The coffee survey results (Not what you think)

Does coffee dehydrate???

I posted this in a poll question last week on LinkedIn.? A better question may have been “Does drinking coffee dehydrate?”? (Thank you @ Matthew Mullen for your comment, it’s still not clear if you didn’t like the question, which was poorly worded, or that the answer was so obvious, it shouldn’t have been asked.)? Setting aside my unscientific poll and poorly worded question, the point of last Wednesday’s seemingly random survey was to make a comparison to a broader point:??

“The biggest risks to businesses are not the things they don’t know, the biggest risks to businesses are the things they THINK they know, but don’t”?

We all walk around with knowledge. The longer it stays without being refuted, the more likely it is to become permanent. Even after the source of that knowledge has long been forgotten, (if it was ever known in the first place).? What are all the things you KNOW?? How many things do you dismiss out of hand because you already know the answer?? More importantly, if you lead people, how many ideas are prevented from coming to you because your employees “already know” what you are going to say?? The biggest risks to businesses are not the things they don't know, the biggest risks to businesses are the things they think they know, but don't. ??

These unwritten mandates are called orthodoxies. They act as rules of the game at all organizations and we probably couldn't function without them. Often, however, there is significant value in flipping them (doing the opposite), especially if they are widespread across your industry.? It's probably not helpful to just start doing the opposite of conventional wisdom at your work place, but a little bit of brainstorming might help you develop a more productive and innovative solution to some long standing problems.? Over time, that openness to outside thought might actually change your culture.

This short article from peer insight? titled: Design Thinking Ideation Technique: Challenging Orthodoxies might help.? It doesn’t go very deep, but the concept is pretty powerful.? They suggest:????

1. State a fact or assumption about your industry or problem
2. Ask yourself why the above is true? Should you challenge it?
3. Now answer, what would be the opposite of that assumption?
4. Create possibilities based off this new idea

Here is a practical example:??

I once worked with a pre-employment screening company.? One of the challenges was the delay in getting candidate reports back.? Background checks in the United States are controlled by more than 4000 different counties and municipalities across the country based on where the candidate lived in the past - each with a different process!? There is no way to know by candidate what locations needed to be run before the check was initiated, because that first report was required to define the candidate locations. It was impossible to know when a report was going to be delayed until it was not received on time. “On time” was often variable and meant when the customer needed it (whenever that might be!)??

The conventional wisdom was to provide an average days to deliver metric, I mean, obviously we couldn’t control how 4000 different municipalities operated! ? The standard was to inform the customer after it had gone past that average. The customer was already aware of the delay, so unfortunately, it really wasn't that helpful.?

After following the Orthodoxy process listed above with a few variations, we developed individual averages by municipality (the data were already available).?We could then give customers advanced warning almost immediately after initiating the report, once we knew the locations that needed to be checked on a particular candidate. That information was returned in milliseconds. Customers received advanced warning that the report might be delayed based on the locations being researched, instead of getting an alert after the report was already delayed. Turns out, this advanced warning is what customers needed.?The real problem wasn’t so much the delay, it was getting a call from the hiring manager wondering why they couldn’t make an offer.? The advanced warning all but eliminated these complaints (and reduced contact volume).? We also added internal alerts so WE were aware of unanticipated delays before our clients and could start taking action before they even knew there was a problem.

We all know drinking coffee dehydrates you....

As for the long awaited results of the poll.? There were 3300 views of my poll. ? 36% of the significantly fewer respondents said YES - coffee dehydrates.? Again, this isn’t scientific, but honestly, I would have thought the % to be higher. ? We all know drinking coffee dehydrates you!??

But in reality, this isn’t true.??

According to Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D. of the Mayo Clinic:

“Drinking caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle doesn't cause fluid loss in excess of the volume ingested. While caffeinated drinks may have a mild diuretic effect — meaning that they may cause the need to urinate — they don't appear to increase the risk of dehydration.”

Suggestion for the day.? Try to identify how many times you react from a place of deep seeded known knowledge, but don’t actually know.? It may help you when you start to face an old problem that doesn’t have an answer… based on what you know…

About the author: Daniel Hoesing is the creator of the Predictive Customer Behavior Index? assessment, a tool used in assessing Customer Success capabilities of SaaS, ecommerce and subscription based organizations, that is indexed specifically for the size of the organization, and the Predictive Customer Behavior Playbook? a tool used to create Customer Success playbooks, policies and procedures for companies with limited Customer Success infrastructure or no formal process.? Please reach out to him for more information Daniel Hoesing on LinkedIn