Stop Decorating the Fish

It was literally over a meal, within an hour, we just came up with the idea of what this book could look like. And we wanted it to be simple and not huge, and make a pretty important point that the illusion of progress versus real progress are two very different things, and that's what we were both committed to.

Rachel Salaman: Interesting, and as you say, it's a relatively simple concept. The story isn't complicated. I've mentioned the premise, but could you briefly tell us the rest of the story of the fish?

Kristen Cox: Yeah. So, this town, Busyville – and it's titled Busyville for a reason – we live in a culture almost where we're rewarded for how busy we are... for how many plates we can keep spinning in the air. And, somehow, we count progress for how many changes we can make.

So, this town of Busyville is very busy trying to bring back the fish that it relies on for its economy. And it introduces, as you said, lots of shiny solutions, like more data, more resources, new technology. And in the background of this (as all of these people are working on these different initiatives) you see this beaver. He's just watching these guys and the beaver's busy doing different things. The beaver's named Alex.

And, at the end of this book, the fish finally achieve what they wanted to do, to get back to the breeding ground. And they think they've been the ones that were responsible for this success. But you can notice, in the background, it's Alex the beaver that really deals with the core issue... the real problem to solve. The beaver's building a dam and he fixes the flow of the water, which allows the fish to be successful.

What this teaches us, we hope, is that most problems aren't worth solving. These Busyville citizens were very busy doing lots of things and solving lots of problems, but real breakthrough happens when we know which problem really matters – what's the problem we should solve?

In our estimation (in at least my experience and I think with Yishai's as well), we see organizations that are solving a lot of problems that aren't the core problem to solve. And there's big opportunity cost to that.

Rachel Salaman: And that's where the "Seductive Seven" come in. They're seven solutions that people often reach for without first establishing that they actually fit the problems at hand. Before we get into those, though, I wanted to ask about this second edition of your book. What's changed since the first edition?

Kristen Cox: So, we wanted to improve and kind of upgrade the case studies in the back. So, there's the story that's short and we wanted it to be beautiful, which is ironic because I am blind. But I wanted it to be a beautiful book.

And then, in the back, we upgraded the case studies. In the case studies before, we had all of the Seductive Seven showing up in one case study. We wanted to go a little deeper into each of the Seductive Seven and do a case study on each one of those, so people could really understand what's the core issue going on as they try to approach a problem with more money or more technology. What's the right mindset that they should have? And what's the trap they can fall into? So, we changed and upgraded the case studies. We hope they're simpler and a little more impactful.

Rachel Salaman: Absolutely. Now, as I mentioned, you've had a distinguished career in public service. Through that career how often have you seen people "decorating the fish"?

Kristen Cox: Most of the time (and I used to do it) you know, I've learned the hard way of what works and doesn't work. I've worked for three [state] governors, I worked back in D.C., I've run nonprofits, etc.

You know, part of this, Rachel (if I can share some of my personal story in this) is that I am blind, and – further – I wasn't born blind. I started going blind later in life. And there is a time that I call my "dark years," you know... was a transition. And I was actually on public assistance and didn't have a job... it was just really... was a hard time in my life. And I was a recipient of government services, and I'm grateful for the safety net program I had and really good people. But, it was really a bad place to be and, as much as people intended to do a good job for me, the system itself wasn't designed well.

I was fortunate to have some great mentors come into my life to help me learn how to live as a blind person. And that was almost despite the public assistance programs, not because of those. So, I felt this passion and this urgency about all the things we're doing and we're so busy, but are we really solving the problem for the customer?

So, many of the Seductive Seven are great for management. We can feel successful launching a new initiative, a new strategic plan. We can feel successful having a data-driven organization. But we really have to keep coming back and anchoring ourselves into: "What's the problem we're solving for the customer?"

So, running the budget for the State of Utah, for the Governor, people would come in for budget requests. I just saw these patterns come up and up again... "Not getting good outcomes, I need more money for a new data system," "Not getting good outcomes, I need to reorganize my whole agency." And I saw it so much it was a bit discouraging, but also, I think, an opportunity to hopefully help people find a different path forward.

Rachel Salaman: When you were in those positions, did you have these conversations with those people? Did you teach them about the Seductive Seven?

Kristen Cox: Yeah, I did. Really good people! And I don't want to pretend that I have all of the answers, for sure, but yeah, we did. And I was pretty grumpy about giving out more money, because I wanted... the hardest thing to get in leadership or management, or even in our own lives, is clarity. What is the problem we're trying to solve? Complex? Complexity is easy. I can spew out a 20-page paper much easier than writing a very succinct case study that's in the book. Those are harder to do.

So, to get clarity on, "Why do you need more money?" This is the question that's interesting I think, Rachel. If you had all of the money in the world and all the technology you wanted and all of the data, and you could reorganize any way you wanted to reorganize – if you had all of the Seductive Seven – what would you gain? What's the problem you're solving? And that level of clarity is really hard to get to. And, as we went through budget requests, we wanted more and more of that kind of clarity.

Rachel Salaman: Yes. I think they're very much a distraction, aren't they, the Seductive Seven? Perhaps that's behind the term "seductive" that you chose.

Kristen Cox: Yes. I mean, we used the word "seductive." I, actually, at the beginning, had what I call the "fatal four." And then I'm like... "Wait, there's more."

I saw this over years, evolving, right... this is over a long career. But they're seductive for a reason and they're ubiquitous... everyone's using them. We have, sometimes, solution industries pushing them, you know, "I have a key now, I just need to find the lock." People having a solution, looking for a problem, and sometimes they're actually part of the solution.

There's times when... you know, it's like a recipe. I have many ingredients. One of the ingredients may be some more data, information; but that doesn't mean that that's the recipe itself. So, that's why they can be so alluring. But what we want to help people understand is that, just because we make a change or are successfully implementing something, doesn't mean we are successful in providing value to the customer. Those can be very different things.

Rachel Salaman: So perhaps we could talk about the Seductive Seven now, starting with the first of these, which is, "More Technology." In what kinds of situations is this wrongly perceived as the solution to the problem?

Kristen Cox: You know, I often get asked which one's the most common of the Seductive Seven, and I have to say, usually it's "More Technology" and "More Data."

Technology is really powerful. I believe in it. I use it as a blind person. As a professional, we implemented it in government all the time and in the private sector. So, it's not that it, by itself, is a problem. It's that technology is just a tool. And if we don't understand the specific problem technology is trying to solve, we can really make things worse and actually hardwire a dysfunctional system, and making changes becomes more difficult.

So, we're saying, upfront, "What's the limitation you're moving for the customer? What's the change you want to see in the business?" And when we understand that, then we can use technology to amplify our solution. But, when we jump head in, right into technology, without thinking of those issues, we can make things worse.

Rachel Salaman: And it's linked to "More Data," which is the second of the Seductive Seven and, again, sometimes more data does help, I guess. So, what are the clues that we need to use our existing data better rather than collect more?

Kristen Cox: Data are just words and numbers – that's all they are – they're words and numbers. And having endless access to endless words and numbers doesn't help us.

What does help us... if we understand what are the questions we're trying to answer. And we usually need much less data when we are very clear on the questions we're trying to actually answer.

All the biggest breakthroughs (you think about science or in our organizations, or people like Elon Musk and others), they didn't just hope that the answer would reveal itself in data. They asked really important and provocative questions. Those questions would drive them to know, "What numbers and information do I need to get?"

So, when we can learn to think, then our data can be powerful. But if we hope the data will reveal some magical breakthrough... yeah, we can get some minor improvements, there's no doubt about it. But breakthrough... leaps in performance... I just don't think we're going to find it there.

Rachel Salaman: It's the idea of Big Data that's so seductive, isn't it?

Kristen Cox: Yeah.

Rachel Salaman: Whereas understanding your little data better is a better way to go... could deliver better results.

Kristen Cox: Well yeah, and think of all the... I call it "noise in your system."

A story I tell, just [about] my blindness, when I was going through this training program to learn how to use a cane and walk independently. They took us down to an intersection (it was back in Maryland, I was living back there at the time). And here in the United States there's these... whenever you're in a street, they put these chirping signals for blind people, so they know when to cross the street or not.

But this intersection had so many roads converging that all of these chirping sounds for the blind... there are so many of them... I was overwhelmed. I couldn't distinguish which direction to go based off the sound, because they're all coming in one place. And that created so much noise. I had to figure out how to ignore that to get the real signal, which is, "OK, I just have to listen to how the cars are moving and listen to the traffic flow." And I see this endless times in our organizations... just so much data, no insight. No insight, just more data.

Rachel Salaman: That brings us quite nicely onto "More Strategy," which is the next of the Seductive Seven. And we sometimes think a new direction will be the answer, when just doing what we're already doing better is actually the solution.

Kristen Cox: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: So how can we know when that is the case?

Kristen Cox: So, I like how you said it... you know. We just need to do better with what our... Yishai and I will talk about our... original commitment to our customer. What was our original commitment? What did we promise that we would give them?

You know, in the book we use a case study about a car wash company (all of our case studies are real experiences, real clients). And it offered gas stations a car wash, so that people could fill up their gas and get a convenient, cheap car wash. And they were actually dominating that market. But they saw that they were losing market share. People were going into stand-alone car washes that gave them detailed car washing... more expensive, spend a lot of time. You'd have probably a much better, cleaner car inside. But it took more time, more money.

And they thought their direction was, "Look, we're losing money. We should shift our direction from a convenient car wash attached to a gas station and move into this stand-alone, expensive car wash experience." And that was what they wanted to do. They wanted to move in that direction and change their strategy. And they spent a lot of time on R&D and the engineering. And, "How do we make this just the best machine ever and make it more complex, with every option a customer could want?"

But they missed the point. Their original promise was to deliver a convenient, good, cheap car wash. And when they recalculated and remembered what they were originally committed to do – and their original goal – they could come back and see what was blocking them from achieving that.

And their car wash machines were hard to calibrate. People attending in the gas station are not going to be experts in the technology of a car wash machine. And so the car wash was down a lot. It wasn't even usable when people would go use it.

So, they did simple things, like, "Well, we could remote in and actually help calibrate the car wash for the gas station owner, so they don't have to do that. So, it's convenient for them and we have more up time." They just did simple things like that to deliver on their original promise to the customer. And, in doing so, they had a 300 percent increase in their revenue.

It's simple. It's easy to come up with new ideas. Actually new ideas usually is not the problem. What's really hard is in the execution. Strategy... when I see an organization changing its direction like every year, every couple of years... it's a big red flag for me.

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Rachel Salaman: So, the next of the Seductive Seven is "More Training and Communication," which sounds like a good idea to most people in most situations. When does this turn into a problem?

Kristen Cox: So, this one's a tricky one, because training... I do trainings with people that can be helpful, and communication is great, but what I tend to see is organizations that rely on this to almost compensate for inherent flaws in the system or the product.

So, let's take Utah, for example. We're a very beautiful state, but we're a dry state. We're desert. We have mountains, but we're a dry state. We get very little rain every year. And so there is a big initiative to do what's called "Slow the Flow Campaign" to encourage people to save water.

Sounds great, right? Get a new PR company, put out advertising, get people to use less water... what's wrong with that? Well, in Utah the water's fairly cheap compared to our neighboring states. It's subsidized by a lot of different revenue streams, so people don't pay the full cost of water.

So, if water is relatively cheap, and I hear a nice little PR campaign on the radio one day and listen to it for five seconds... but I can go home and water as much as I want and not spend a lot of money on that... it's going to be really hard for that PR campaign to overcome the financial incentives that are built in to cheap water.

So, it's not a bad thing. But, if we can understand... if we can make it easy and intuitive and natural for people to behave the way we want them to behave – the policies, the measures, the financial incentives – those are built into the system, then training can complement that. But, it can't substitute that.

Rachel Salaman: Another of the Seductive Seven where behavior is front and center is, "More Accountability and Assigning Blame." This is a really interesting one. What are your lessons for this pitfall?

Kristen Cox: I just wrote an article about this. I've really been thinking about it. You know, we all want to change the world, right? You know, I say it's easy to say, "I want to make my positive impact in the world. I want to make my impact. I want to change the world." Which is (for me) kind of inward focused, right? It's a bit selfish, "I want the world to do what I want the world to do."

And it's really easy in our organizations, when we're not getting the outcome we want, to assign blame. To blame the government, to blame our employees, to blame our peers, to blame our bosses. And it's not that they don't play a role. And it's not that there shouldn't be some change. But it's really difficult to change other people if we haven't first taken stock of our contribution and role in the problem.

You know, one of the things... where this really sticks out to me was... many years ago I was working with a team and managers who cared about their employees. You know, these were good people. But they told me that 30-40 percent of their employees were poor performers. And they were going to put them on corrective action plans and try to get them out of the organization.

Now, that's a pretty high number, you know? 30-40 percent. I just believe people, for the most part, are good... they're [just] going to act in their own self interests.

So, when we stepped back and looked at how they organized the work, and how these people were set up not to succeed... they were playing a game that was unwinnable... the way management had set up their structure.

When we started showing management some of the challenge that was going on... they really had to pause and understand that a large part of the reason these employees were not performing well was because the managers themselves had not done a good job setting up the whole system – the flow of work, the product, what they work on, what not to work on – all that kind of stuff.

If management had started with what I call extreme responsibility: "What's my part? Have I done [enough] with what I have stewardship over – the resources, my own decision making – whatever that is? If I start there, have I done as well as I can with what I have responsibility over?"

And if the answer is "Yes," great! Then you have a story to tell... your circle of influence expands, you can talk about your successes. But when we [abdicate] that and we look at everyone else to change, we overlook what we should be doing. And, imagine, in this world, if everybody was not about changing everybody else, but we started with changing how we work... and this is private sector, public sector, management, employee.

You know, employees... we may have difficult bosses (we've all had those). You can't change your boss, but you can either change your job and leave or, "What can you do to serve your boss? What can you do to serve your peers? How well... is your work product? Have you done your very, very best in the work product you've been given?" It's a much more... [a] happier place to live than trying to control things we can't control.

Rachel Salaman: Absolutely. I suppose some people – a very small proportion – might blame themselves too much... might be too internalizing...

Kristen Cox: Yeah, yes.

Rachel Salaman: ... which is another pitfall.

Kristen Cox: Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I can fall on that one. So, I think if there's a healthy [boundary] it's, "What do I have control over? Did I do my best?" And then, at some point, you have to move on. We can't be perfect. But it's more about, just, don't blame other people, before we first check ourselves.

Rachel Salaman: Yeah, absolutely. Now "Reorganization" is another "false friend" that you talk about in the book. When do people tend to turn to this as a solution when it isn't going to help?

Kristen Cox: First of all, I love your term "false friend." I'm going to adopt that now. I just love that!

Here's my theory... people react to what they know about or have insight into or have visibility into. You know, you change things you have awareness of. You don't change if you don't know about it... you're not going to change it. And management can see org charts pretty easily, right? That’s very visible... they have a lot of visibility into org charts.

So, I see this happen when there's different resources that need to synchronize or coordinate for something. You still have all of these individual divisions. The question is, "How do you get people to synchronize and to align regardless of where they are?"

You're still going to have R&D. You're still going to have product design and product launches. You're still going to have budget and finance. All of those separate workflows or focusers are still going to exist, regardless if they're in two separate organizations or all under one.

The more difficult question that's more relevant and impactful is: "How do I synchronize and align services regardless of where they are – the financial incentives? Clarity on the goal? What not to do? What to do? How do I send signals to the different entities, so they know when to act and not act? Come together? Leave each other alone?" Those are harder things to work through.

This one kind of ticks me off a little bit. I see this happen, and it's so distracting to the employees. You know, "Where's my title? Where's my office? Where's my cubicle? Who do I report to?" And so much emotional and financial energy goes into these things.

And we see them in mergers and acquisitions, right? You can do mergers and acquisitions and very seldom does it provide a big value to the customer. It provides a lot of angst. We've done some research on this and the amount of, you know, mergers and acquisitions that are actually successful is pretty rare. It may look good on financial papers (and we understand that), but it keeps going back, for us, [to] "Where's the value created?" And just moving chairs around on the deck isn't going to solve those things.

Rachel Salaman: Well the last of the Seductive Seven is "More Money" – throwing money at a problem. And you say that often the solution is to use your existing resources better (again this is a recurring theme, isn't it?) and not add new ones. Could you talk us through that?

Kristen Cox: Yeah, and I keep going back to just running the budget here for the governor for eight years. The one thing I know that is a fact of life... there will never be enough money to meet all the demands, because people have endless ideas, there is endless demand, and a limitless creativity, which is great. There will never be enough money to solve all those problems.

So, when we assume that, and we go back to extreme responsibility, "I have money under my division, under my team, under my stewardship." Before we assume (this is such a mindset issue)... when I go and I think, "I need more money," my assumption is, "I'm doing as well as I can with the money I have. My people have what they need, when they need it. I'm not bad multitasking them. I'm not interrupting them with stuff... with the Seductive Seven. They have what they need, when they need it. All of my systems are synchronized. I'm not wasting capacity because of desynchronization or bad measures."

When I assume I need more money, I'm assuming that I've done all those things. But the issue is... if we don't know how our existing resources are used, more of them won't help.

We can have endless money. I see entities saying, "I can't really do this because I need more money." I'm like, "Well, the chances of the legislature, for example, appropriating this money are pretty rare. So, you have to sit with what you have... what would you do differently?" And it goes back, again, to not waiting for somebody else to solve our problems, and we're forced with just looking at it.

Now, there are times where we do need more money. I'm not saying you never do. But, if we start with the assumption, "I can't get more money and there's something going on in my organization that I could do better at... what is that?" It sets a mindset of curiosity. And breakthroughs always happen not in what we know, but in what we don't know. The gap between where we want to be – a very specific outcome, very [specific] – and where we are. And it's in that uncertainty where the opportunity lies.

When we force ourselves, with the "more money" discussion, to go deeper into our execution – our strategy, how we're using data, signal versus noise – we then have an opportunity to clean out the bad stuff in our system that isn't providing value and add what could provide value. And then, if we still need more money, go for it!

Until then, you know... we've seen a pretty amazing car company out there that had hundreds of projects in R&D, and engineers are spread thin. So many things they're chasing. But when you got back down to: "What does the customer really need out of your car?" a lot of those projects weren't even relevant. And cutting down tons of those projects to create capacity so they could focus on what the value in their new product line would actually provide the customer.

So, it's really a mindset issue on this one. It can be humbling. And it's hard to say, "I don't know. I'm not sure how to do that." But, I think that's where the opportunity is... "I don’t know, this feels uncertain, this feels uncomfortable, but I am going to at least be open to the possibility that I don't know all the answers and there's more I could do with the resources I have."

Rachel Salaman: Now you close your book with four questions to help organizations avoid "decorating the fish."

The key question here I thought was, "What blocks the organization from achieving its goal?" (You've just talked about goals.) You're talking about things like measures, beliefs, policies, rules. Do you have any tips for identifying the blockage?

Kristen Cox: I think one distinction here, for me, that's important is... there's a big difference between achieving a goal and eliminating a problem.

Eliminating a problem is about: "Something we know about and we don't like." But achieving a goal: "I have to think about what I'm not doing. What's missing? What information – product line, customer value – do I not know about?"

So, first of all, you have to have a goal. And the goal has to be: "What do we give?" not "What do we get?"

So, when we see organizations chasing earnings per share, it's very inward-focused. It's about, "What revenue do I get?" But when you change the goal to: "What am I going to give?" that's the first step in understanding... "What's the limitation I can remove for the customer?"

And when we keep going back to that, we have a fighting chance of finding it. And all of these administrative functions of data and technology become very secondary... until we can understand, "What's the goal for the customer? What's blocking them from achieving the goal?"

I keep going back to my heritage on this one, but... there's a school for the blind, serving kids. And the school is setting up this new building (they've got funding for a new building). And they do really well in terms of professionals who are serving kids who are very young – preschool kids, kindergarten kids – you know, very young kids.

Some of these kids, they still have some vision. So their focus, their strategy and all of their thinking has been, "How do we paint lines on the floor that are really bright, so if they have any remaining vision, they can see it? And how do I put big things on the door so the kids can feel it or see it and know where to go?"

And that sounds great, right? This really cool environment for young kids and it's very innovative, and they can feel very innovative about their product and everything. But is that really the goal? Is the goal for these kids to have an environment that they're completely safe [in] and have no challenges?

The reality is... that's not how the world is designed. The world hasn't got painted stripes on the sidewalks and big tactile things you can touch any time you go into a new office building. That's not how the world is.

So, when I understand that... when I understand the goal is to help these kids be independent... not for me to feel good as a professional... but my goal is to help these kids become independent. Then I have to think about what's blocking those kids from being independent... anywhere in the world, they can be independent wherever they go. That's a very different discussion.

So, it sounds so simple... but know your goal for your customer. And this is true in product design. It's true for R&D. It's true for value. You see some of the biggest companies over time losing profit share... GE [General Electric Company], IBM. They started focusing on what they're going to get, not what they're going to give. And I think that's where we can all lose our way. And then we can't even discover the real limitation, because we're focused on the wrong goal.

Rachel Salaman: And perhaps, while we're on the topic of your heritage (as you called it), I just wonder, how much did your blindness inform everything that's gone into this book? And I'm thinking particularly of the subtitle, "Which Solutions to Ignore and Which Problems Really Matter." Did your blindness inform that at all?

Kristen Cox: Yeah. I mean, I think it has in some big ways. I think... One: you learn (I learned as a blind person) that a lot of the things in this world are kind of made up. And having to question core assumptions is a really important mindset that I learned and was grateful to learn from some mentors. Because our organizations – our products – are by-products of how we think. And if we can't think clearly or if we can't question these assumptions that we hold true for a very long period of time, it's very difficult to create the lives we want to create.

I think I also learned that... I had a lot of professionals at the time try to help me use more of the vision. I had some remaining vision. (I have a little bit left but it's not useful anymore.) But, at the time, you know, I could read large print or magnifying glasses. And it was always about helping me do more of what I had.

So, more magnifying glasses, these textbooks that were 26 volumes that I was trying to haul around the campus with a rolling cart. And they were maximizing what they knew... which was my remaining vision. And I don't blame them for that, you know, I understand their intentions were good. But that strategy was so detrimental to my long-term independence. You know, it would take me an hour just to read one page in a book with a magnifying glass, with eye fatigue. And actually, at one point, I started thinking I was stupid, like "What's wrong with me... I can't keep up in class?"

When people helped me understand that my mindset was the problem, and that a lack of something... We always think a lack of something is the problem, right? A lack of data, a lack of strategy, a lack of technology... When people thought the lack of vision was the problem and to maximize whatever vision I had left, I was stuck!

But when the mind shift changed... it's like you can get information many different ways. I don't have to see it... I can feel it, I can hear it, I can touch it. There's many ways to get information. When that changed for me, it really opened up my life.

And, as a blind person, I walk into a room and I don't see where the chairs are or the tables and there's a lot of uncertainty. But, I learned from some mentors that the opportunity is when we walk through the uncertainty... when we walk through what we don't know. And when you take a step, you may bump into a table, but now I know it's there. And the biggest breakthroughs happen when we don't stand on what we know but when we dare to question everything we know, so we can achieve a different goal.

Rachel Salaman: Kristen Cox, thanks very much for joining us today.

Kristen Cox: Rachel, it was a total pleasure. Thank you so much.

Rachel Salaman: We were talking about the second edition of, "Stop Decorating the Fish: Which Solutions to Ignore and Which Problems Really Matter," by Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Mind Tools Expert Interview from Emerald Works. Until then, goodbye.