Lessons in Prioritization from the Lowly Pothole
"Pothole" by Dean Shareski licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
The most consistent challenge of my career: what are the most important actions I can take right now to benefit my customer/team/user? The challenge of fixing potholes offers a useful illustration of how to answer the question.
With thousands of miles of roads in a typical city, no city government can prioritize fixing potholes effectively. In a conference presentation I attended recently, Eric Clark from SpringML highlighted an intriguing aspect of this by asking the audience for a show of hands: how many people have encountered a pothole in the last week? Almost every hand went up. How many had reported a pothole – ever? Less than 1% of the hands went up.
Locals have the knowledge of where the potholes are, but city officials who can solve the problem can't access the knowledge.
So Eric’s team mounted a camera on a streetsweeper and built a computer algorithm to identify and categorize potholes to be repaired.
But for many situations, knowledge doesn't lend itself to collecting automated images and developing an algorithm to prioritize a fix. In managing and retaining a large team, or building a web application with the features users will care about, or finding the right prospect to buy a product, there is no automated algorithm.
The default position is to create a solution and priority by making assumptions, but such a top down approach can be wildly off the mark.
Instead, meet with people you serve on a regular basis in casual, 1:1 meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to access the local knowledge – find the potholes they haven't reported to you. If you are a data analyst, meet with the people who use your reports. If you are sales person, meet with a customer or someone you aren't actively selling to to get feedback. If you are an HR director, meet with 5 employees chosen at random.
Leaders face a reality that "knowledge potholes" are everywhere, so how do we prioritize our energy and efforts to find them?
Without a way to access local knowledge, we:
Implement solutions with a lukewarm reception that don't "scratch the itch of our customers"
Choose engagement initiatives to build culture that don't really matter to employees
Sell to the wrong prospects and close fewer deals
Create reports for leadership that don't get used
This plays out in busineses large and small, as well as government and non-profits.
Methods such as "Management While Walking Around," Jobs to Be Done, and Customer Discovery all point to a better way. I heartily recommend diving deep into each of those methods. But you can start quickly, and efficiently.
Meet with people you serve on a regular basis in casual, 1:1 meetings.
The purpose of these meetings is to access the local knowledge – find the potholes they haven't reported to you. If you are a data analyst, meet with the people who use your reports. If you are sales person, meet with a customer or someone you aren't actively selling to to get feedback. If you are an HR director, meet with 5 employees chosen at random.
And in your meeting with them, focus on asking open ended questions. Tiago Forte touts open ended questions as a path towards genius, and provides a compelling example from physicist Richard Feynman and his penchant for contemplating a list of 12 favorite problems.
For an unknown reason, I am most naturally inclined to ask yes/no questions (e.g., "do you like working here?"). But the insights I get from that are pretty thin. It takes a bit of practice, but here are a few shortcuts:
To what extent do you believe XYZ?
If you could change anything about XYZ, what would it be?
How valuable is XYZ? What is more important?
My effectiveness at making an impact on people around me depends on my ability to utilize their own experience, to fill a pothole that they actually care about. Tapping into the local knowledge of the people I am trying to help paves the way in making a difference for them.