Leadership Lesson: Know what you want to optimize for

One reason change efforts fail is because they fail to start with one simple question

What are we optimizing for?

You see, there are many ways to run a business

There are even more ways you can organize your teams

Each has their benefits and drawbacks and in the end it’s all about trade-offs

Most optimize a certain way because that’s what they’ve always done

Some because it seemed like the best approach at the time

Now they want to change

But that change might conflict with their current optimization approach

As leaders, we need to be intentional about how we want to optimize our business

What Do We Mean By Optimize?

Everyone wants to optimize for everything, but that’s not possible

Even then we have to recognize that certain optimizations are in conflict

Here are some examples of things we could optimize for:

• Flow

• Quality

• Remote work

• Most Revenue

• Customer delight

• Shareholder value

• Team collaboration

• Keeping people busy

• Hiring the best from around the world

• Making sure people can work on their specialties

I’m sure you could come up with many more

Did you notice anything?

While we’d like to have everything on the list, in some cases it's impossible

Let’s take a look

Optimizing and Trade-Offs

Let’s say you want to make sure everyone is always busy

After all, no one wants bored employees and you don’t want to be paying people to sit around

So you make sure that everyone always has work to do

And you want to make sure everyone can work in their area of expertise

We have to make sure our

• Data Scientists always have Data Scientist tasks

• Designers always have design tasks

• DBA’s always have DBA tasks

• Etc.

But does every project have exactly the right amount of each task for each role?

What if we also wanted to optimize for team collaboration?

Can you see some of the challenges?

What about if we optimized for flow?

We know that to achieve flow there will have to be some slack in the system

If that’s true, then everyone can’t be busy all the time

Here’s another example

Let’s say instead you decide you want to optimize for Remote Work

Turns out, it’s not as simple as signing up for Zoom

If you had optimized for on-site Team Collaboration, you’ll need to make more changes

Even then, you may find that you don’t get the same level of collaboration you had before

If your process included interacting with your customer, how will you replicate that?

You also want to take advantage of the benefits of how you’re optimized

If you’re optimizing for remote work, you should take advantage of the larger talent pool you have access to

Likewise, if you’re moving from remote to on-site, you’re limiting yourself to the local talent pool

Being Intentional About Your Approach

Before Covid, there were still a lot of businesses that were hesitant about remote work

I was working with a company optimized for on-site collaboration

This arrangement was fine for most teams, but one team wanted to work remote

They had buy-in for some trials, but the results weren’t great

When I had chance to work with them it was clear why

They decided each team member could work remote up to 3 days a week

The result was some team members would be in the office while others were remote

Every meeting was a disaster

There were on-site and remote workers struggling to communicate over crappy conference phone systems

They couldn’t do any of the activities you might do in an on-site working session

That meant no whiteboards, post-its, etc

But they also weren’t using remote collaboration tools like Zoom and Miro

They gave themselves the worst of both worlds

After working with them, they moved to having team on-site days and remote days

This meant when they were remote, they were all remote and could optimize for that approach

They also explored the tools and equipment they would need to make remote work a success

Living With Trade-Offs

One company I worked with did nothing but fight fires

Things never got out the door

Everyone was always busy

When I started working with them we focused on optimizing for flow

Now, they were delivering more than ever, without the fires

But, one executive was struggling

He walked the floor and remarked

"But they don't feel busy"

Different optimization strategies are going to feel different

They were able to get things done sooner because people weren’t always busy

You have less frenetic energy, less chaos, and more getting done

It’s going to look a lot calmer than what you’re used to

It’s easy to look at that and feel like people are slacking off

You have to be able to show results in metrics that measure against what you’re optimizing for

What About The Specialists?

Sometimes you need a very specific skill in your business

A skill that requires a deep level of expertise

And so you hire a specialist

Someone skilled in one area

But you don’t have enough work for them

When you need them they have plenty to do

But when you don’t, what do you do?

You could optimize for the specialists

You would have to find work that only they can do

Of course, there’s rarely work that they can do in isolation

Other people will have to work with them to deliver the work

Those people could be doing other more important work

And if you’re trying to find work for them, it’s likely that work isn’t that high in value

See The New Model of Scaling for more on this problem

What else could we do?

We could

• Hire contract workers when you have the work

• Train other team members in the skills of the specialist

• Have our specialists learn new skills that are more generally applicable

Choose the approach that aligns with what you are optimizing for

Open Source Projects Look Different For A Reason

Open Source projects were not optimized like traditional businesses

Formed by volunteers around the world, they had a different set of challenges

• No formal hierarchy

• Many were anonymous

• Volunteers could come and go

• Commit as much or as little as they wanted

• Worked different schedules in different time zones

• Need to communicate decisions and have transparency

Facing these challenges, they developed tools and approaches that optimized their situation

Today there are many businesses that contribute and run Open Source projects

They still adhere to and respect the original optimization model

What To Do About It?

You need to understand what your business is optimizing for

Not only that, everyone in the company needs to understand it

Here’s an exercise you can run to get intentional about your optimization approach

Create 4 columns

Neutral - Not Optimizing For - Optimizing For - Needs Discussion

Pre-load the neutral list with some of the suggestions we’ve discussed here

Have the participants add any others they are aware of or see happening in the company

Let participants know that in the end we can choose no more than 3 items to optimize for

Others might get benefits, but won’t be our focus

Each person takes one of the Neutral items and moves it to either “Not Optimizing For” or “Optimizing For”

When they do, they will say a brief 1-2 sentence reason why they feel it belongs in that category

When there are no more neutral items, participants can move any item to “Needs Discussion”

Go through each of those and have a short discussion

If there is clear consensus to move the item to “Not Optimizing For”, do that

Otherwise place the item under “Optimizing For”

Discuss any items that need discussion in the “Optimizing For” column

Dot Vote to find the top 3 in the “Optimizing For” list

Share your results with your teams

Then What?

Now that you have an idea of what you are optimizing for, make sure your changes are in alignment

If not, you may need to look at a different approach

If this has helped you, I’d appreciate if you would share this newsletter

Need some help?

Book an introductory call with me and let’s see if we’re a good fit for working together

https://calendly.com/toddcharron/introchat