THE GLITCH FIXER

BE PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE ILLUSION!

 In tough economic times, it’s essential that organizations spend their money in ways that will deliver tangible and measurable benefits. Few would argue with this statement, yet many organizations fall into a trap I call “The Solution Illusion”. This trap is most prevalent when organizations are deciding where to allocate their hard-fought budget.

 The Solution Illusion occurs when organizations buy into some kind of solution (perhaps an IT system, or an outsourcing contract) without fully understanding the problem or business need that they are trying to address. Without a thorough understanding of the problem domain, it’s almost impossible to maximize the potential benefits. This leads to projects and initiatives that get canceled and projects that don’t deliver the expected benefits. In a worst-case scenario, an organization may end up implementing an expensive solution or IT system that is far more complex than it needs, yet still does not resolve the organization's issues.

The Solution Illusion often results in people and organizations assuming that because something is expensive, enticing, and “en vogue” that it must be an improvement that will solve just about any conceivable problem. There are many real-life examples of The Solution Illusion occurring in organizations large and small.  Take the well-publicized example of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) IT Care Record project, which was initiated to provide nationwide electronic access to patient records. 

 A National Audit Office (NAO) report from May 2011 implies that the original project had not taken adequate consideration of the local business requirements/capacity, and talks about additional customization being required and disagreement with suppliers over substantial “new requirements” during the project. A likely cause of this situation is that the problem domain was not fully understood at the outset, leading to misunderstandings about what functionality would be delivered. Could this be a real-world example of The Solution Illusion in practice? Either way, the resulting report makes a sobering read, “we conclude that the ￡2.7 billion spent on care records systems so far does not represent value for money, and we do not find grounds for confidence that the remaining planned spend of ￡4.3 billion will be different.”

 At the time of writing, an official statement has been made confirming that the program will be dismantled as “it is not fit to provide the modern IT services that the NHS needs.” What does that mean? This quote, and variations of it, shows up attributed to a couple of people, including as an African Proverb, but the longer version is his and goes as follows:

‘There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem. ’This is one of the duality quotes where you are sorted into one of two camps. The solution camp and the problem camp,

The question is: Can you sit on the sidelines, or does not helping make you part of the problem? Not every problem requires all-hands-on-deck, but I think far too many do too little. In hindsight, the Trump election, and to a lesser degree, also the Brexit vote, served as a huge wake-up call for our industry. What happened since felt as if reality broke into our neatly sealed-off digital world. It is a classic case of systemic shock. Externalities caused by the digital industry have gotten so big and troublesome that they no longer can be ignored. People stand up and voice their concerns.

Let’s for example take disruption, one of the poster-boy brainchildren of Silicon Valley. At first, what gets disrupted are outdated business models and yesteryear’s technologies. Digital improves the customer experience and delivers more value for less money. New jobs are created, and some people lose their jobs, as it’s always the case when new technologies arrive and older ones disappear.

But after a while, disruption enters other areas, like politics, or the physical world. Now it is our political system that gets disrupted, by Brexit or by a president who viciously uses Twitter not only to win the election but also to speak directly to the unwashed masses and to political leaders all over the world. It is a bit surprising that so far only Facebook gets blamed for this, while Twitter seems to get away with it.

 In the physical sphere, you see retail space shrinking, cab services and accommodation disrupted, or the entire automotive and transportation industry shook up. The first serious doubts appear. Is digital really the Holy Grail? Do we really want everything turned into a digital product? Should the whole world be taken over by nerds, who seem to be drunk on such power?

At this point, disruption turns into a power struggle. Old power fights back. Now there are two options: New power can pick up the gauntlet and start to fight. That’s a war the digital squad will probably lose, with dramatic results and massive losses. But not very unlikely.

Facebook increasingly looks like a battleship on a collision course with a lighthouse, which still tries to persuade the lighthouse to change direction. Not going to happen. Facebook will inevitably crash or change its course. Crash means that Facebook literally gets deleted. The #DeleteFacebook campaign would end up with the deletion of Facebook itself, not only of a few user accounts.

Would you like that outcome? Perhaps one of the most disturbing long-term problems for Facebook is that more and more people seem to like the prospect of deleting Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg might assume his company being too big to fail, but what would society really lose if Facebook went under? Not much, I fear.

Besides fighting a war, the other option is always peace negotiations. That’s more likely to happen than a full-blown war. In this scenario, externalities will somehow be reintegrated into the digital system. Disruption, for example, will be limited, one way or another. Incentives for Facebook or Twitter to further disrupt the political system will be minimized.

Things like that have already occurred. Uber lost some ground in Germany as well as other countries, and also in Texas, at least for a while. Airbnb got severely limited in Berlin, with a law that only recently was loosened a bit. The EU General Data Protection Regulation will shake up the digital marketing sphere and adjacent areas.

 To fix digital, the industry needs to become aware of its negative side effects and enter into negotiations with the non-digital world about what’s tolerable or even desirable and what’s not. This isn’t going to be easy, and it will probably set some limits for people who don’t like to be limited in their ambitions.

But hey, you can only change the world so far as the world accepts to be changed. If the world considers a problem what you think is a solution, than either convinces the world that your solution is not a problem, continue to be part of the problem, or be part of the solution.

Avoiding the Solution Illusion

 As management and business change professionals, it’s important that we take the opportunity to step back, understand and define the problem domain, long before we examine potential solutions. We need to work collaboratively to avoid knee-jerk reactions that don’t actually address the underlying business need. And sometimes we must slow down and reflect before we speed up to deliver.

This is one area where the tools and techniques from the world of Business Analysis can add a huge amount of value. These tools will help us understand the problem in terms of the process, people, and organization. In many cases, we can get from ‘alleged’ solution to ‘actual’ problem by asking a series of questions. In some cases, it could be as simple as asking “why” several times until the underlying business need is elicited. In more complex cases, it might be necessary to employ more rigorous and structured techniques.

However, you proceed, asking robust, challenging, and analytical questions upfront to help the project team to understand the business value and customer value that is required. This measure of business and customer value should be used throughout the project to guide scope. It informs the business case and ensures that everyone (From the Project Team to the End User, to the Sponsor) understands the problem that is being solved. And once the business value and the business benefits of the project are understood, it is much easier to build a compelling business case.

Projects and initiatives that fall for The Solution Illusion have a higher risk of failure. They might well deliver on time, and on budget, but if the problem was never understood, what are the odds of it being solved?

Why is doing something important? 

Doing something is important. But doing just any old thing isn’t usually very helpful. So there will be a time for reflection, a time of observation and planning before useful action can commence. Sometimes, we know what to do because we’ve seen it before, that’s fine.

However the random action, the “But I’m doing something” is usually counterproductive. Look at knee-jerk politics. An emergency occurs. There is some useful reaction, but then the opportunists descend like vultures, ready to exploit the event for their own purposes. Instead, the more productive work is typically done by examining the needs and thinking about how to best fill them. While it can get complicated with special needs or odd circumstances (such as a storm, where roads and power are out, but food needs to be moved, stored, and prepared), a little planning goes a long way.

While there are new ‘problems’ surfacing all the time, many are extensions of known problems, or at least sufficiently similar to existing ones that we have a clue as to what we have to do. That is why some people spend their lives finding patterns in solutions.

Where can I apply this in my life?

There are problems in all of our lives. There are plenty of problems in our local and national governments. There are plenty of problems in the world. Where do you want to start?

 I would recommend it in your personal life, but it is your choice, right? One thing that makes this difficult is that not everyone sees something as a problem. To some, it may be exactly as it should be. Then you have people who agree that something should be done but want to do the exact opposite of what you wish to do. And there are those who wish the exact same end as you but believe a different path will solve it more quickly or easily.

So one way to minimize these issues is to start with yourself. Hopefully, you can come to a conclusion regarding the status of something as a problem or not. Also, you should be able to determine both the direction to take and the proper path to get there, right? What are some of the problems in your life? I know, that’s a really heavy question, but by doing nothing, are you part of the solution, or part of the problem? At least start by thinking about the problems in your life, and making a list. Grab some paper and get busy.

With a list of some of the issues in your life in front of you, put a mark next to the most significant challenges you face in the next few months. Two or three should be a good start, as you can always come back for more challenges at a later date, right?

Select one and consider this: You know where you are, but where do you want to be? If you have a money shortage, you would select a different solution if you were just a few dollars short compared to being a few thousand dollars short, right? Think about that for a moment. Now try to figure out which direction you want to go. What is the solution, in the broadest terms? In the money example, do you cut spending, find a new source of income, some of both, or do you rob a bank? Be honest with yourself regarding what you are willing and able to use as the solution.

Now consider what the actual path might be, or come up with several options, in case the first one doesn’t work out as well as you hoped. Going back to the money issue, can you get more hours at work? Can you get a second job? Can you make things on the side to sell at garage sales? You have identified a problem, and come up with some ideas on how to solve, or at least reduce, the problem. But until you take action, are you really part of the solution? So now it is time to get busy. Pick one of your options and get started.

  BE PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE ILLUSION!

In tough economic times, it’s essential that organizations spend their money in ways that will deliver tangible and measurable benefits. Few would argue with this statement, yet many organizations fall into a trap I call “The Solution Illusion”. This trap is most prevalent when organizations are deciding where to allocate their hard-fought budget.

 The Solution Illusion occurs when organizations buy into some kind of solution (perhaps an IT system, or an outsourcing contract) without fully understanding the problem or business need that they are trying to address. Without a thorough understanding of the problem domain, it’s almost impossible to maximize the potential benefits. This leads to projects and initiatives that get canceled and projects that don’t deliver the expected benefits. In a worst-case scenario, an organization may end up implementing an expensive solution or IT system that is far more complex than it needs, yet still does not resolve the organization's issues.

The Solution Illusion often results in people and organizations assuming that because something is expensive, enticing, and “en vogue” that it must be an improvement that will solve just about any conceivable problem. There are many real-life examples of The Solution Illusion occurring in organizations large and small.  Take the well-publicized example of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) IT Care Record project, which was initiated to provide nationwide electronic access to patient records. 

 A National Audit Office (NAO) report from May 2011 implies that the original project had not taken adequate consideration of the local business requirements/capacity, and talks about additional customization being required and disagreement with suppliers over substantial “new requirements” during the project. A likely cause of this situation is that the problem domain was not fully understood at the outset, leading to misunderstandings about what functionality would be delivered. Could this be a real-world example of The Solution Illusion in practice? Either way, the resulting report makes a sobering read, “we conclude that the ￡2.7 billion spent on care records systems so far does not represent value for money, and we do not find grounds for confidence that the remaining planned spend of ￡4.3 billion will be different.”

 At the time of writing, an official statement has been made confirming that the program will be dismantled as “it is not fit to provide the modern IT services that the NHS needs.”

What does that mean? This quote, and variations of it, shows up attributed to a couple of people, including as an African Proverb, but the longer version is his and goes as follows:

‘There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem. ’This is one of the duality quotes where you are sorted into one of two camps. The solution camp and the problem camp,

The question is: Can you sit on the sidelines, or does not helping make you part of the problem? Not every problem requires all-hands-on-deck, but I think far too many do too little. In hindsight, the Trump election, and to a lesser degree, also the Brexit vote, served as huge wake-up call for our industry. What happened since felt as if reality broke into our neatly sealed-off digital world. It is a classic case of systemic shock. Externalities caused by the digital industry have gotten so big and troublesome that they no longer can be ignored. People stand up and voice their concerns.

Let’s for example take disruption, one of the poster-boy brainchildren of Silicon Valley. At first, what gets disrupted are outdated business models and yesteryear’s technologies. Digital improves the customer experience and delivers more value for less money. New jobs are created, and some people lose their jobs, as it’s always the case when new technologies arrive and older ones disappear.

But after a while, disruption enters other areas, like politics, or the physical world. Now it is our political system that gets disrupted, by Brexit or by a president who viciously uses Twitter not only to win the election but also to speak directly to the unwashed masses and to political leaders all over the world. It is a bit surprising that so far only Facebook gets blamed for this, while Twitter seems to get away with it.

 In the physical sphere, you see retail space shrinking, cab services and accommodation disrupted, or the entire automotive and transportation industry have shaken up. The first serious doubts appear. Is digital really the Holy Grail? Do we really want everything turned into a digital product? Should the whole world be taken over by nerds, who seem to be drunk on such power?

At this point, disruption turns into a power struggle. Old power fights back. Now there are two options: New power can pick up the gauntlet and start to fight. That’s a war the digital squad will probably lose, with dramatic results and massive losses. But not very unlikely.

Facebook increasingly looks like a battleship on a collision course with a lighthouse, which still tries to persuade the lighthouse to change direction. Not going to happen. Facebook will inevitably crash or change its course. Crash means that Facebook literally gets deleted. The #DeleteFacebook campaign would end up with the deletion of Facebook itself, not only of a few user accounts.

Would you like that outcome? Perhaps one of the most disturbing long-term problems for Facebook is that more and more people seem to like the prospect of deleting Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg might assume his company being too big to fail, but what would society really lose if Facebook went under? Not much, I fear.

Besides fighting a war, the other option is always peace negotiations. That’s more likely to happen than a full-blown war. In this scenario, externalities will somehow be reintegrated into the digital system. Disruption, for example, will be limited, one way or another. Incentives for Facebook or Twitter to further disrupt the political system will be minimized.

Things like that have already occurred. Uber lost some ground in Germany as well as other countries, and also in Texas, at least for a while. Airbnb got severely limited in Berlin, with a law that only recently was loosened a bit. The EU General Data Protection Regulation will shake up the digital marketing sphere and adjacent areas.

To fix digital, the industry needs to become aware of its negative side effects and enter into negotiations with the non-digital world about what’s tolerable or even desirable and what’s not. This isn’t going to be easy, and it will probably set some limits for people who don’t like to be limited in their ambitions.

But hey, you can only change the world so far as the world accepts to be changed. If the world considers a problem what you think is a solution, than either convinces the world that your solution is not a problem, continue to be part of the problem, or be part of the solution.

Avoiding the Solution Illusion

 As management and business change professionals, it’s important that we take the opportunity to step back, understand and define the problem domain, long before we examine potential solutions. We need to work collaboratively to avoid knee-jerk reactions that don’t actually address the underlying business need. And sometimes we must slow down and reflect before we speed up to deliver.

This is one area where the tools and techniques from the world of Business Analysis can add a huge amount of value. These tools will help us understand the problem in terms of the process, people, and organization. In many cases, we can get from ‘alleged’ solution to ‘actual’ problem by asking a series of questions. In some cases, it could be as simple as asking “why” several times until the underlying business need is elicited. In more complex cases, it might be necessary to employ more rigorous and structured techniques.

However, you proceed, asking robust, challenging, and analytical questions upfront to help the project team to understand the business value and customer value that is required. This measure of business and customer value should be used throughout the project to guide scope. It informs the business case and ensures that everyone (From the Project Team to the End User,  to the Sponsor) understands the problem that is being solved. And once the business value and the business benefits of the project are understood, it is much easier to build a compelling business case.

Projects and initiatives that fall for The Solution Illusion have a higher risk of failure. They might well deliver on time, and on budget, but if the problem was never understood, what are the odds of it being solved?

Why is doing something important? 

Doing something is important. But doing just any old thing isn’t usually very helpful. So there will be a time for reflection, a time of observation and planning before useful action can commence. Sometimes, we know what to do because we’ve seen it before, that’s fine.

However the random action, the “But I’m doing something” is usually counterproductive. Look at knee-jerk politics. An emergency occurs. There is some useful reaction, but then the opportunists descend like vultures, ready to exploit the event for their own purposes. Instead, the more productive work is typically done by examining the needs and thinking about how to best fill them. While it can get complicated with special needs or odd circumstances (such as a storm, where roads and power are out, but food needs to be moved, stored, and prepared), a little planning goes a long way.

While there are new ‘problems’ surfacing all the time, many are extensions of known problems, or at least sufficiently similar to existing ones that we have a clue as to what we have to do. That is why some people spend their lives finding patterns in solutions.

Where can I apply this in my life?

There are problems in all of our lives. There are plenty of problems in our local and national governments. There are plenty of problems in the world. Where do you want to start?

 I would recommend it in your personal life, but it is your choice, right? One thing that makes this difficult is that not everyone sees something as a problem. To some, it may be exactly as it should be. Then you have people who agree that something should be done but want to do the exact opposite of what you wish to do. And there are those who wish the exact same end as you but believe a different path will solve it more quickly or easily.

So one way to minimize these issues is to start with yourself. Hopefully, you can come to a conclusion regarding the status of something as a problem or not. Also, you should be able to determine both the direction to take and the proper path to get there, right? What are some of the problems in your life? I know, that’s a really heavy question, but by doing nothing, are you part of the solution, or part of the problem? At least start by thinking about the problems in your life, and making a list. Grab some paper and get busy.

With a list of some of the issues in your life in front of you, put a mark next to the most significant challenges you face in the next few months. Two or three should be a good start, as you can always come back for more challenges at a later date, right?

Select one and consider this: You know where you are, but where do you want to be? If you have a money shortage, you would select a different solution if you were just a few dollars short compared to being a few thousand dollars short, right? Think about that for a moment. Now try to figure out which direction you want to go. What is the solution, in the broadest terms? In the money example, do you cut spending, find a new source of income, some of both, or do you rob a bank? Be honest with yourself regarding what you are willing and able to use as the solution.

Now consider what the actual path might be, or come up with several options, in case the first one doesn’t work out as well as you hoped. Going back to the money issue, can you get more hours at work? Can you get a second job? Can you make things on the side to sell at garage sales? You have identified a problem, and come up with some ideas on how to solve, or at least reduce, the problem. But until you take action, are you really part of the solution? So now it is time to get busy. Pick one of your options and get started.