideas.  To do DI a company needs ideas that are radically different than the ones they’re selling now.  If the ideas are slightly twisted variants of today’s products and business models, that’s a sure sign continuous improvement has infiltrated and polluted the growth engine. The gears of the DI engine are gummed up and there’s no way the company can sustain growth.  For objective evidence the company has the chops to generate the right ideas, look for a process that forces their thinking from the familiar, something like Jeffrey Baumgartner’s Anticonventional Thinking (ACT).

For DI-driven growth, the ability to execute is most important.  With execution, the first differentiator is how the company investigates radically new ideas.  There are three differentiators – a focus on speed, a “market first” approach, and the use of minimum viable tests (MVTs).  With new ideas, it’s all about how fast you can learn, so speed should come through loud and clear.  Without a market, the best idea is worthless, so look for “market first” thinking.  Idea evaluation starts with a hypothesis that a specific market exists (the market is clearly defined in the hypothesis) which is evaluated with a minimum viable test (MVT) to prove or disprove the market’s existence.  MVTs should error on the side of speed – small, localized testing.  The more familiar minimum viable product (MVP) is often an important part of the market evaluation work.  It’s all about learning about the market as fast as possible.

Now, with a validated market, the differentiator is how fast company can rally around the radically new idea and start the technology and product work.  The companies that can’t execute slot the new project at the end of their queue and get to it when they get to it.  The ones that can execute stop an existing (lower value) project and start the new project yesterday.  This stop-to-start behavior is a huge differentiator.

The company’s that can’t execute take a ready-fire-aim approach – they just start.  The companies that differentiate themselves use systems thinking to identify gaps in resources and capabilities and close them. They do the tough work of prioritizing one project over another and fully staff the important ones at the expense of the lesser projects.  Rather than starting three projects and finishing none, the companies that know how to do DI start one, finish one, and repeat.  They know with DI, there’s no partial credit for a project that’s half done.

All companies have growth plans, and at the highest level they all hang together, but some growth plans are better than others.  To judge the goodness of the growth plan takes a deeper look, a look into the work itself.  And once you know about the work, the real differentiator is whether the company has the chops to execute it.

Image credit – John Leach.

We’ve been conditioned to ask for direction; to ask for a plan; and ask for permission. But those ways no longer apply. Today that old behavior puts you at the front of the peloton in the great race to the bottom.

The old ways are gone.

Today’s new ways: propose a direction (better yet, test one out on a small scale); create and present a radical plan of your own (or better, on the smallest of scales test the novel aspects and present your learning); and demonstrate you deserve permission by initiating activity on something that will obsolete the very thing responsible for your success.

People that wait for someone to give them direction are now a commodity, and with commodities it always ends in the death spiral of low cost providers putting each other out of business.  As businesses are waist deep in proposals to double-down on what hasn’t worked and are choking on their flattened S-curves, there’s a huge opportunity for people that have the courage to try new things on their own. Today, if you initiate you’ll differentiate.

[This is where you say to yourself – I’ve already got too much on my plate, and I don’t have the time or budget to do more (and unsanctioned) work. And this is where I tell you your old job is already gone, and you might as well try something innovative. It’s time to grab the defibrillator and jolt your company out of its flatline. ]

It’s time to respect your gut and run a low cost, micro-experiment to test your laughable idea. (And because you’ll keep the cost low, no one will know when it doesn’t go as you thought. [They never do.]) It’s time for an underground meeting with your trusted band of dissidents to plan and run your pico-experiment that could turn your industry upside down. It’s time to channel your inner kindergartener and micro-test the impossible.

It’s time to choose yourself.

At the start of projects, no one knows what to do.  Engineering complains the specification isn’t fully defined so they cannot start, and marketing returns fire with their complaint – they don’t yet fully understand the customer needs, can’t lock down the product requirements, and need more time.  Marketing wants to keep things flexible and engineering wants to lock things down; and the result is a lot of thrashing and flailing and not nearly enough starting.

Both camps are right – the spec is only partially formed and customer needs are only partially understood – but the project must start anyway.  But the situation isn’t as bad as it seems.  At the start of a project fully wrung out specs and fully validated customer needs aren’t needed.  What’s needed is definition of product attributes that set its character, definition of how those attributes will be measured, and definition of the competitive products.  The actual values of the performance attributes aren’t needed, just their name, their relative magnitude expressed as percent improvement, and how they’ll be measured.

And to do this the project manager asks the engineering and marketing groups to work together to create simple bar charts for the most important product attributes and then schedules the meeting where the group jointly presents their single set of bar charts.

This little trick is more powerful than it seems.  In order to choose competitive products, a high level characterization of the product must be roughed out; and once chosen they paint a picture of the landscape and set the context for the new product.  And in order to choose the most important performance (or design) attributes, there must be convergence on why customers will buy it; and once chosen they set the context for the required design work.

Here’s an example.  Audi wants to start developing a new car.  The marketing-engineering team is tasked to identify the competitive products.  If the competitive products are BMW 7 series, Mercedes S class, and the new monster Hyundai, the character of the new car and the character of the project are pretty clear.  If the competitive products are Ford Focus, Fiat F500, and Mini Cooper, that’s a different project altogether.  For both projects the team doesn’t know every specification, but it knows enough to start.  And once the competitive products are defined, the key performance attributes can be selected rather easily.

But the last part is the hardest – to define how the performance characteristics will be measured, right down to the test protocols and test equipment.  For the new Audi fuel economy will be measured using both the European and North American drive cycles and measured in liters per 100 kilometer and miles per gallon (using a pre-defined fuel with an 89 octane rating); interior noise will be measured in six defined locations using sound meter XYZ and expressed in decibels; and overall performance will be measured by the lap time around the Nuremburg Ring under full daylight, dry conditions, and 25 Centigrade ambient temperature, measured in minutes.

Bar charts are created with the names of the competitive vehicles (and the new Audi) below each bar and performance attribute (and units, e.g., miles per gallon) on the right.  Side-by-side, it’s pretty clear how the new car must perform.  Though the exact number is not know, there’s enough to get started.

At the start of a project the objective is to make sure you’re focusing on the most performance attributes and to create clarity on how the attributes (and therefore the product) will be measured.  There’s nothing worse than spending engineering resources in the wrong area.  And it’s doubly bad if your misplaced efforts actually create constraints that limit or reduce performance of the most important attributes. And that’s what’s to be avoided.

As the project progresses, marketing converges on a detailed understanding of customer needs, and engineering converges on a complete set of specifications.  But at the start, everything is incomplete and no part of the project is completely nailed down.

The trick is to define the most important things as clearly as possible, and start.

In a confusing way, the seemingly negative elements of novelty are actually tell-tale signs you’re doing it right.  Here are some examples:

No uncertainty, no upside.
No heresy, no game-changer.
No recipe, no worries.
No ambiguity, no new markets.
No effectiveness, no success.
No efficiency, no matter.
No disagreement, no gravity.
No answers, no problem.
No problem, no innovation.
No dispute, no dilemma.
No headache, no quandary.
No obstacle, no predicament.
No unrest, no virtue.
No failure, no creativity.
No discomfort, no relevance.
No agitation, no consequence.
No questions, no significance.
No best practice, no anxiety.
No downside, no upside.

All business processes are powered by people. Even with all our automation and standardization, nothing moves without people. And people are powered by language. Language is important.

“Fix that so we don’t make any more mistakes.” Snarl words. “Figure out what we do well, and let’s do more of that.” Purr words. Which are more powerful?

“Wonderful work.” Purr words. “Wonderful, more customer complaints.” Snarl words. The same word is both, but it’s clear to all which is which. One is empowering, the other demotivating. Which is better for business?

Subtle usage makes a difference, intonation makes a difference, and tone makes a difference. It’s not just words that matter, but how they’re delivered also matters. Words can build or words can dismantle, and so can delivery.

We know people drive everything. And we know words influence people. Yet we don’t use words in ways that respects their gravity.

It takes care to use the right words in the right ways, and it takes thoughtfulness. But with today’s race pace, it’s tough to be well rested which makes it tough to use care and forethought. Well rested shouldn’t be a luxury and shouldn’t be scoffed at. In an instant the wrong words at the wrong time can be catastrophic. Trouble is the value of being well rested cannot be quantified on the balance sheet.

People power processes and words power people, and the right words at the right time can make all the difference. But it takes thoughtful, enlightened people to deliver them. And for that, they should be well rested.

WHY? To grow sales in existing markets and create sales in new markets.

WHAT? Create innovative technologies and design products with more function and less cost.

HOW? Educate the engineering engine.

This is easier said than done, because for years we’ve set one-sided expectations – new products must work and timelines must be met – and driven risk tolerance out of our engineering engine. Now it’s time to inject it back in.

The message – Our thinking must change.  We must take more risk, but do it safely by reducing negative consequences of risk.

To reduce negative consequences of risk, we must learn to localize risk through the narrowest and deepest problem definition, and learn to secure the launch so it’s safe to try new things.

We must do more up-front technology work, but learn to do it far more narrowly and deeply. We must learn to hold ourselves accountable to rigorous problem definition, and we must put our best people on technology projects.

To focus creativity we must learn to set seemingly unrealistic time constraints; to focus our actions we can look to a powerful mantra – spend a little, learn a lot.

The trouble with new thinking is it takes new thinking. If you don’t have it, go get it. If you already have it, figure out why you haven’t used it.

The more work I do with innovation, the more I believe mindset is the most important thing.  Here’s what I believe:

Doing new doesn’t take a lot of time; it’s getting your mind ready that takes time.

Engineers must get over their fear of doing new.

Without a problem there can be no newness.

Problem definition is the most important part of problem solving.

If you believe it can work or it can’t, you’re right.

Activity is different from progress.

Thinking is progress.

In short, I believe state-of-the-art is limited by state-of-mind.

If the rule makes things take too long, do you follow it or shortcut it?

If the reason for the rule is no longer, do you follow it or declare it unreasonable?

If you don’t understand the rule do you work to understand it, or conveniently trespass?

If you don’t follow the rule, does that say something about the rule, or you?

When is a rule a rule and when is it shackles?

When it comes to law, physics, and safety, a rule is a rule.

If you’re limited by the rule, is it bad? (Isn’t far worse if you don’t realize it?)

What if the solution demands unruliness?

If you don’t follow rules, is it okay to make them?

What if a culture is so strong it rules out most everything, except following the rules?

What if a culture is so strong it demands you make the rules?

When it comes to rules, there’s only one rule – You decide.

I will hold a Workshop on Systematic DFMA Deployment on June 13 in RI. (See bottom of linked page.) I look forward to meeting you in person.

We’ve mapped failure to the wrong words. And this mis-mapping is so strong and deep that un-mapping seems unlikely. I propose failure, as a word, be scratched from the dictionary.

Failure is learning in the form of experiments (including the thought kind) with outcomes different than theorized, where the outcomes create a more complete understanding of theory, or learning.

Wrong is mapped to failure, but failure should be mapped with – different than our best understanding.

Newness is mapped to failure. Replace failure with learning and the mapping is right – more newness, more learning. This is why tolerance of failure (and newness) is a must – no newness, no failure, no learning.

Risk is mapped to failure. Replace failure with learning and the mapping is right – more risk, more learning. Risk cannot be forbidden, if we’re to learn.

Risk and newness are mapped to late, and, guilt by association, failure is mapped to late. Replace failure with learning and the mapping is right – learn fast to avoid being late. And now, after several paragraphs of un-mapping, hopefully the re-substitution makes sense – fail fast to avoid being late.

Failure isn’t failure, failure is learning.

Year-end numbers, quarter-to-quarter earnings, monthly production, week-to-week payroll.  With today’s hyper-competition, today’s focus is today.  Close-in focus is needed, it drives good stuff – vital few, productivity, quality, speed, and stock price.  Without question, the close-in lens has value.

But there’s a downside to this lens.  Like a microscope, with one eye closed and the other looking through the optics, the fine detail is clear, but the field of view is small.  Sure the object can be seen, but that’s all that can be seen – a small circle of light with darkness all around.  It’s great if you want to see the wings of a fly, but not so good if you want to see how the fly got there.

Millennia, centuries, grand children, children.  With today’s hyper-competition, today’s focus is today.  Long-range focus is needed, it drives good stuff – infrastructure, building blocks, strategic advantage. Though it’s an underused lens, without question, the far-out lens has value.

But there’s a downside to this lens.  Like a telescope, with one eye closed and the other looking through the optics, the field of view is enormous, but the detail is not there.  Sure the far off target can be seen, but no details – a small circle of light without resolution.  It’s great if you want to see a distant landscape, but not so good if you want to know what the trees look like.

What we need is a special set of binoculars. In the left is a microscope to see close-in – the details – and zoom out for a wider view – the landscape.  In the right is a telescope to see far-out – the landscape –  and zoom in for a tighter view – the details.

Unfortunately the physics of business don’t allow overlap between the lenses.  The microscope cannot zoom out enough and the telescope cannot zoom in enough.  There’s always a gap, the middle is always out of focus, unclear. Sure, we estimate, triangulate, and speculate (some even fabricate), but the middle is fuzzy at best.

It’s easy to manage for the short-term or long-term.  But the real challenge is to manage for the middle.  Fuzzy, uncertain, scary – it takes judgment and guts to manage for the middle. And that’s just where the best like to earn their keep.