Innoveering Nebraska

Oh boy am I excited about this!  I’m reading Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (the brothers who wrote Made to Stick).  I’m happily reading along thinking, “I’ve heard most of this before, but they’ve done a great job organizing it and putting a new, interesting spin on it” when suddenly out of nowhere I’m hit with an explanation of why I’ve been struggling with my Sparks project so badly. 

It turns out humans can only make so many decisions before we experience fatigue.  It’s why a day of shopping can be so tiring (and I was so hopeful all these years that I was worn out because I’d actually walked much farther than I’d realized).  Despite my disappointment over the lack of calorie burning involved with shopping – which was a substantial disappointment – I’m thrilled to understand why figuring out all the many details of a project is overwhelmingly exhausting. 

To take a step back, the Heaths explain that there are two driving forces in our minds.  Imagine a rider on an elephant.  The rider is the rational part of our mind that contemplates data and reaches rational conclusions.  The elephant is the emotional part of our mind that responds to situations in response to the feelings triggered.  Most of the time the rider can tell the elephant where to go, but when the rider is tired or the elephant is having a particularly strong reaction, the elephant goes where it wants – despite all the rider’s efforts. 

Both the rider and the elephant have positive and negative traits.  The elephant provides the extra energy needed to move a great distance – far greater than the rider could travel alone.  Think about how much easier it is to work on something when you’re all fired up and really believe in the worth of what you’re doing.  That’s an emotional response that’s carrying you forward.  Go elephant!  The rider can direct the elephant in a more efficient manner than the elephant would have found on its own, but the rider can also get stuck in indecision by overanalyzing the possible routes.   My rider has definitely been stuck. 

But wait, there’s more!  Understanding why you’re stuck and exhausted and generally miserable is great, but the Heaths take it a step further.  They explain a means for  enabling the rider to direct for a longer period of time without decision overload.   They not only identify the problem, but point out a solution.   You establish simple – very simple – guidelines.   This is best illustrated by an example from the book which I’ve paraphrased  and quoted below.  

In 1995 when Brazil privatized its railroad into seven branches and auctioned them, the railroad was in a terrible state of disrepair.  50% of the bridges needed repair and 20% were on the verge of collapsing.   The section that became America Latina Logistica (ALL) didn’t have much capital, but ended up doing extremely well in the long run because its managers established four rules for employees at all levels to follow in making decisions:

Rule 1: Money would be invested only in projects that would allow ALL to earn more revenue in the short term.

Rule 2: The best solution to any problem was the one that would cost the least money up front – even if it ended up costing more in the long term, and even it if was a lower-quality solution.

Rule 3: Options that would fix a problem quickly were preferred to slower options that would provide superior long-term fixes. 

Rule 4: Reusing or recycling existing materials was better than acquiring new materials. 

So I’ve given it some thought and came up with the following rules for Sparks:

Rule 1:  If the three goals of the program can be achieved without a particular feature, that feature isn’t necessary and won’t be included in v1.0.  It can however be dumped into a file containing all these extra feature ideas in a loosely organized manner which I will look at after v1.0 launches.

Rule 2:  Follow the MacNiel/Lehrer standard of assuming audiences/customers are “as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.”

Rule 3:  Limit the volume of language.  More words can be added later if users need additional explanations.     

Wish me luck, I’m going to resume my wrestle with gomockingbird while following my new rules.  Hopefully I’ll have more stamina.  (For the record I really do like gomockingbird – but in the way I like the retainer that’s nearly closed the little gap between two of my teeth.)

On  side note, I never would have stumbled across this ever-so-useful revelation if I hadn’t given myself permission to take a break to rest and redirect my mind.  Work a little, rest and repeat.  It works.  And sometimes it works really, really  well.

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