Exhaustively seeking the best

This week’s posts are on maximising. It's not a good thing.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon talked of ‘maximising'. As a political scientist and cognitive psychologist he knew plenty about how we make decisions.

If we keep working on something - think a presentation, report or document - we can end up wasting a great deal of energy, time and effort. The result is we create stress, worry and unnecessary overthinking.

We can find ourselves overworking, over-researching, checking and rechecking or endlessly gathering information. It’s a painful choice to keep chasing or seeking better or best. And yes, better and best belong where standards of excellence are required and achieved.

But that report, presentation, article, post … it’s time to stop the endless search for the best. It's exhausting. Not just for you, but for the people you work with (and live with). They might be waiting on you to deliver, finish, send or hand over something. Or be there.

Go check with them: is what you’ve done so far good enough for the task at hand?

Do you feel exhausted? Might you be seeking 'the best' on something you're currently working on? 

The danger of more

Buying popcorn at the Apollo 11 doco recently (incredible music by Matt Morton btw) the attendant asked if I’d like to ‘supersize it’. The opportunity to upgrade, add more and make bigger is everywhere. When is enough enough for you?

‘Maximizing’ is a perfectionist behaviour. We think we need more, better, different or just more.

➕More research, data or insights before we present

➕More consultation, more people, more topics before deciding

➕More searches for more options before choosing

➕More editing before posting.

 The drive for more is habitual, hedonic. We gain pleasure, reward and satisfaction - first from desiring more, then seeking it, getting it and knowing that we have it. Only to start the cycle again when we don’t feel better about the more we just got.

To go without is a fear. There's the rise of FOMO (fear of missing out) as a feeling but the JOMO (joy of missing out) fans affirm that life is OK with less.

Be aware of your drive for more, more than you had when you thought it was enough. Don’t be fooled by it. Enough can be good enough.

New ways of working: what to do with those insights and ideas

New ways of working: what to do with those insights and ideas.

✅ Customer insights are on hand.

✅ Ideas have been generated. It's time to do something, to get into action with your good work.

Too often we think we need to find out more, keep working on something, finding out more more more. This is known as 'maximising', and it's not a good thing. It's linked to perfectionism, so no, not good. Rather, put those ideas out there and IMPLEMENT something; an experiment, a test, a pilot.

See if something you've thought of has value for your customers. Experiment and watch what happens. Once the experiment is done, take those insights and ITERATE; improve on your idea and go again with another experiment.

✅ There are plenty of customer needs.

✅ We have endless ideas.

New ways of working are focused on delivering value to customers, sooner. What counts is trying things out; not delaying or getting distracted.

To do this we need to:

1️⃣ Involve customers

2️⃣ Ideate possible solutions

3️⃣ Implement tests and experiments

4️⃣ Iterate and improve on the solutions.

What project you could apply this way of working to? 

New ways of working: let's 'ideate' and come up with ideas

New ways of working: let's 'ideate' and come up with ideas. Creativity is a must, a survival skill says the World Economic Forum, the Institute for the Future and other predictors of skills for the brutal future.

Celebrate this skill of human ingenuity we have, to make up stuff that solves tricky problems. Our customers need us to do this.

We gained insights from the INVOLVE stage (see yesterday's post) so it's time to come up with ideas about the insights. Ideas happen when you form a mental image of something that isn’t present or isn’t yet real. That's a concept or plan, a program or suggestion, a whim or a hunch ... or something more detailed.

Rod Judkins in the book 'Ideas are your only currency', says that ideas are our only currency! 😆

In a world where Netflix-ing, Uber-ing and Spotify-ing are an everyday thing, remember these are the result of ideas. Ideas that someone had, they created and put them into the world.

New ways of working need us to stop this 'I'm not creative' sh*t (it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, by the way) and bring ingenious solutions to tricky customer problems.

You're clever and your customers need that.

New ways of working

If delivering value sooner is the goal, let’s check out how to get that started. Hint : it doesn’t start with you. It’s about involving people, users, customers, colleagues.

It means connecting more with people, not less. It’s being closer to them and understanding more about who they are, what they need, what their problems and challenges are.

Involve is about empathy, understanding things from their perspective and seeing the truth of the situation or problem. How close could you get then Martin Lindstrom in ‘Small Data’ says, ‘there’s a well-known quote that says if you want to understand how animals live, you don’t go to the zoo, you go to the jungle.’

Lindstrom gets very close to gather data; he moves in! Why so close? ‘I look for patterns, parallels, correlations ... imbalances and exaggerations,' he says. 'Typically I focus on the contrasts between people’s day-to-day lives and their unacknowledged or unmet desires, evidence that can be found anywhere.’ A-ha!

Start with empathy and getting closer to your customers. This is a vital part of new ways of working... putting the customer at the centre.

How do you currently involve your customers? How could you involve them more?