Assumptions, Transformation & Inefficiency
Three separate discussions this week fuelled my thoughts on this topic.
- “Not all inefficiency is waste. Some of it is glue” – a post by Martin Gutmann, Professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
- “The Doorman Fallacy” – from the book by Rory Sutherland focussed on “customer experience” entitled “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life”
- “When we don’t understand the “end to end process”, we are not automating or “enabling with AI”, we are gambling in a losing game” – a quote stimulated by comments in a post by Glen McCracken “You don’t need to understand AI to use it”
“Not all inefficiency is waste. Some of it is glue” resonated with me.
Martin Gutmann suggests that “leaders need to be thoughtful about accidentally cutting ‘useful waste’ – the invisible work that actually makes some of the most important aspects of work – decision making, organizational change, and collaboration – possible.”
This reminded me of the “Doorman Fallacy”, which is what happens when your strategy becomes synonymous with cost-saving and efficiency WITHOUT fully understanding the business context (a.k.a. “end to end process”);
- First you define a hotel doorman’s role as ‘opening the door’
- Then you replace his role with an automatic door-opening mechanism.
- Then you realise that “opening the door” is only the notional role of a doorman; their other, less definable sources of value lie in a multiplicity of other functions, in addition to door-opening: taxi-hailing, security, vagrant discouragement, customer recognition, as well as in signalling the status of the hotel.
- This apparent inefficiency may be “value in disguise”. The doorman may actually increase what you can charge for a night’s stay in your hotel . . . This can be a valuable tool in thinking about “customer experience”.
Assumptions are funny things. We make them all the time. They are our evolutionary survival “thinking fast” technique (Daniel Kahneman) at play. Sadly, it doesn’t work well in our complex world where we are not about to be eaten by a dinosaur! 😉
What causes us to assume we have “covered all the bases” in addressing a business problem, when we have actually made some dangerous assumptions?
We all have to fight our cognitive biases, our natural framework of assumptions. There are many, but these strike me as most common in our world;
- Confirmation Bias
- When we seek information that confirms our existing beliefs or preferred solutions, and ignore data that contradicts them.
- Overconfidence Bias
- When we overestimate our knowledge or the completeness of our analysis.
- Framing Bias
- How a problem is initially defined shapes the questions asked — if it’s framed too narrowly, we miss broader factors.
- Availability Heuristic
- We give undue weight to information that’s most readily available, memorable, or recent — rather than what’s most relevant.
- Data & Evidence
- We assume data is complete, clean, and up-to-date. Have we challenged whether the data truly supports our conclusions? Are we interpreting correlation as causation?
- Measurement & Success
- Are we defining success in measurable terms? Are we assuming short-term wins mean long-term success? Have we assumed outcomes without planning how to track them?
We can and must create mechanisms with our teams to challenge and validate our assumptions.
In an ever more complex world, we need these more than ever.
- “Zoom Out” and Shift Left”: Think beyond the specific problem focus, to the broader business outcome, value, process focus and stakeholders. Does it change our view?
- Pre-mortem: Imagine the project has failed. What went wrong?
- Five Whys: Keep asking “why” to get past surface-level reasoning.
- Inversion Thinking: Ask “What would cause this project to fail?”
- Devil’s Advocate: Assign someone to actively challenge every step.
- Multiple Perspectives: Ask others what they think you’re overlooking.
Are there others you use to good effect?
You can read “Not all inefficiency is waste. Some of it is glue” by Martin Gutmann here . . .
You can read more about the “Doorman Fallacy” here . . .
You can read Glen McCracken’s post here . . . .
Thanks for reading . . . .
Assumptions, Transformation & Inefficiency