Mike Lehr's Blog

In 12Most I wrote about business lessons from various battles. Pydna in 168 B.C. – the titanic clash between two undefeated armies, the Macedonians and the Romans – illustrates flexibility’s inherent power by working with smaller units. We can become better problem solvers if we can train our minds to see the smaller aspects of everything.

At Pydna, the Macedonians fought as a single, massive phalanx in which soldiers fought using 20-foot long pikes. This created a massive wall of sharp daggers. The Romans fought in smaller cohorts; their soldiers used short, 20-inch swords called a gladius. Cohorts became buzz saws as they slashed and cut.

When confronting an enemy directly (Figure #1), the phalanx crushed him. However, the cohorts were flexible and surrounded the Macedonians (Figure #2). While those in front suffered heavily, the pikes did not allow the Macedonians to turn quickly enough to defend against the other Romans. Consequently, the Romans all but obliterated the Macedonians.

One of the best ways to train our minds to see the finer aspects of problems is to think about the differences in similar words. Don’t accept they are the same; if they were we wouldn’t need both. Also, don’t worry about being right; just try to come up with differences. It’s similar to physical exercise: doing is beneficial and winning unessential. As examples, I’ve written about the differences between clarity and truth, intelligence and wisdom, and optimism and Pollyannaism.

We can then apply this by writing the problem down, attacking definitions and breaking our description into smaller parts. Just as breaking change down into small, simple steps makes it easier to effect change, breaking problems down into smaller parts makes it easier to solve them.

The challenge is training our brain to see a solid unit as many parts.

In the March 26, 2012 edition of The New Yorker, I ran across the article, “The More the Merrier”, which sited the work of Zeynep Ton, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, that looked at four low-price retailers: Costco, Trader Joe’s, Quik Trip and Mercadona. The article cited these findings:

These companies have much higher labor costs than their competitors. They pay their employees more; they have more full-time workers and more salespeople on the floor; and they invest more in training them. . . . What’s more surprising is that they are more profitable than most of their competitors and have more sales per employee and per square foot.

In my previous post, “Business Profitability Paradox”, I expressed that a business that maximizes its profits every minute will eventually go out of business because no investments are made (which hurt profitability). The article cites the demise of retailers such as Circuit City and Home Depot when they cut labor costs (to maximize profits short term) only to see the first go out of business and the second to be a shadow of its former self.

Thus, when employers start demanding a good ROI (return on investment), I often ask, “Over what time period?” In this case, training and a good business culture don’t happen overnight; however, the costs do. Many times, as with Circuit City and Home Depot, profits rise immediately with the right cost cuts. However, the revenues it hurts don’t fall off until later.

Now, it’s easy to discount Ton’s study as solely a retail phenomenon, but the investment principles hold true beyond just labor.

Therefore, over what period do you want a good ROI? That answer will determine the type of investments you are willing to make.
 
Original post: Business Profitability Paradox

Related post by Zeynep Ton: Retailers Should Invest More in Employees

It’s generally easier to understand what positive and negative reinforcements are than it is to understand their advantages and disadvantages. Tradeoffs exist. Generally, in terms of getting action positive reinforcements are better over the long run, negative over the short run. The table below explains:

Now, it’s important for us to understand and appreciate how these work together. After all, managers are likely to use both, not just one or the other. Therefore, here are two important ratios to remember:

Results Ratio: It generally takes five (5) positive reinforcements to do the work of one (1) negative one.

5:1

Relationship Ratio: It generally takes ten (10) positive reinforcements to overcome the negative feelings of one (1) negative one.

10:1

For instance, one could hold a gun to someone’s head and change his behavior very quickly, but the relational damage is immense. We don’t want to become overdrawn on our relational accounts because overreliance on negative reinforcements will reduce the effect of positive reinforcements. This will necessitate greater use of negative reinforcements and produce a synergistic spiral downward resulting in a compliant, uninspired workforce.

People periodically ask me, “Should I get a coach?” I chuckle because it’s akin to asking, “Should I get married?” Coaching as with marriage is great if you find a great person. However, it can be unrewarding, even harmful, if you don’t, especially if you’re already good at your profession.

If you’re considering a coach, I strongly recommend reading, “Personal Best”, by Atul Gawande which appeared in the October 3, 2011 issue of the The New Yorker. Gawande gives an excellent account of his decision-making process for securing a coach. More importantly, he made three points about coaching that standout from other coaching literature I’ve read:

1. “Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components.”
2. “Good coaches speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.”
3. “. . . bad coaching can make people worse [especially if they are already professionals]”

In many respects, it doesn’t matter what the coach’s credentials, experience, references or record of accomplishment are: if the coach and you do not connect on a personal level, your experience will be mediocre and possibly damaging. Yes, selecting a coach is a highly subjective affair.

Many coaches will transfer their failure to the client by saying, “I’m only as good as my client is.” Theoretically, this is true, but in reality, you can have two excellent coaches in a situation where one succeeds and the other fails. Coaching is not an objective science; it’s a subjective art. What works for one client might not work for another.

That means determining what you want in a coach. If credentials and experience are important, that’s great! If not, don’t fret. You’re in charge; it’s your coach . . . and your choice.

One of the paradoxes of best practices is that they promote unimaginativeness because if everyone followed best practices the differentiation among competing firms would drastically narrow.

In its raw form, BP is copying. Companies do not transform markets or shoot ahead of the competition by copying. If they do, they need to enhance the original. A better practice than the best practice will achieve this especially if every other company in that space is following the best practice. As a result, BP’s encourage “inside the box thinking” resulting in a workforce based upon complying with the BP rather than thinking about making the best better.

This occurs because to find a “best practice” people only need to dredge the internet or current research material. If they don’t want to do this, they only need to find an unimaginative expert who has already done this for them. However, bettering a best practice requires much thought and inspiration. That’s why in many law firms there are research assistants assigned with this task so attorneys have more time to think about the uniqueness of their cases.

Of course, many unimaginative people offer this defense: “Let’s not reinvent the wheel.” What they don’t realize is that since 1790 the United States Patent Office has approved over 30,000 patents for wheels. This number doesn’t include many specialty wheels in toys and machines such as the wheels on toy cars or the pulleys in machines like transmissions. It also doesn’t include the Ferris Wheel.

BP’s encourage employees to do exactly that: not reinvent the wheel. They don’t encourage them to think about improvements to make the wheel better or for other purposes. BP’s say, “Someone else has already solved the problem.” Thus, the best practice of inside-the-box thinking is to adopt a best practice.

Additional recommended reading: the post “The Downside of Best Practices” by Mike Wyatt

In problem solving, seeing the connection among disparate things helps. Recently, I drove home on a road that runs along a creek. People living along this road have driveways running over the creek connecting their houses to the road. The last two years has seen much intense flooding from rain, thus causing extreme damage to the bridges over which their driveways run.

On this particular day, I noticed how vastly improved these bridges have become. For instance, on one steel beams run where wood once did. Another was wider and more arced. Others just looked stronger; I’m sure a construction engineer could have told me why.

While seeing these bridges, muscles came into mind. Exercise tears down our muscles and cause them to return much stronger. Whether it’s a flood destroying a bridge or intense effort destroying our muscles, we experience the rebirth of something stronger. On a larger scale, we saw the destruction of the World Trade Towers compelling engineers to seek ways to make such structures stronger. Earthquakes in Haiti, floods in New Orleans and many other similar disasters produced similar outcomes.

So what is the problem-solving lesson? Perhaps it’s that we shouldn’t fear crises because in reality only they can make us stronger. If it’s true for bridges and muscles, perhaps it’s true for our spirit. Can we really become physically, mentally and emotionally stronger without crises? Can any training replicate the emotions of a real crisis? It’s similar to the difference between training and game day or practice and audition time.

The history of bridges tells us that their design is a product of crises. Perhaps that means our improvement as humans cannot occur without them either. If we were truly successful at eradicating all crises, perhaps we would stop becoming better.

The inverted problem-solving technique (IPT) involves looking at the opposing aspects of a problem. To see IPT’s value it helps to write down the problem. In simple terms, if the problem involves “doing something,” IPT suggests exploring “not doing it” as a potential solution (or “to do it” if “not doing it”).

For instance, I first ran across it as a child when I wanted to learn to play. The book, Complete Chess Course, by Fred Reinfeld had a section called “The Nine Bad Moves.” Rather than immediately teach you good moves, Reinfeld had you learn what not to do. Later, I applied the concept when I developed my training methods: I first identified what I didn’t like about training that I took.

We often spend extensive time evaluating and determining the best solution. In reality, there are often many solutions. Thus, IPT suggests that we look at avoiding a bad decision as a potential solution rather than trying to determine the best. For example, in change initiatives and technology rollouts not only ask, “What can we do to make this successful?” but also ask, “What shouldn’t we do?” Too often people only focus on what needs doing to solve the problem.

Additionally, IPT helps us explore problems deeper by qualifying its various parts. Often, we only ask, “Is this part causing the problem?” Such an evaluative approach limits us to “yes/no answers.” Rather than ask “Is this department hindering the rollout?” ask, “How is this department hindering it?” and “How isn’t it?”

We can even apply these questions to the problem itself (Why is it a problem? Why isn’t it?). After all, it’s not unusual to find people working on the wrong problem. Moreover, the answers themselves will help us find solutions.

As people’s careers progress, they tend to become more risk adverse, less willing to accept challenges. Much is because they feel they have too much to lose if wrong. Enough of these people in a company can retard its growth and our own too. Awareness of their existence will help to protect us.

In “The Paradox of Excellence,” an article in the June 2011 of the Harvard Business Review, Thomas DeLong and Sara DeLong write “high performers often let anxiety about their performance compromise their progress” even to the point that they “would rather do the wrong thing well than do the right thing poorly.” As a result, they tend to prefer options that worked well in the past to those that are best.

Early in their careers, things might have come more easily to them. As they progress and tackle more difficult assignments, they begin to function more and more on the outskirts of their attributes and skills. Rather than expand those limits they consolidate their gains, preferring consensus over what is right. As the Delongs attest, their careers flatten.

However, enough of this excellence in the right positions will flatten the company’s growth too. This conservatism will affect budget decisions, product development and talent acquisition. Expense control supersedes investing; existing products supersede new ones; the proven candidate supersedes the game changer. It helps to explain how the best and the brightest can bring about demise.

If we work for such people, the expansion of our limits could slow too. The challenges we seek will be thwarted by the conventional. It’s important to realize their existence and to avoid being blinded by their excellence and allowing our talents to rot under their light.

Person A has solved a hundred problems while Person B has only solved five. Who’s the better problem solver? The answer is B, but the question is, “Why?”

Initially, people often say that Person B’s problems were tougher. However, I tell them that Person A also solved all of Person B’s problems in A’s hundred problems. Some say that B did a better or faster job. I tell them there was no difference in the solutions. Occasionally, someone gives this answer: B solved the problems on his own while someone taught A how to solve his.

I once told a friend that I thought someone was smart because of an idea she had. He asked me whether she had read it somewhere. I didn’t know the answer, but it eventually led me to create this puzzle about problem-solving capabilities. Yes, there are many correct answers; however, the one I seek is rarely given.

Consider any brainteaser. It’s more impressive if people hadn’t seen it before than if others had already shown them the solution. Yet, in everyday life, we don’t really care because as long as someone can give us good advice, we don’t question whether she learned it from someone else or discovered it on her own.

In fact, we tend to feel more comfortable with those who can show training and education rather than those who arrive at good solutions without them. Yet, it’s the latter group that has the talent to solve novel situations; the former can only learn from experience, theirs or others.

So, next time someone gives you advice, ask him how he derived it. After all, my math teachers always wanted me to see my work, not just the answer.

Intuitive approaches, ones that influence people on an emotional, often unconscious level create additional options for almost any problem, especially if they involve people. Too often though, we look at problems objectively: we solve problems rather than alter how people feel about them.

Customer service is fertile ground for intuitive approaches. In the May 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton write in “Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast…” that customers will endure waiting “even when what’s shown is merely the appearance of effort.” Examined this way, customer service is theater, even entertainment. People pay to see comedians. Why wouldn’t they feel better about the same old service if it was suddenly more enjoyable?

Once, a quality service group, who had already heard many speakers on the topic, asked for a different approach from me. So, I taught them how to improve customer service without changing one process for doing so.

Here’s the key: don’t assume you improve customer service by providing better service. This doesn’t matter if customers don’t know or don’t feel that you are servicing better. So, communicate better that you are providing better service and influence better how customers feel about the service.

Previously, we saw that changing people’s feelings for you would change how they interpret your message even if you don’t change anything about the message. This principle holds true for customer service: change how they feel about you and you will change how they feel about the service even though you don’t change one thing about the service. We saw the same with management-employee relations.

By thinking of ways to influence people’s feelings about problems, we create more problem-solving options. Customer service is ideal for seeing how effective this can be.