The Store and the Farm

The further away from something you are, the more you rely on others to tell you what it is. The more you rely on others for information, the less you are needed, especially if the information is wrong, and regardless of how good you are at solving problems, you may be solving the wrong one.

I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I did grow up with a dad who loves to hunt. He would probably say the times with his boys hunting and fishing were among his favorite, and although I enjoyed venturing into the woods and hanging out in the blinds with my dad, waking up at 4:30 in the morning was miserable.?It was the snacks that made the early morning tolerable. My dad would let me get whatever I wanted: chocolate donuts, Mrs. Baird’s cinnamon rolls, chips, gummy worms, you name it, it was going up on the counter to get purchased.

We would arrive at the edge of the woods about 5:30 am, and start walking to the blind so we could make sure we were ready to go before first light. Sunsets are amazing, especially on the beach, but there’s something special about getting up before the world does and watching it awake. The sun would slowly shine through the trees and you could see the leaves glisten from the dew.

Time would pass, we would watch and listen, and sometimes hear something that ended up just being a squirrel. Secretly, the longer time would pass, the more I would hope we didn’t see a deer. I knew if we got a deer after spending 4 hours in the blind, that meant we weren’t going to get home until much later, and a lot more work was going to be involved. This was especially true in the evening hunts. If we shot a deer right before sundown, we would be skinning and cleaning the deer in the dark. Nevertheless, growing up, if it wasn’t for my dad hunting, there are probably many meals we would not have had meat for.

I wonder how true that would be today, even if cost was not an issue? If people did not have grocery stores to pick up their meat from, how many would just not have it? Many people have been so far removed from the process, that it is not about skill or cost that creates the gaps, but mere convenience and priority, or maybe laziness. Either way, you forget the amount of work it takes to eat a meal. What would you do different today if you had to raise chickens, kill chickens, process the chickens, then cook the chickens? You might think twice before making a simple meal like chicken and dumplings, or even firing up the grill and throwing on some drumsticks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against this process. One could argue the benefits just as much as the harm. I think this is true of many things. Whether it is the food supply chain or a company gaining in size.

Block Chain technology has allowed some visibility to return, but not in the process itself. Transparency creates trust, but does little to give visibility into the effort.?You may know where your eggs come from, but you still have no understanding of the work involved or the quality of that work.

This concept of showing value by proving effort is constant in every aspect of business across all industries. I touch base on this in my article about the?The Patient and the Painter. I had a lot of side jobs when I was younger. Whether I was photographing a wedding or real estate property, or I was coding a website (back in those days it was actually coding, not just click and drag). There was always someone that thought nice cameras and computers were all you needed to get the perfect shot or to publish the best website. When it’s about technology, the perception can be that people don’t care if you show your work or not. I can remember my geometry exams in grade school and getting a B, even if I got all the answers right. Maybe geometry failed us in teaching this lesson.

So how does this problem of farm to store translate to organizational change and digital transformation. Simply, it’s the same problem, only repackaged.

How Technology and Digital Solutions Remove Transparency

As people move up in the organization they are farther removed from the work, so they tend to underestimate the effort. This is also true of how technology replicates this same effect. Let’s look at this step by step.

• Step 1 – Identify a process that you want to streamline and automate.
• Step 2 – Create a process map to understand inputs, outputs, and workflows.
• Step 3 – Develop or Implement solutions that help you automate this process.
• Step 4 – Measure results against previous metrics to confirm required value obtained.
• Step 5 – Repeat for other processes.

Processes are not typically improved when they work, they are only reviewed when there is a problem. A problem does not have to exist for there to be a benefit. We tend to think that if something is broken, then fixing it and it working at it’s original state is a benefit.?But benefits and problems are not mutually exclusive. Something that is working can still improve and provide benefit. This is what we have seen with technology. Many processes have been automated to gain more efficiency in a new state whereas the old state was working, but now as a new state, it is also working, but more effectively.

If A=80 at it’s most efficient state, and then you change A with B, whereas B=100. Nothing was wrong with A, it was operating at 100% efficiency , even though it was 80. Furthermore, if you only replicate process A when changing to process B, you are actually losing efficiency not gaining it. There was no problem with A. B is just more efficient in a new state.

Let’s pretend that A represents a 1968 Chevelle, and B represents a 2020 Tesla. If something breaks down in the process on a Chevelle, there was a good chance that the owner could fix the problem. If there was maintenance required, the owner would also typically not have any problem doing the work themselves. Now if we were to take that same scenario and apply it to a Tesla, chances are that even though the car is more efficient, the owner would not be able to fix the problem in the event there was an issue. You could even go as far as saying that all of the owner’s friends and family and even local mechanics, probably would not be able to help; unlike with the 1968 Chevelle.

Technology has made processes more efficient and transparent by simplifying the perceived effort of the task, however, do the benefits outweigh the loss of control. There may be an app for everything, but what happens when that app breaks or is no longer supported? If processes are dependent on technology, how much risk does that pose to the growth of the initial benefited process?

Ways We Can Add Transparency Back into the Process

1. Allow tribal knowledge to become organizational knowledge.
2. Learn past your own piece of the process.
3. Continue to look for ways to improve outcomes.
4. Collaborate with people that the process impacts.
5. Share, Record, Document, Train, Adapt, Improve, Repeat.

When you stay in a constant state of always improving, you don’t allow yourself or your organization to lose visibility of how things work. If you are the only person who can do your job, you have done a bad job. You have to let go so you can move on and up. In a global job market, technology is competition as much as it is replacing. We have to remember the impact we have on effort. We have to make sure that we don’t lose sight on what it takes for us to have what we have. Technology can create gaps in perceptions of effort replacements, such as new people versus systems, and in reality we need both, but being aware regardless of what it looks like or feels like, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in which we have lost touch with. Whether is it going to the store for groceries or sending a client an email. Whether it is raising chickens on a farm or traveling across country to visit an employee, we can’t loose touch with the process. We can’t be more focused on the end result than the steps that got us there. At some point they will come full circle and have a direct impact on us. People or technology, the weakest chain is the one most likely to take us down.