Half-baked execution

We can have the most brilliant ideas and they don’t seem to work. People have been deployed, resources committed, plans drawn and then acted upon. Then results didn’t quite hit the spot. People didn’t seem to respond as we were all expecting. Even when assumptions made weren’t wrong. And then we convince ourselves that was probably not the right idea. We pursued the wrong one – it seemed to work intuitively but it didn’t.

Except maybe it was executed poorly. Because we didn’t have the right people executing; the partners chosen were wrong, and the processes and plans developed weren’t going deep enough. Too many things were left to chance and circumstances happened to not favour the outcome. So we got the wrong conclusion; the notion that the idea won’t work when it was just not well-executed.

This can happen because resourcing was poor. Only half of the resources required was given. People might not have been sufficiently vested in the idea and were just waiting to see it “fail” so that they can get back to life. There’s organisational inertia and conflicts of interest within the execution – consultants should have been brought in rather than doing it inhouse where staff preferred not to have anything to do with making their core job obsolete.

And that’s why the new software didn’t help us solve the problem, the process introduced was making the organisation slower rather than faster. Actually, it was just conclusions being made pre-maturely and there wasn’t sufficient buy-in on new softwares to make it work. So are we making the right conclusions when we claim to have tried something and it didn’t work?

Half-baked ideas

I have been in work places full of half-baked ideas. Typically the management needs to be able to resolve something. It could be a real problem, an imaginary problem, an itch or even a personal pain. And because insufficient thought went into defining the problem, we rush into trying to come up with solutions which do not necessarily speak to the actual problem at hand.

Following that, because the problem was not well understood, it becomes much more difficult for the staff to actually develop and flesh out the ideas. When problems are well understood, the solution can be interrogated properly to make sure it tackle the critical parameters and aspects of the problem. In fact, when problems are properly articulated, the solutions would be more than obvious once proposed.

When all of these process of pondering are not present, we develop half-baked ideas. And we don’t realise that because the understanding of the problem isn’t there for us to test the ideas against. So very often when the half-baked ideas are in the more practical or implementation phase, new problems are uncovered and often we may discover new things that force us back to the drawing board. Often, it is better to interrogate ideas, think them through, flesh them out, and develop them further before committing resources. Otherwise, half-baked ideas are going to be the most resource-intensive ones.

Checking boxes

The other day I was having a conversation with a business leader who was versed with developing pitches for his company in order to convince customers of their value proposition. He was with a software business so while there are standardised capabilities and products, everything they sell to businesses are quite bespoke and require them to go into a process with the customers.

Therefore, he was basically selling dreams that are mostly realisable but will take time. He was the one who tries to convince his customers to come on the journey with his company. Meanwhile, in order to make the sale, his technical guys will have to do the hard work of filling in technical specification forms, making sure that they fulfill specific requirements of any Request-for-Proposals (RFP). On the other hand, he had to spend time with these technical guys to also make sure what he promised was feasible, and within the delivery capabilities of the firm.

His tech guys are stretched, between trying to check the boxes for the client in terms of the specifications and producing detailed documentation, with having to invest time to help refine the overall pitch. What should they prioritise and what is more important? The industrial complex wants us to prioritise checking boxes, and meeting explicable criteria, especially those written down. Yet in reality, we know that’s not get us over the line and truly help us thrive.

So I’d argue that the technical guys will need to get good at making sure boxes can be checked but for their own benefit, they should focus on the pieces beyond that. As much as possible, we want to automate those box-checking so that intelligent people can be freed to do the creative work. And perhaps then, schools can begin to educate rather than to ‘train’ – to bring up people who do the creative work rather than be competent box-checkers.

What is the problem?

What exactly is the question asking? That’s the first thing to find out whenever you confront a problem in school. Yet we don’t think to much about how questions are to be interpreted. After all, it is the teachers’ fault when they don’t ask the right questions or when they don’t ask questions “correctly”.

But a student is never really rewarded or recognised for asking good questions. Or finding more than one way of interpreting the questions. Indeed, students who interpret examination questions differently and then answer them in a manner different from what the teachers had expected are typically marked down. Then there are those who respond to teachers’ questions with more questions and that is generally not welcomed. The ones that stump teachers generally seem to undermine their authority, so it became the domain of class clowns and naughty kids.

Interrogating a problem is an important and useful skill. In fact, it is often the starting point of problem-solving. That is why projects are so important and too often, we overemphasize the need to come up with a solution and to do something or to produce something rather than to help students think through problems and be able to articulate them.

Iron rice bowl

Many people were ‘stuck’ in their jobs before the pandemic. Where are you still here? Because you are worried you can’t come back after leaving? But why do you want to come back? Because it is an iron rice bowl? What is the story you’re telling yourself about your relationship with your job if you’re thinking about the iron rice bowl story? Why do you need an unbreakable rice bowl if you don’t know how to grow and make rice for yourself?

The story of an ‘iron rice bowl’ starts with the notion of commoditised labour; that you are replaceable and that you’re a cog. Anywhere and everywhere. And when you get some kind of job with lots of benefits and it is hard for you to get fired, then that security is worth your being a cog. And so you’d conform, comply and keep the machinery going. It is not because you are irreplaceable but because the machinery is designed to keep you around, even if you’re just in a bag of spare parts, you’re still making a living.

As Seth Godin would ask, ‘why make a living when you can make a difference’. You can choose a different story about work, a story on being a linchpin; on never getting fired. It matters because if worrying about job security should not be in the domain of one who cares to make a difference, and is able to contribute a positive value.

The future trade

In psychology, and behavioural economics, we describe the endowment effect. It is the idea that “mine is better” to the extent one would only part with something at a higher price than what one would be willing to pay for it.

Yet the endowment effect is not that strong when what you own is something that comes to you only later. You kind of discount it. And if it is far out enough you discount it even more. So we get into all kinds of trade involving our future income, our future time, our future life. And then as we live out these commitments, we bear the burdens of them, and we end up living a life that is based on our past desires and wants. But yet if we try to wriggle out of them or unwind them, we create even more commitments through the consequences those unwinding have on our future selves.

Do you want to continue that life? If not, then focus on living in the present, steward your commitments well, and take a long term view to weight your time in the future as much as you treasure your time right now.

Utility and markets

When I started my career at IE Singapore, I worked in a team that deals with companies in the ‘Environmental Solutions’ space. We were broadly looking at companies that deals with 3 big broad topics: Power, Water and Waste. They interact with one another in the environment but companies tend to focus on some aspects of the trio which leads them to be classified one way or another.

In terms of the maturity of these different markets, they are vastly different. Power tends to be a national, regional sort of market where electrons literally zip around at the speed of light. Water moves around in pipes at far slower speed, water networks are expensive to build and maintain so they operate at a more local level. Waste is an even more local market since they cannot be easily conveyed around through pipes. Product logistics plays a big role in the reach of a market.

And so do product uniformity. Electricity takes on a single form, whether it is consumed by households or industries. Maybe the industries require high voltages but that can be dealt with more easily. Water is a bit tricky as water quality requirements differ even within households; potable water versus water for flushing. And with industries, some require ultrapure water, others just distilled water, and the wastewater produced are also of different quality so treatment is different. Waste takes even more forms.

Demand structures are also different. Energy generally enjoy network effects. And some kind of feedback loop. The introduction of electricity can bring about more productivity which buys more electrical equipment and encourage higher electricity demand.

I once stepped into a market in Ghana Central region and saw a vendor selling a charcoal iron beside the Philips electric irons. I found it strange why they would be peddling such a primitive gadget when the modern version is available. I subsequently realised that there were significant number of villages and households which were not electrified and of course they would ask for the charcoal iron. Yet the electrical iron is superior in terms of weight, convenience, and productivity. It was something to aspire towards. So when people around you use more electricity and bring in products that use more, it can encourage you to adopt them too.

Water does not have such demand loops. There is only this much water each person can use. And new devices are designed generally to use less water than the older versions of them. Beyond certain per-person consumption, it’s almost pure wastage. Water is a more fundamental need than power so it keeps us alive rather than give us much more productivity.

Waste is of course far behind in both the supply and demand structures. Understanding these bottlenecks in markets help us appreciate why certain technologies can solve some problems and not others. Why some business models work better in some markets.

Back in Singapore

Over the past 2 years, due perhaps to the pandemic, and also maybe stage-of-life, a lot of my friends who have been working overseas are relocating back. Most of them either have already married and are starting families or are getting married. It’s great to back home and looking to contribute to the society back here.

Yet it isn’t easy to settle back in Singapore after spending a lot of time overseas. I’ve personally gone through it myself and I’ve also found it strange why having had a prolonged overseas experience always makes us feel a bit like a stranger in our own land.

For one I think when you live in a foreign land for a long time, you’d have been relieved of the social expectations from family and friends you grew up with. Sure there is some degree of social comparison with maybe university mates but that’s all. When you’re back in Singapore, you feel the weight of expectations on your shoulders again. Weekly meals at parents? Or worst, staying with parents and having to update them wherever I go.

To a large extent though, the expectations are from ourselves, our understanding of the context we grew up in, and expectations of how we should behave. That burden is greater in our home country. Perhaps what we ought to do is to lay bare these stories in our head and decide if we want to keep them.

Collecting more dots

Seth Godin asks great questions and it’s amazing how what he went through in life helped him make daily observations that is worth pondering over. I’ve referred to him and his blog frequently. There’s little doubt he has been a great inspiration to me. So I’m just planting another of his questions here ‘What is school for?’ with this TEDx talk he did quite a while back.

Market moves

Capitalism evolves with the culture but it also shapes the culture. And there are market forces upon our culture that we cannot ignore. This is why an approach towards blindly de-regulating everything is not just ridiculous but unacceptable.

During the early stages of capitalism, there are many proprietors and many labourers; capital being scarce and labour being more abundant. What is interesting is that the diminishing marginal return on labour sets in quicker than capital so capital keeps gaining more. And that gives capital more bargaining power and hence retain a good share of the income. This is helpful because the concentration of capital in the initial phase helps allows the scale of investment that brings about the large scale development. The government’s ability to tax these gains also help to allow for massive investment in public infrastructure and education, enabling the new class of knowledge worker, unlocking a new phase of capitalism.

We need to decide if the concentration of capital is still important and good for the society from a corporate perspective. I’d say in some industries and spheres, maybe. But in others, it’s probably not so great because increasing the bargaining power of these industries against their customer base or labour base is not going to help with the social objective of improving the society.

And this is not just about the media giants appealing to one political faction over another in order to gain dominance over a set of audience but to the detriment of the society as it fuels divisions. It’s also brands that are trying to appeal to other divides across different spectrum that humans find themselves distributed across. For capitalism, dividing people can be profitable, sometimes more than uniting them. Luxury goods being the best example of that – making things ‘exclusive’, which essentially spells ‘division-as-a-business model’.