The Second Right Answer

One of my favorite books is “A Whack on the Side of the Head” by Roger von Oech. Great Book! Should be on your bookshelf . It’s filled with insightful stories that are designed to change your pattern of thinking. One of the themes in the book is a guiding principle to always look for the ‘second right answer’. 

We all work in organizations that emphasize accountability and excellence in performance for both speed and accuracy. Each of these have their merits but can easily lend themselves to a focus on trees rather than forest. Work effort becomes a series of tasks where throughput sometimes over-rides quality and direction. 

A good technique to help force an emphasis on the bigger picture (am I doing the right thing in addition to doing things right) can come from asking ourselves for the second right answer. Is there another way to do this that is better than the first thing that comes to mind? Now – don’t read into this that we want to over analyze everything – I’m talking about a quick mental exercise where we consider a second right answer. The way we perceive an instruction or question matters and sometimes can lead us down a path that we didn’t intend to go.

Let me summarize a quick story from the book to illustrate.

In a small eastern European village in the early 1800’s, the community was stricken by a curious but deadly plague. What was curious about the disease was its grip on its victim; as soon as a person contracted it, he’d go into a death like coma. Most died within a day but occasionally a hearty soul would make it back to the full bloom of health. The problem was that since 18th century medical technology wasn't very advanced, the people honestly had a difficult time telling whether a victim was dead or alive.

One day it was discovered that someone had been buried alive. This alarmed the townspeople, so they called a town meeting to decide what should be done to prevent such a situation from ever happening again. After much discussion the people split into three groups and agreed to return after two days with proposed solutions. The solutions proposed were:

1. The first group proposed that all coffins have a glass window put above the face of the victim and that the coffin not be placed in the ground for a period of one week. The mortician would check the glass window several times a day and if the person woke up, they’d let them out.
2. The second group proposed that the coffins be buried but each should have a string tied to the right hand of the victim that ran through a tube to the surface and was tied to a bell. If the bell ever rang – you knew you had action to take.
3. The third group brought in a prototype coffin which simply had a nine inch steel dagger placed in the lid directly over the heart of the victim. Once the lid was closed there would be no concern regarding whether the victim was dead or alive.

Each team was answering the same question, “How do we make sure that we never bury anyone alive?”  Different approaches, different solutions, different outcomes. The third group completely missed the primary objective while still answering the question.

From a management perspective I have a bias for outcomes rather than tactic. The “what” if you will rather than the “how”. As you can see from the story though, carefully defining the "what" can make all the difference. 

In our organizations the “how” matters and despite my personal bias - is required. What we do is often complicated and yet needs to be readily repeatable. At the same time, we each should have a mindset of continuous improvement while striving to be both fast and accurate. Some of that improvement will come from looking for the ‘second right answer’. When you look for more than one right answer, you allow creativity and innovation to open up and new potential is created that wasn't there before. Look for that second right answer...

Incremental improvement – everyday.

Todd Sirrine