From Brittle to Resilient: A Practical Example

Alpha Contractors** is a small company near Richmond, Virginia. They employ 5-6 skilled fixers or handymen who do home improvements that are more complex than do-it-yourself (DIY) jobs, but too small, unique, or varied to justify hiring your own team of specialists.

Like me, they are “Practical Generalists.”

They’re quite busy.

In fact, when I spoke with the owner Sam, he said, "It's hard to keep up. We schedule work six days per week, every week." 

That’s a “brittle” situation. If anything goes wrong, everything goes wrong.

And it did.

On a Monday when two of his handymen were scheduled to come work at my house…it rained.

They couldn’t work for any part of that day. We had to reschedule. I expected they would just come back the next day, or maybe later that week.

“Unfortunately, the soonest we can come out again will be two weeks from now,” Sam told me. 

"What? Why?” I replied. 

 Since every day for the next two weeks was already booked solid, they had to put me at the “back of the line” on their first unscheduled day… two weeks down the road. 

I was frustrated, of course. But instead of complaining, blaming, or judging, I applied what I know about Human Reliability. Specifically, the concept of “Resilience" came to mind.

“Sam, it sounds like delays like this happen a lot. Weather… people being sick… materials not arriving in time, etc. And it’s costing you a lot. You often pay overtime for your fixers to do catch up work on Sunday. You refund angry customers (like I could have been). And since your team is rushing to catch up every week, the quality of your work sinks and so does your company’s reputation. That’s a bad feedback loop you’ve gotten into.”

Sam said, “That’s all true, but you can’t plan for rainy days two weeks in advance, right?”

I said, “Well, here’s a different way of looking at it… and a practical idea you can try out. Yes, it’s true, each delay itself is unexpected, but on average, you can pretty much depend on losing about… one day per week to unexpected events, right? So what would happen if you only scheduled work on five days each week (not six)?" 

“That wouldn’t be efficient,” Sam replied.

I said, “But how inefficient are you right now because of all the rework, overtime, complaints, and refunds?"

Sam thought for a moment, then replied, “Hmmm… So you’re saying deliberately keep one day per week open, like maybe every Thursday, then any rain days, sick days, or other delays we can immediately make up on those Thursdays?"

He thought out loud, "Hmmm... my team and I could figure out together how to make this work in terms of scheduling, pay, etc. But I already know they’ll appreciate less stress, less time pressure, and a more predictable schedule. My customers will definitely like the quicker response to unexpected events. And my life will surely get easier too."

Yeah... this could really work!" Sam realized.

I said, “You got it. Think of each Thursday as a “resource-in-reserve”*** that allows you to be more… flexible, adaptable, and resilient."

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So, how can you apply the "resource-in-reserve" strategy to your work or home life to enjoy some of the same benefits that Sam got?

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**A made-up name for a real company

***Some call this “Adaptive Capacity"