Here is this week's book recommendation. The dip, from Seth Godin. A short book with lots of insights. Don't expect answers in the book. The questions and the mental model described in this book will stick with you - and that is the greatness of it.
Shortcuts are tempting. Everyone wants a “low effort, high payout” project to do. These projects do exist, but are rare and usually non replicable. Because things that payout are really hard.
If you are doing a tech product, then you probably have a wicked problem at hand now.
In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.
These problems are never solved with quick tactics. There's no shortcut. But the payout is exponential if you face the problem and act on it for long enough. Consistently showing up with a solution and iterating to get it better.
But human nature goes against consistency. We are wired for favoring immediate results - what behavioral economists call hyperbolic discounting.
Great innovation come from consistency. Looking from the outside they may look like a breakthrough. In fact, good fortune rewards consistent work.
Betting on lucky isn’t nearly as productive as simply establishing a platform where you can benefit from the occasional arrival of good fortune. - Seth Godin
There are three ingredients to keep teams consistently in search for the best solution for a problem, triggering innovation.
Build a resilient culture
Aim for short-term rewards into a long-term goal
Have clear rules about when to quit
Resilient culture
The most difficult thing about being consistent is to keep people motivated when results are not immediate. It seems like going nowhere.
Therefore, the first ingredient for a team to be consistent in their effort is resiliency. And for that to happen, culture must reinforce committing to a path versus flipping projects.
Humans act in group. If your group only values quick results, there will be no incentive for long-term commitment. However, if your peers help each other to stick within a path, then even when things seem to be going sideways people tend to stick.
But this ingredient alone can lead to dumb stubbornness. Being consistent is not about being rigid. It is about sticking to a problem and to a method (or platform) to solve something because it’s worth it.
Short-term signaling
A good method for being consistent is fast iteration. Have a clear method to test a solution and measure the result. Since requirements are often difficult or impossible to grasp from the outside (remember, it's a wicked problem), you need ways to get inside the problem with a small solution that you'd be OK if it fails. This helps in finding out more about the requirements, scope the problem and finding better solutions in time.
Having short-term results that are pretty much negligible looking for above is better than having no results. So, a smart tactics to keep a team engaged is to spend some extra effort to test an incomplete solution and have insignificant results - even failures. That will (i) satisfy human needs for short-term results; (ii) help you (in)validate a path.
But sometimes, short-term insights may be misleading. A team may get really involved to a problem and oversee that they are taking a dead-end path.
Know when to quit
Teams will always doubt if their solution is still worth pursuing. This doubt often leads to a cognitive load that may derail the whole motivation.
So, before starting something, it is great to have clear rules or thresholds to define when to quit. At every iteration, review it. It may be a maximum budget to spend, a metric that you are looking at (for exemple: adoption, retention) or a time span.
Sometimes it is best to have someone outside the project to evaluate it and give a new perspective - it is easy to miss some points when you are engaged with a problem.
Also, the culture must foster and celebrate quitting. To quit is the only way to start over a new promising direction and to use resources better. Being consistent at something that has no value is a waste.
Always be curious.
Thanks for reading