The combination of focus and limited time produces impeccable work. It generates the momentum to craft a signal among the noise of fake urgencies.
A developer team with a block time of focus could build the next piece of art to push the product forward. A leader can concentrate on envisioning the next company jump. To engage with these flow moments, we learn how to manage distractions.
Today, we understand the consequences of interruptions and multitasking when building something. But, there is a big boss here, like the final boss of our favorite video game: optimization.
What does optimization mean?
We start clarifying that something that doesn’t work requires a fix.
We can optimize when a degree of results already exists.
A dictionary definition of optimization is to use a resource in the best and most efficient way.
Constantly applying that definition could create the most dangerous zone for growth because you bet that an improvement will occur again, like in a casino. You invest hours in a row, compromising your energy and money, gaining a sense of progress.
Over time, optimization became your focus, losing the vision to spot valuable opportunities. This kind of entropy starts to produce unexpected and particular shapes of “improvements”.
Shape #1 Avoidance: Optimization could be a mechanism to avoid elimination.
Every company has a culture that influences people’s interactions and decisions. It’s integrated with rules that refer to “here is how things work”.
With this context, let’s explore this shape with an example:
One person is acting like a pinball trying to arrive at a unified solution in a company structured in silos. This requires isolated meetings because people “don’t talk” between areas. Plus, the extra component of the limited time available. When the meeting is happening, achieving something in 60 minutes seems impossible.
With that pressure, the person increases their persuasion skills, agency, and “productivity”. But, is it this kind of behavior that we want to normalize?
Another example:
You often see people in meetings taking notes because the decision-maker is absent. When will the note-takers have the meeting with the decider? How many times will the original message change by then? How many hours of back-and-forth and clarification will the absence of a decision cost? How many commitments are already taken to have time to focus on this new one?
After the meeting ends, note-takers travel to the decision-maker’s place. Imagine an organizational chart like a map, and the person walks with a compass. The mission is to find where requirements will get prioritized. Now multiply this example by a horde of people looking for a decision.
On this journey, people develop impressive sales and accuracy skills, among others. However, is this an accurate model of decision-making based on business ambition, and are these behaviors correlated with real progress?
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These cases are forms of optimization based on unconscious avoidance. That is, instead of eliminating what is non-functional, optimizations are everywhere around it. What could happen if the company’s structure facilitates faster agreements in less time? How can the key decision-maker have an organizational space to go instead of people going after them? What if leadership focused on discovering your company’s growth model instead of side capabilities?
Shape #2 Overdoing: Optimizations can extend working hours by sacrificing quality and freedom.
Organizations have a lengthy process to change when someone detects a dysfunction. Until this happens, more manpower is doing the job on inefficient trails. In consequence, people are very busy with full agendas and working late. A space to reflect on what is happening at the roots will be available when the endless work is complete.
Overdoing causes a lack of reflection to cut or transform part of a process. This prevents higher quality production, time to scale, and freedom to implement.
When a process is over-optimized, it counterintuitively becomes untouchable.
More time and freedom for some companies could be a problem because it sounds “weird”. It is associated with high performers who create ways to produce more with less. But, if “being busy” is the norm, more space in agendas generates guilt and judgment of not working enough.
Also, this dynamic produces a kind of paralysis of action. A space created means that anyone could schedule more work and pointless optimizations.
Overdoing has different opinions; for me, there is a misunderstanding with business ambition. The problem is not workload or multitasking, which is one of the main causes of a slow business. It is the speed to detect at the right time what needs to be eliminated, rather than letting optimization happen. For this, we need official organizational time to reflect on what it is doing.
Ten years ago, a company could be years behind schedule on a project, fail to deliver, and still be alive. Today, I have doubts that this can happen.
Shape #3 Blindness: Optimization could lead outside of the real growth.
Think of the Pareto 20/80 rule, according to which 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. As results are based on past actions, the invitation is to focus on finding new ways to amplify them. This is where the phrase ‘achieving more with less’ was born.
We can apply the same term as a scaling/optimizing rule.
For example, every year, a company decides which business, products, or services to market. When scaling is a priority, it defines where a new way of working is necessary. It means an opportunity to achieve results that the company has never known. This separation prevents slowing down or blocking the company’s progress.
In this context, the proper way to work with optimization is by subtraction. Otherwise, you are generating more work and unnecessary competition for resources. You could provoke that real growth could be lost in the fog of poorer optimizations.
Optimizations can noisily cover up your best signal to growth.
Elimination is key; it’s the switch divider between the scaling and the optimizations. It allows to redirect the resources where the company could scale.
Scale demands entering into a season of elimination. It shows a clear path to stop doing what no longer works and rethink the business growth model.
What does scale mean?
It’s a concept that sounds familiar and intuitive. In time, it became very attached to frameworks. Also, it seems to be a philosophy that fits the rapid change capabilities demanded today.
When you apply it, it’s a punch to your mind, it’s not about the cocky offer to use AI or looking for endless tools for scale. It is digging into your core paradigm of thinking to change it at the root.
To simplify my explanation, I’m going to use a practical example:
When a person or a team has a challenge, they go through 3 waves of experience over time:
- Certainty: An action we know, and results can be forecast.
- Uncertainty: An action we hypothesize as correct, and the results are probabilistic.
- Chaos: An action we struggle with, and the result is unknown.
This graph depicts the 3 lines to explain each in isolation, but in reality, they work together. Part of that reality is that no one can stay permanently on the same wave for a long time:
• A world with constant certainty no longer exists.
• Endless uncertainty will lead to an up/certainty or down/chaos at any moment.
• Living in chaos generates a level of stress that is unsustainable in time.
So, the reality is more like this one. A challenge could depart from any level. But, as humans, we build certainty to move forward, and we also destroy our certainty to explore new paths.
The way we navigate these challenges is through standards. Standards are rules that we add or drop to achieve something. While some rules could keep us in the same place, others could lead us to real growth.
Let’s see simple examples:
Imagine you wake up every day at 11 AM because you set this rule for yourself. One day, you investigate your chronotype and stuff that helps to regulate your energy. After that, you decide to start your day at 5 AM.
In this case, you add this new rule and decide to start the next day at 5 AM. You want this change regardless of any approach or suggestion you have heard before. You start from chaos, and it takes 2 or 3 days of struggle to build certainty and stabilize your new standard. Both rules, wake up at 11 AM or 5 AM, couldn’t exist at the same time. The impact of messing with those (even weekends) will stop the growth you are looking for yourself.
Next example:
A new project in a company needs several meetings to clarify the requirements. You only have 60 minutes per encounter because it is added to everyone’s agenda. Also, you have 20 people in each meeting, and you don’t have a clear picture of who makes the decision.
One day, you take the time to understand the current meeting rules and decide to subtract one. You cut the rule: “Everyone who doesn’t make a decision can come”. This decision brought to the surface the rule that it remains: ‘Only those who make the decisions get there’.
You propose and communicate this change to the people involved. You clarify that it could provoke uncertainty or chaos because it is new. You also emphasize that this subtraction will speed up each meeting and even simplify it.
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Those are simple examples that seek to understand the essence of scaling. Going deeper will lead to new questions and challenges, which are referring to the same thing:
The rules are based on a paradigm that isn’t functional for your results.
Scaling does not have a magic pill to mask the struggle for real change. It’s simple, sometimes crude, and puts in the center those who make change, humans. Remember:
Optimization can squeeze every drop of value, but when results plateau, you must scale.
Scaling leads to exponential results as you transform yourself and your business.
The first question to ask yourself is: How do I transform my paradigm thinking in this challenge?
After answering it, you choose or create the frameworks that fit your new identity and business.
Thank you for reading.
Julián.-