Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm your host, Derek Hudson. The Essential Dynamics podcast gives us the opportunity to explore the ideas that we've been developing and call essential dynamics. We're doing this so we can help people and organizations work through tricky problems and improve their performance. Today, I have my colleague Dave Kane with me.
Derek:Dave, welcome to essential dynamics again.
Dave:Hey. Thanks. Yep. Good to be back.
Derek:So, Dave, we've been, at our, firm unconstrained. We've been trying to raise the level of the conversation a little bit. One of the things we've been doing is putting some blogs out there and understand there's one that you wanna you wanna dig into today.
Dave:Well, yeah, one of the more recent ones you you put out there was, how to or getting around to building the better birdhouse. And it was a really interesting analogy. And so I've kinda been reflecting on that for about a week here since I've read it, and there's a couple kinda paths I think I'd like to go down and just sort of get your thoughts on and and sort of dig into a little bit. And the first of which being is, you know, why is this so hard, and and what are some tips to help get us, you know, more successful at it? But maybe to start with, for context, do you just wanna give a bit of a an overview of of what I read, so, others can follow?
Derek:Yeah. So the blog is called You Better Build a Birdhouse, and it came to me just as I was thinking about the performance initiatives, the improvement initiatives that organizations try, And how when we deal with things that are more tangible, it's really obvious whether we're successful or not. And so the the story I tell on the blog is about a family that has a beautiful backyard and a beautiful neighborhood. And, there's a lot of birds and songbirds singing, but the, the the daughter in this family feels like they don't the birds don't come into their yard, and she finds out at school one day, if you build the right kind of birdhouse, you can you can have robins nest in your yard. And so she tells her dad about it.
Derek:And so here's the thing. The only successful outcome of that project is if, dad helps the girl build a birdhouse. Mhmm. And when you think about the, improvements that you want to do in an organization, and you can, you can come up with ideas in a lot of different ways, A lot of times we don't get anywhere close to, you know, actually building a birdhouse and doing something, tangible and useful. And so I I'm just trying to put it out there that, hey, before we before we start any of these initiatives, let's get really clear on the problem we're trying to solve.
Derek:Really clear on the, planned course of action, like our hypothesis as to, you know, how we're gonna solve the problem, and then do it, and then see if it works. It seems it seems obvious, but, there's a big difference between, putting a birdhouse up in the backyard and watching for the birds to nest, and, talking about birdhouses and having pictures of birdhouses and sketches of of birdhouses. And so you better build a birdhouse. Yeah. No.
Dave:What I what I really liked about it, well, because I made the connection of, you know, getting around actually building the birdhouse in an organization should be, you know, getting around to changing the system that you're generating value with. And so I sort of kept jumping back and forth between building a birdhouse and and working with this family or doing it within a company. But, even as a starting point, you you follow essential dynamics and and you always talk about your quest. And I really enjoy this one because, you know, the the father is suddenly on a quest to go build a birdhouse and get robins in his yard, and he's on this epic journey that, you know, he didn't sign up for and suddenly has been thrust upon him, and he's got all sorts of different motivations to succeed. So I I kinda like that.
Dave:But so why is it so hard? Like, why is it that hard to translate the plan and the idea into into getting the right thing done?
Derek:Well, I would say it starts with, we often are not clear on our purpose. And, you know, we talk about systems and we talk about the flow in a system, but it's it starts with it's designed to accomplish something. And if we're not clear on that, there's no amount of improvement of the system that's gonna make a difference if, if we're not clear on what what we wanna do. I I'm really dating myself because I do remember the Pogo comic strip in the newspaper.
Dave:I don't.
Derek:But it's, one of the, one of the lines from that, and I don't remember as a kid, but, was, having lost sight of our objective, let us redouble our efforts. Mhmm. And and there's no, like, there's no, no value in improvement, in, grit, in, you know, putting your back into it and extra energy if you're not clear what you're trying to accomplish. And and so the birdhouse analogy, it's interesting because there's I talk about building a birdhouse, but that's not that's not the ultimate objective here. And I don't know that I did this on purpose, but in the conversation between the father and the daughter, the ultimate objective is songbirds in the yard because they sound nice, and it's nice to have them.
Derek:Mhmm. And the hypothesis is, well, if they had a place to nest in our yard, they're more likely to come. The nice thing about the birdhouse is it's completely within the control of the management team here, which is the father and the daughter. Right. Their their hypothesis is if we build a birdhouse, then the birds will nest in our yard, and we'll have birds in our yard.
Dave:Okay. So that that's that was sort of my my second question. So let's sort of park the why is it so hard for a sec and just figure out why do we know this is the right one to do first? Because, you know, there's there's a lot of other things I could do in order to get birds songbirds into the yard. I could, add some bird seed or, I could throw worms all over the yard.
Dave:Like, there there's other things that could be done, and so quite often, you know, it's because this opportunity was presented or somebody came to you with this idea, suddenly, it's the right one to do. How do you know that this the birdhouse is the right way to go? Because somebody could've walked and knocked on the door and said, well, here's some bird seed we're selling as opposed to somebody gave her an idea to build a birdhouse.
Derek:You're talking about, the consulting industry that I'm trying to say somehow distinct from what I need to. Yeah. So that's that's a good point.
Dave:But there's that. Yes. There's the solution looking for a problem. There's also to even with, say, some of the federal grants. Right?
Dave:It's, hey. Everybody needs to go build a digital website, and here's some money to go do it. How do I know that's that's the right one? And, I have my views, but
Derek:Well well okay. So we we talked about let's get clear on a purpose. And then once we're clear on a purpose and we need a system to create to accomplish that or to create value.
Dave:Mhmm.
Derek:There are steps in that process that move you forward. There are things that get in the way. You need to understand that because any improvement outside that that, critical path, doesn't make things better. And and so for example, let's let's try this one. This is a really obvious one.
Derek:So I was in a conversation online a couple days ago with a high school friend of mine who had a heart attack. And he's actually he's far away in The United States, and he's recovering. And I empathize because twenty two years ago, I had a heart attack. When I went into the hospital, you know, the, the trauma team, paramedics had picked me up and they did a quick diagnosis and they brought me in, and then it was time for an angiogram to confirm the diagnosis. And the nice thing about angiograms is once you're there, they they do the therapy right away.
Derek:They leave a stent inside. There's other I have other health problems. I have bad knees and bad vision. I'm not very flexible. Probably should weigh a little bit less.
Derek:You know? But in that moment, it's pretty clear that I need a stent in my artery. And any other improvement isn't even an improvement, doesn't even matter. And so one of the problems we have in these complex systems is we think any improvement is an improvement. And what we need to try to understand, and it's not obvious, but try to understand what's an improvement that's gonna matter.
Derek:It's actually gonna increase the flow of value. So you don't you may not actually know. So the bird seed is a good example. You might maybe there's colors that, birds are attracted to. You could put out in your backyard.
Derek:But here's the thing, you build a birdhouse, and then you see if birds come.
Dave:I no. I agree. I I think there there's an easy there's an easy check before you go like, certainly trying something is better than than waiting and analyzing anymore. Right? Because you're building a hypothesis and you can go out and you can try something and you get some improvement or you figure out what the next thing to fix is, and so I agree that, especially if it's a stint and that sort of thing, doing that doing something is better than doing nothing.
Dave:So but I think when time allows, it's it's much easier to do a quick assessment back to you sort of said, you know, your purpose and your purpose x and your purpose y. And so it's the birdhouse example. You know, your purpose x is to get songbirds in the yard and purpose y is probably you're trying to teach your daughter to do it, you know, responsibly, you know, financially and both sustainably. Right?
Derek:Mhmm.
Dave:And so when you go, you look at your other alternatives, I could go buy seed, but then I have to keep buying seed in order to keep them coming. So you've you've developed a model where I have to keep throwing money at us, so maybe that's not the best outcome. And then there's also these undesirable effects that may also come about. You you could go with the seed, and that may just attract a bunch of birds that scare the robins away. Right?
Dave:So if you look at your purpose, that's your purpose why
Derek:Yep. You could screen
Dave:it quite quickly and figure, well, bird building a birdhouse is specific to the robins and songbirds I want, so that's probably the best out the best alternative to start with.
Derek:Yeah. That's exactly right. And we can do those thought experiments, and it's, what I find interesting is, although we have the capacity to do a lot of detailed analysis, and you and I are both pretty strong in our spreadsheet game, and that's been kind of overtaken by things like Power BI and big data and, you know, I'll pass beyond that to machine learning and things. But it doesn't it's there's a lot of value in a cause effect, kind of diagram and if then then looking at the things. And, what if we put seed in our backyard?
Derek:Well, the magpies will come and eat it all. Yeah. And so if you want magpies, then if you want any kind of birds, that's fine. If so you so you then you branch off of that and say, well, what kind of birds do we want and what attracts those birds? And has this girl learned in school?
Derek:There's a particular kind of birdhouse, not the kind that we would think of that, that robins like. And so and there's some good information out there about what they like. And so that's a that's reasonable hypothesis. It might not it might not always work, but, and I also like to put on the additional criteria like sustainability, and then you scrap materials from birdhouse, build it once, you're good. Yep.
Derek:You don't have to pay the software as a service model and to have, Uber Eats bring your,
Dave:bring your birdseed every year.
Derek:Bring your birds.
Dave:Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. That's right.
Dave:So how does that translate to do we get out of business? Is this, like, a decision tree you're looking at, or how are you looking at, you know, the quick consideration of of what the other outcomes may be if you pursue this path?
Derek:Yeah. Decision tree is a is a good way to look at it. I certainly have used, you know, various techniques, you know, just a little bit of flowchart. In, the theory of constraints, there's the, future reality tree, which is actually more about implementation and the current reality tree, which is about what the heck is happening. And, it's really focused on getting to root cause, which I think is, you know, obviously, good in in the case of the bird.
Derek:Like, why don't we have, birds in our yard? Your analysis might show that your cat is the constraint.
Dave:Oh, yes. Yeah.
Derek:And you can build all the birdhouses you want as long as you have a feral cat in the backyard, then you're not gonna have any birds. Right. And and so sometimes that's obvious, and sometimes it takes a little bit of work, but, you know, just without, you know, picking a specific tool, my experience has been being clear about the goal that you want and then having multiple voices, multiple sets of eyes looking at, the situation in reality and considering what's happening is valuable. I've been in meetings where the boss just told us what was gonna happen, and sometimes the boss was right, and sometimes the boss was wrong. I've also been in meetings where the boss had an angle and then tried to get it out of the group.
Derek:That's never a good idea.
Dave:Hey. What there's an answer he was trying to draw out?
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. That's never a good idea. You gotta I mean, way like it is we're looking for truth here, and and truth will stand on its own and it can come from anywhere. So let's get, some multiple voices in the room and and try and understand cause and effect, both what we see and what we what we intend to see and put those things out there.
Derek:I think it's way more about being clear on the purpose and understanding the flow of the system at a high level. So where I see this breakdown in organizations is people just do stuff because they think it's a good idea. Or they're siloed already, and so they're doing stuff to optimize locally when we really should be looking at the system overall.
Dave:Right. They they think these are the pieces they can affect. And so in their mind, doing something is is better than doing nothing. But,
Derek:yeah, I
Dave:think I mean, I've heard it enough times on on the podcast from others. You could even just simplify it to being you're just taking a step back and having all the voices in the conversation take that system view and just sort of, you don't have to get too complicated into, how you do a decision tree or other things, but it's just taking that moment to sort of align it to how does this align to our purposes? And if we do this, what might be the consequence or what might be the outcome? And then evaluating which which alternative is gonna be easier. So, I mean, there's there's more complicated ways to do it, but in in the birdhouse with the daughter, it might just be a quick conversation.
Derek:Yeah. I think that what we struggle with a lot of times in business is that we really like complexity. Like we re we really like sophistication, we really like lots of data, and so the solution has to, has to have those elements. And when we, when we look at a system that there's flow, there's supposed to be flow to create value, we know that somewhere in there, there's one step that's can't keep up with the other ones, and that's the constraint. We also know that there, and it might be that, or it might be something else that should be the constraint.
Derek:And it should be the constraint because it's the hardest thing. It uses the most expensive equipment or the most skilled work, or it's the most intricate or whatever. And so we need to organize our system around that. And if you can increase the flow through the constraint, you'll see it come out the other end. But we don't think that way most of the time.
Derek:We think if I can improve over here or over there, it's like a it's an improvement, so it should flow through, but Yeah.
Dave:Any anything I can do to to improve it should make a difference, but I always like looking at it as, you know, it's it's it's like
Derek:a
Dave:hose and there's one con you know, one big squeeze on the hose, and you can go and take all the other kinks out of it, but that's not gonna increase what's coming out the other end.
Derek:Well, that was my experience twenty two years ago, Dave. Yeah. With the hose? With the with the hose in my heart. Yes.
Dave:Oh, yes. Okay.
Derek:Yeah. That's that's exactly right. Distant. Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:You you've gotta open it up. You gotta open up the flow, and then, you're gonna be surprised by the next blockage.
Dave:Right. Well, it'll it'll either reveal itself by the flow didn't increase and you can go downstream and figure out what's next, or if potentially it's upstream. Like, how do you know?
Derek:Yeah. And and so the way you know the way one way to know is to, yeah, take the one constraint out and then see what see what happens. And that's the other way to do it is to ask yourself a bunch of questions and say, when that's not the constraint, what is? Now it's it's really possible. I think this is worth talking about for a minute is that sometimes, because we're not thinking of a systems view, and we tend to work at at the local levels and then assume the system's gonna be fine on its own, that we have a system that's that's, not stable.
Derek:It's in chaos. And so the constraint bounce around bounces around all over the place. And you can't see what's going on. And and so you have to make a judgment and say, well, I think this is this is one problem we know. Let's give that part more capacity.
Derek:And that takes it off the list, the first thing. But the second thing is is it might start to reveal what your real constraint is. And I I read a really interesting article a while back. It was a software company. They're developing software, and they were onto something, but it was gonna be a while before they even had had customers.
Derek:But the the owner who was writing the article said, I came to only accept a constraint if it wasn't something I could solve easily with money because you needed to find the real constraint. The business is hard enough. Things are complicated enough, that if you also constrain it with making uneconomical cheapskate decisions, you put more constraints on your system than you need to have. And I've I've gone through this a bunch of different ways, you know, with home repairs and stuff like that. And finally, when I get my head around it, just get the get the professional in, pay the money, I did I never have to think about it again.
Derek:Right. Whereas, you're trying to accommodate this, you know, one limitation in your system all the time. It's taking so much time and attention. And, you just solve it and it's fine. And I mean, I I work with a client who, was in a situation kinda like that, and then they got their head around what the value would be of, like, the second piece of equipment.
Derek:Because it was expensive, and they didn't wanna spend the money. Right? But they get the expensive piece of equipment. They pay for it in, like, literally weeks of increased flow. It's not used all the time, but when it when it's used, that increased flow, that problem, like, never manifests itself again, and you can go on and run the rest of the business.
Derek:But so you can kinda cheap out, and, you know, leave constraints in the system that don't need don't need to be there. And I think there's, there's something to that in our minds as well. We fuss about things that we don't need to fuss about.
Dave:Right.
Derek:And if you could solve it once and for all. So, you know, I I mean, in this conversation, I don't wanna make, I don't wanna minimize the complexity of organizations and, you know, the job that leaders have. But we don't have to make it more complicated than it really is. And so anytime we can step back and say, oh, actually, if we just built a birdhouse, it would be better. That's step one.
Derek:And then step two is you gotta build a birdhouse.
Dave:Yes. So what I've sort of heard though is there there's this there there's, I don't know, a bit of a balancer or it's a challenge here because you've sort of said on one hand, you know, it's certainly better to do something based upon your best hypothesis of of what you think, and then you will learn from it. And then that sort of bias for action is is working towards improvement. But at least or but ahead of that, you do need to at least look at these against your your purpose path and people and and sort of screen things out to understand what the which outcome's gonna get you where you wanna be, which are gonna have these undesirable effects. So there there's this balance between you do need to step back and do a little bit of thinking with that bias reaction still there.
Dave:It's like you just don't wanna start shooting off at different constraints.
Derek:Abs absolutely. You wanna try and stabilize the system, and the mental effort is kind of the least expensive thing that you can do. So so take the mental effort. And so perhaps, the next time we get together, we can talk a little bit more about that and how because I think I I know you wanna get to the sort of the people side and the path side of that as well.
Dave:I do, and and I still kinda have my question I opened up with of of why is it so hard. I mean, I I I've gotten into a better discussion here on why this one first, and so that really helps. But I still have a few questions or thoughts for you on, on, you know, on why is it so hard and how do we merge that into the purpose path and people to make it effective. So
Derek:Well, do we wanna pick that up next time then? Why is it so hard?
Dave:Probably better than than squeezing it in, so let's let's carry it for a week and bring it back to this question later.
Derek:Okay. What okay. I will say this though. We can ask why is it hard in that particular case, but the essential dynamics establishes, with this idea of the quest that if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth talking about. So don't be surprised that it's hard, but, yeah, let's understand why is it hard.
Dave:Sounds terrific.
Derek:Okay. Hey. Thanks very much. So, on on this episode, Dave asked the questions. Derek didn't do a good job of answering.
Derek:And, so we're gonna try it again next time. Yeah.
Dave:We'll just spin it around. Yep.
Derek:So Dave Kane from Unconstrained, thanks for being with me today. Brynn Griffiths, thanks for being in the background, making us, sound better than we are. And until next time, consider your quest.