Whoa, we started with a laugh. That was impressive.
All right, we're we made another week. It's process
that podcast didn't give us I know the topic
today. Yeah, it is. Why are why are things only
obvious? after They're obvious Hmm, let me sit
with that for a minute. Why are they only obvious
after they're obvious? Yeah. Yeah You're probably
thinking of a pet rock and how brilliant that
is. That was, it was obvious. It was going to
be a huge thing. Like, what is that? Recency
bias? Or confirmation bias? Take recency bias
and confirmation bias. And if they had a baby,
it would be, that was so obvious. Obviously,
obviously. There's probably something besides
Pat Rock though. Tell me where you're from. Yeah,
so here's where I was coming from. So I was working
at an e -commerce company in Boise, Idaho, and
we would ship stuff from the wrong place. Right.
And we would ship something, and I probably told
this story again, or in the past, but I want
to zero in on one, this story, but then also
just why stuff's obvious. And this was physical
goods, right? Yeah, yeah. So physical goods,
we would order something like on the West Coast.
And if the West Coast distribution center didn't
have one of the items, it would ship from the
East Coast or from Florida or something. And
we would call that a ship from wrong. And so
what we did is we would basically have the ship
from wrong. We found that basically our number
one product was always on the ship from wrongs.
And people just kept asking why in the world
are we out of... optimum protein, chocolate protein.
That's a number one seller. We're never out of
that. As most of our listeners would have guessed.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously. Number one product.
Yeah. Number one product at bodybuilding .com.
Optimum chocolate way. You can find it now at
Amazon, which is a different story for a different
day. So what I did was I was like, why is it
shipping from the wrong distribution center?
Basically because you'd be get some, some bespoke
pill that was only covered in, in, you know,
in this case in Pennsylvania. And so because
they bought the chocolate protein and the bespoke
pill that only lived in Pennsylvania and then
Pennsylvania was the only one that had the bespoke
pill. That was what they, that's why that shipped
from the wrong location was the bespoke pill.
Okay. Right. So I spend it. I don't know. I spent
quite a bit of time explaining this. I'm like,
this is what I need. I need the data of like
the thing when it tried to fulfill an order,
the thing that it couldn't fill in the original
warehouse, but it could fill in the shipping
warehouse. I want that and we'll call it a ship
from wrong. Cause that was the item that forced
us to ship from wrong. And so I deliver this
report and literally like probably to this day,
that report is still used if they have two warehouses
still. It was so obvious after the fact, just
to break that and ask, is this really the most
logical approach? Yeah, it was a logic thing,
but it was like, oh yeah, that's the data we
need. And so after the fact, it just became like
everybody used it. Everybody used this thing.
Everybody in operations used it. Chris, what
Herculean effort did you go through to get people
to appreciate the value of the stop shipping
stuff from the wrong coast report? It was super
simple. Like it took me, it probably took me
more time to explain the data warehouse team
when I was trying to do. And then it was a brief
explanation of, hey, these, because I had to
explain like, this seems wrong. Like this data
doesn't make sense. And I'm like, no, no, this
is your causal problem. that this is what caused
the problem because you didn't have this skew
in the, you know, the closer shipping location.
And then once they made that, once they made
that connection of like, Oh, I've been wanting
this data for 12 years or whatever. There, there
was, I, I could just walk away, never touch the
thing ever, ever again. That's, it's incredible
to think about. Cause to your, your initial question
of, you know, once it's obvious, why is it so
obvious? And then a lot of organizational change
management, we've talked about that time. And
so oftentimes we're trying to convince people
that a new way of working that is not intuitive,
it's wildly unfamiliar, we're demanding them
to completely change everything about how they
spend their workday. But this is a better thing.
Like that's what's bred this huge volume of work.
Just trying to communicate all of the changes
and then trying to get people to appreciate the
value of it. versus something that's super intuitive.
People see the problem once you point it out.
They're like, well, that's a horrible idea. We
shouldn't do that. So talk to me more about what
is it that makes the obvious so obvious once
it's shared with us? I think people have to see
stuff. I think people have to see it. And I think
it's going to always be that way, where they
have to see the outcome. The other thing, the
counter to that is that people don't like to
change, because most of the time change is just
not actually helpful. Well, no, it's a lot of
time. It's more to do. Yeah. It's more to do
without a reason why they should do it or a reason
that actually helps someone else's life, but
not yours. Yeah, very true. Well, and most of
us are on a measure of autopilot. If we've been.
Oh, yeah. Whatever our regimen is, whatever our
routine. It may not be a consistent ritual, but
we step through a lot of the portions without
having to really engage our frontal lobes. All
that executive function and change demands it
all of a sudden of us. Yeah. Well, I think that
that's like the magic of really good process.
I mean, we talk about process a lot, but really
good process, it just makes sense, right? Which
is interesting, right? So like, if you think
of companies like Instagram, right? Started out
as a bourbon sharing app to share pictures of
bourbon. It was, it was obvious, not to even
to the founders or the makers of this thing,
but it was obvious to the users. And they, like,
what was obvious was discovered by their users,
not necessarily by the creators. Now the creators
shifted and called it Instagram and sold to Meta
and for eight dollars are probably on their yachts.
Right now but like if you think about like something
like we've been You know slack another one like
literally like the company was doing something
else. They're like, hey, yeah We're gonna look
we like this a lot. This is actually really helpful
Let's see if this is a product and now all of
a sudden it's it's huge Yeah versus like the
versus like Microsoft Teams, which literally
was Horrid and then Coder happened and it had
to become a thing But if you remember teams before
COVID, it was, it was struggle bus central. Right.
I, in all fairness, it doesn't feel so different
post COVID as it did pre. In part because they
don't, they don't do a lot to make their navigation
more intuitive. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I
mean, think about the Microsoft suite of tools,
SharePoint, which is hard to share and it's hard
to know the point. Compared to Google. Yeah.
where Google just like it's their Google. It's
always been collaborative. Like I ran into something
with I think it was on a SharePoint site where
like I had a conflict between and this is like
we're not talking like 10 years ago. We're talking
like this morning. I see what a spreadsheet and
he's like I don't get the spreadsheet. I'm like
can you just pull up so that I can kind of see.
I'm like It didn't save my edits like it had
this old thing and then it's like I've got a
conflict over here I'm like, I don't care about
your conflict. So then the solution is save the
file. Yeah Right and then reupload it or do whatever
and then share it again. None of what and that's
Well, that's great. That's fine. If you're you
know, if you're not Connected to dial -up like
if you're if you're offline, that's fine. And
some of this is like just the architectural beginnings
of these where Google has always been forward
-looking in having a collaborative system. Yeah
Whereas Microsoft is coming off of CDs that it
used to send to people to install. It was a 12
dist install for Windows 95 for a lot of us that
hit the workforce last century and I think you
touch on something super interesting and I think
just the Microsoft versus Google experience and
how we navigate, you know One of these was designed
to just be additive, echoing a very different
era of software development, and it was all physical
collateral -based. They had to be able to put
it on disks and ship it, and that had to ride
for some indefinite period of time. So they had
to spend a lot of time bombing it to make sure
that it wasn't going to blow up once they shipped
and destroy your next quarter's earnings, versus
cloud -based. Where you can find a bug in the
morning and then push through a fix late that
day and it affects all of the users that were
already getting pissed off and so yeah Yeah,
modern tools by design should be far less far
more frictionless Simply because the speed of
being able to do that ironic correct not always
more simple Yeah, right. Well, what's interest?
What's interesting about just this whole thing
is that Google? right, in their Google Sheets
application was obvious because of all of the
work that Excel did in order to make it the standard.
But it was not as useful, therefore not as obvious,
and therefore more like just harder to manage.
So it's interesting how some of these things,
the interaction's kind of interesting, where
it's like, look, if Google came out with a sheet
before, I don't know how it worked. We needed
spreadsheets bad, which is why they went and
created Lotus Notes and all the other things.
That's right. You're thinking if Lotus Notes
had a baby with Salesforce, then we would have
had Ginger. I mean, you know, that's actually
really interesting. Like what would have happened?
What would have happened if Lotus Notes would
have been bought by Salesforce? Yeah. Whose motto
was don't install a darn thing. That's right.
Yep. Be done with that whole server environment.
Well, so. Yeah. Let's, you know, we talk a lot
about process then a lot of it is I think based
on today's conversation, we're kind of gazing,
you know, into the dark hole of just a bad process
design. Nobody understands why we're doing it
this way. It's not intuitive. It's super stiff.
So, you know, how do we start to design processes
or how do we start to curate processes inside
of our organizations that are more intuitive?
Yeah. About how people can start to make the
obvious more obvious to their... Yeah, the number
one thing that I would do, because where I see
a lot of process debt is around reporting. maybe
just because of where I sit, but I think determining
if it's a infinity project, like people are always
going to do quarterly business reviews. There's
no definitely done. Is that what you mean? Correct.
Well, or it's just, it's consistent. Like it's
going to be the same change, but it should be
a slowly moving change or a daily metric report.
Those are consistent over time versus one -off
analysis with prediction. Yeah. I think we convolute
those. I think we convolute those too much. And
so what happens is you're like, hey, I need you
to go do this one -off thing, right? And you're
like, okay, well, it's one -off. So it's, I'm
gonna keep it really simple. And what's not obvious
is that one -off report is now used in perpetuity.
Yeah. It's gospel, regardless of how. Yeah. Reporting's
a good area. What about one of the recurring
conversations that I seem to have at least a
couple of times a month, if not weekly, is I
send it to you in the blank. I put it to you
in Slack, but why did you look in email? Well,
I looked in email. Oh, but I put it on SharePoint.
We play a little bit of hide and go seek. I've
never experienced an organization that has come
to a way of making the communication medium obvious.
Have you seen examples of that where it's like
if we only do it this way then everybody intuitively
knows where to expect to find it I Think it's
I haven't damn it. I know and we're getting still
close All right, we'll wrestle what's interesting
is it It is you run into issues where you run
into people's skill set II Right. So you're running
into someone who doesn't know Excel. Yeah. And
so they do the thing in Word. Right. Or you have
SaaS tools all over the place. Yeah. And there's
no clear owner. And so it just ends up in SharePoint
or OneDrive. And so I think we actually... Do
a lot better when we have really hard constraints,
but I don't think many companies want those hard
constraints Because it means that they have to
clean up stuff and cleaning up is a lot harder
than saying let's go buy a new tool Well said
yeah, I agree the proliferator well you we talked
in a previous episode about a About a past co
-worker who had really clean boundaries Yeah,
so you knew exactly how to interact with this
person and and their per their work product Yeah,
yeah, that sounds very similar if we said, you
know, we're going to Always put updates into
one place. This is where you'll find them. This
is where that information's in. Yeah Yeah, you
were you know before we got on you were telling
me about An implementation that you were doing
and you were showing people how to use the tool
and they were just shocked And I think I think
that that's what's funny is like we don't like
training But we want to get better, but we don't
like training and we want to get better and and
no one has the No one has the authority to push
the change And so it ends up in this like kind
of weird cycle where it's unless you can kind
of get the the snowball rolling It's really hard
because generally you're dealing with whoever
the weakest link is on the tools Yeah. Fundamentally,
we need others oriented process owners with absolute
authority. I mean, we'd laughed in another prior
to getting on air session, just about a dictatorship
is really easy because everybody knows exactly
what's expected of them. Yeah. And absent high
trust, it's high known consequence, which looks
a lot like high trust, maybe. But the ambiguity
is is completely extracted in that world. Yeah.
The my way or my way. So in our efforts to be
more human, we also make all these social creatures
crazy by trying to give them a little bit of
decision rights. So 100 percent. I so what do
we do about this today? I would say be curious,
figure out what happens between the silos. I
think efficiency is oftentimes hidden between
silos, because people don't know what's going
on. I think that's really important. And if you
find something that's obvious and you know it's
obvious, just be prepared for a long slog to
make it obvious. Really? Chris, you can finish
that thought. Go ahead. Well, I'm just thinking,
because I've done this quite a few times in my
career. I feel like I do this a lot, actually.
I feel like, again, this might be my superpower.
But it like people just don't get it and then
you show it to them and then they never talk
to you ever again And they use it every day.
It's the weirdest thing. They're like, I don't
get it. I'm not really tracking what you're doing
over there. It's like, okay All right. I just
I'll keep asking and beg borrowing and stealing
because I've had it a couple times where it's
like like And it all tends to be in the data
space, but sure there, you know, the last time
that this happened, like I started pulling this
dataset and then had an issue. And the dataset
was like just clear, clear as could be like what
my issue was. And so then I showed some people
are like, Oh my gosh, this is great. And then
all of a sudden I got a dashboard, like the next
week. And so like, but it was, it was only obvious
when you could show the use case. Chris, I love
that. And I was going to touch on the value of
use case. Oftentimes that point of be curious
doesn't mean I have to be the problem solver.
You know, in my experience, somebody else already
has an intimate knowledge of the problem. And
to them, it's so obvious, but for any of a host
of reasons, they're not being heard. Right. Yeah.
Sometimes your job is just to support or to champion
their point of view. Yeah. Right. And, and escalate
that, make it more visible so that everybody
else sees the use case. So. Yeah, I would also
say like, if you're a manager and you want to
actually tackle process that, find someone who's
business slash UX UI type, right? So high people,
high, how are they going to do this? Like what
are the people going to do? And then find someone
with deep, deep tech knowledge and you could
do some magical things. Like there were, I worked
with the Salesforce engineer at one point and
I would have this wild hair. Like we, we saw
this one problem where the clients would say
thank you and it would reopen their tickets just
by saying thank you. So I was like, hey, it'd
be really cool if you could just check for thank
you. And if it was thank you, just don't reopen
it. I love it. And they're like, that's a good
idea, but that's going to be kind of hard and
I don't know. And then I woke up the next day
and was like, I figured it out. And you're like,
dude, you're awesome. But again, he was in the
technical weeds, like solving deep, gnarly technical
problems, and no one would have come to them,
because they wouldn't even know that they were
supposed to come to them. Yeah. These experts
are everywhere, but you've got to tease them
out. You got to find them. I love it. All right,
man. Thank you, sir. Yep. Catch you next week.
All right. Have a good weekend. Bye.