Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness describes how we approach our work. Resourcefulness means finding quick and clever solutions to problems without sacrificing quality.

A quick solution is one that minimizes the time until we get feedback from the customer whose problem the solution is addressing. Customer doesn’t necessarily mean a paying customer of our company in this context. It means the recipient of our solution and for whom the solution is supposed to generate value. It is important to get feedback quickly because only the customer can tell us if our solution is valuable to them. We can ask them what they need, do a great deal of planning, and think really hard about the problem to come up with what we believe to be a great solution. However, we won’t know until we get feedback from the customer. This is critically important and easy to get wrong. It is easy to convince ourselves that we understand the problem and customer so well that our solution certainly will be just what they need. And then we retreat into our offices to build the perfect solution for them only to discover that we missed the mark once we reemerge.

It is important to differentiate customer feedback from internal opinions. Opinions can be valuable to shape a solution in particular if they come from somebody with a lot of experience or knowledge on a particular problem or solution. But those opinions are not feedback. Because opinions are much easier to solicit than real feedback, one may be tempted to substitute one for the other. This can create dangerous delusions and we are mindful not to confuse the two.

Focusing on quick solutions does three things for us.

First, it keeps us focused on customer feedback and delivering value. That means we understand who our customers are before we get started and are working toward a specific milestone in the near future when we seek feedback from them. Working backwards from that feedback milestone focuses our productive energy on an immediate work product and delivering value. When milestones are too far into the future, we spend too much time planning, over-anticipate needs which leads to solutions that are too complex, and worrying too much about secondary concerns like laying a future-proof foundation or being generalizable. If we give ourselves too much space, our imagination starts to fill the void and we dream up things that aren’t necessary. Keeping us focused on a short timeline to put something of value in front of the customer sharpens the mind and cuts noise.

Second, by seeking customer feedback quickly we are more likely to learn from it. The longer we think about and work on a solution, the more attached to it we become. It’s perfectly normal to become emotionally attached to the things we invest in. But the more attached we become the more likely we fall victim to confirmation bias which means selectively listening for feedback that praises our solution and finding ways to ignore less complimentary feedback. The earlier we seek feedback the more likely we can internalize such feedback objectively and learn from it.

Thirdly, delivering value to our customers quickly allows us to react more quickly and adapt. It is very hard to predict the future. We live in a complex world where subtle nuances can have a big impact, where interconnectedness makes systems and environments unpredictable, and where change happens frequently. Therefore, it is usually harder to predict whether our solution will deliver the value we’re hoping for. Since we care about doing the right thing and not about being right, we can save ourselves a lot of time by producing quick solutions and learning from feedback to iterate to the right solution. Focusing on quick solutions doesn’t mean that we work in a hurry or produce artifacts of low quality. It means that we focus on delivering essential value and seeking feedback quickly. What we deliver needs to be of good enough quality for meaningful feedback.

Clever solutions are those solutions that deliver the essential value with the least amount of work and resources. Clever means having a clear understanding of what the essence of our solution is and identifying the shortest path to getting there. In finding the shortest path it may be helpful to think outside the box. The well trodden path is not always the shortest one. One reason we emphasize intersecting different schools of thought and collaboration between disciplines is that we want to find new shortest paths for the solutions we come up with.

To find clever solutions we need to embrace unconventional approaches when appropriate. Obviously, there is value in conventional approaches. But because conventional approaches are widely popular we may not question what that value is exactly and whether it serves the type of solution we are working on. “This is how I’ve always done this” is not a valid reason for choosing a certain approach.

Clever does not mean that we look for smart or innovative solutions. In some ways clever is the opposite of genius. A genius solution is an exceptionally brilliant solution that is novel. Sometimes we may need those. But in the vast majority of cases we need solutions that are combinations of things that have already been done or somebody else came up with. In analogy to cooking where the dish is the solution, genius means developing a novel ingredient whereas clever means combining existing ingredients in ways that work specifically for that dish. A really clever solution combines mundane and inexpensive approaches to produce a solution that delivers the essential value.

Finding quick and clever solutions applies to everything we do internal and external to our company. Whether we are building a product, presentation, blog post, staffing plan, or financial report, we always do the following:

1. Start by identifying the customer of our work and what their needs are.
2. Determine the smallest unit of meaningful work that provides value to them.
3. Identify clever ways to produce that work product with the least amount of work hours and resources.
4. Eliminate everything that doesn’t add value.
5. Work towards a milestone in the near future where we solicit customer feedback on our work product.
6. Learn from the feedback to adjust our approach and repeat the process.

Resourcefulness stands in tradeoff with carefully planned and comprehensive solutions. Obviously planning and deliberation is important. Working on a solution that we know doesn’t work is a waste of time no matter how quickly we get feedback or how clever it is. But we are willing to sacrifice long term planning in our solutions and not worry about how generalizable, scalable, performant, etc. it may be in the future in favor of resourcefulness. Most importantly, we prefer resourcefulness to perfection.

Note, that resourcefulness does not mean quick-and-dirty solutions and forgoing planning entirely. A solution we build should always be carefully planned to ensure we don’t do redundant work or add technical debt that we have to work on later. That’s wasteful. All work that we do is approached with a sense of craftsmanship. We want to be proud of the things that we build. They should fit with the things we build before them.