How we decide on where to put our resources

A while back, I was asked in a 1:1 how one should decide where to put resources and effort.

There’s a pretty simple and basic framework to making those decisions, and it all comes down to ROI (Return on Investment): getting the most value out of the resources you are able to invest. This applies to decisions large and small: what product to purchase, what project to prioritize, how to plan your time.

While the framework is simple, it’s worth reminding us of it and bringing it top of mind for our daily decisions. Some of us are instinctively (or through years of training) following that model; others might consider putting a post-it note on their desk as a reminder.

ROI: the balance of Opportunity and Cost

• Opportunity – The first decision criteria is the size of the Opportunity. If we do this project, if we buy this SW, what will we gain from it? What metrics will it change, and by how much? What is the impact on our overall operational cost? It comes down to quantifying the “Why” – and as you know, I am a big fan of always, always starting with the “Why”. Why do we do this, and what will we get out of it? How does that compare to other things we could do with our time? Steve Balmer used to say: “Show me the money!”

• Cost – This one is easy: what does it cost to do the project? This includes headcount, fees, and future maintenance. We got all excited about the new opportunities and operational savings a solution will provide us, but what’s the flipside? What is the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of implementing this new solution now and in the future?

Having Opportunity and Cost gives you the ROI. As a first cut, you should rank all projects by their ROI – Which one gives you the most bang for the buck? Where should you invest limited resources?

Criteria that might override the ROI decision

• Feasibility (and timing) – Feasibility is the criteria that should be checked first: do we have the prerequisites to even do this project or implement the new SW? Do we have the resources, or are they booked in other efforts? Is now the right time for this, given the other priorities for the organization, or should this be planned for a different time?

• Risk tolerance – Of course, there is also a different category of projects that you just have to do, and this is where Risk comes in. Some work is required for compliance (e.g., new regulations) or minimizing threat vectors (e.g., increased security measures). In these cases, risk tolerance becomes an additional input to the ROI equation. What’s the cost of exposure, and how likely is it? How much risk are we willing to tolerate for a better ROI in this project or for putting our resources into higher-ROI projects? How much are we willing to forgo high-ROI projects in order to avoid risk exposure. Unfortunately, this category isn’t a hard science and usually requires informed judgment calls.

• Follow-through – The last important criteria to consider are follow-through and sunk cost. It’s easy to chase the new shiny object. However, if you do that before you finish a project that you already started, you are on the path to wasting a lot of resources and frustrating a lot of people. Switching priorities can be necessary in (very few) cases, but it usually comes at a high cost. Whenever possible, follow through and finish what you have started – don’t waste effort by frequently switching priorities. The big exception to that rule is when you learn that your initial assumptions were incorrect. For example, the benefit might not be as high as anticipated, feasibility might have turned out to be questionable, or cost might be skyrocketing. In those cases, you need to reassess the whole project ROI. As for investing, don’t cling to a losing stock only because you already have sent a lot of money on it.

While ROI is a fairly simple financial calculation, the criteria in this bucket are less quantifiable. In most cases, it comes down to looking at all the facts you can collect and making an informed decision and judgment call.

As you do so, make sure to document the man decision criteria for that judgment call so that you know to revisit your decision if any of those criteria should change further down the road.

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Focus on the opportunity, not the challenges

I was going to write about asking “Why not” instead of “Why” – which is advice I’m hearing often – but then I decided differently. While well-intentioned, I think that advice might drive the wrong behavior if it’s heard and understood the wrong way.

In many meetings, we tend to focus our time on why things won’t work, why they are hard, and why we cannot do them right now. We are guessing what might (!) hold us back or make things complicated.

Well, anything that is worth doing and any problem worth being solved tends to be hard and complicated. The easy stuff had already been done a long time ago.

Instead of looking at the challenges, we need to look at the opportunities: what do we gain, what can we enable if we solve this problem? Is it a worthwhile endeavor? How does this rank against the other things we could be doing with our time and energy?

Once decided, we need to stop thinking about why it’s hard and instead start focusing on how we CAN do it. For every problem, there is a solution. It might not be easy, it might not be quick, but there is a way to get it done. Dwelling in the challenges will only discourage us and waste both time and energy.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for ignoring challenges and problems to be solved. I’m instead saying that those problems need to be identified, acknowledged, written down, and then tracked to resolution. That is the productive approach to deal with challenges. Reiterating, discussing, and dwelling on them without concrete action is the unproductive approach. Once you identified a problem, you write it down, find a time and owner and move on.

Once we decided that something is important, we must only be concerned about how we can get it done and finding a realistic approach, plan, and timeframe. We must not waste our time discussing why it’s hard, and we cannot waste our resources looking for easier projects that we can tackle instead. The important stuff tends to be hard.

Back to the “Why not” advice that I poo-pooed earlier – It’s actually well-intended as it challenges us to instead of asking “why do we need to do this” rather get in the mindset of thinking, “yes, why in the hell would we not do this”. Always starting with the “Why” and assuming that there is value in a new project, initiative, or change is a good thing. Dwelling in reasons not to do something that is useful is wasted energy.

Just for the fun of it, here’s a list of a few things that were impossibly hard at some time: personal computers for everyone, finding stuff on the internet, a smartphone for everyone, streaming the movies you like to watch, getting an online order delivered the next day, electric cars, GPS for everyone, online banking,… – well you get the idea. All of those were solved by people who chose to focus on how to overcome hard problems instead of discussing why they are hard to solve.

Since we’re talking about starting with the “Why”, here’s a recommendation for one of my favorite business books:

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Simon Sinek
ISBN-10: 9781591846444

Everything always starts with the “Why”. If you know your “Why”, you know your purpose and motivation. If you know the “Why”, it will be easy for you to enlist others for your cause.



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Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

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If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Effective communications – The Why, What, and How

Effective communication is one of the most important skills as we advance in our careers and lives. The more senior we become, the more we need to achieve things through others. To do so, we first need to convince them to follow our lead. Even if we’re not on the brink of a CEO promotion, we need to convince our peers, managers, or spouses of our ideas.

Communication happens in many different channels, in writing, in meetings, or in 1:1 conversations. The principles of effective communication are always the same: 1) active listening, 2) maintaining a laser-focus on the topic, and 3) a clear thought structure that our partner(s) can follow along.

Today I want to talk about 3) – structuring our thoughts and communication in a way that makes it easy for the recipient to digest, follow along, and buy into our logic. The magic is to always explain the Why, What, and How – in that order!

The Why, What, and How are critically important to convey any idea or suggestion. In presenting ideas, we need to remind ourselves that while we have all the context, causation, and details, our communication partners most likely don’t. Don’t assume everyone has as much context on the topic as you do! – If they did, they would have brought up the idea to you, not the other way around.

If you don’t re-create the full thought context with your communications partner, you cannot expect them to come to the same conclusions that you came to or to agree with your proposal.

The Why

This is also affectionately called the ‘So What’.

Everything starts with this. Tell me why I should care to listen and follow your thoughts. Why does this matter? Why does it matter to me? Why is it important, and why should I care?

If you can establish why a particular topic is important or why a problem needs to be solved, you have already won have the battle. On the flip side, if you don’t have a Why it will be hard to gain support for your idea – there are so many things that already have a strong Why established and thus will take priority.

The What

Ok, you got me with the Why. I know that I need to pay attention, now tell me what needs to be fixed or created.

Don’t get ahead of yourself; don’t jump to solutions. I’m not yet ready for that. I’ve signed up for your cause. Now let me know where I need to direct my attention. If you can get me focused on the right what, you have practically won, and I will crave to learn what I can do for you.

The How

NOW is the time to get to what you wanted to start with. Not a second earlier. For you, this is a long build-up to something that is crystal-clear to you – for me, it’s essential for being able to follow your thoughts.

How can we solve the issue we identified in the What and established as a priority in the Why. Tell me what you want to do and where I can help. What is your plan, where do you need input, where can I help. Be specific, precise, and concise.

Well…?

Let’s put some meat to the theory with an example. Let’s say you want to sell the idea of establishing a weekly metrics review meeting for Ops tickets (totally made up).

A bad communication would be:

“Hey, I want to identify key metrics for the ticketing systems. We should change some of the ways we measure them and then have a weekly review meeting with the Ops team.”

Most likely, my (unspoken) reaction as a recipient would be either “???”, or “sure, now leave me alone, I have important work to do”.

A better Why/What/How approach could be:

“I noticed that we are really slow with certain tasks while onboarding new employees. Often they don’t get proper access to their systems for more than two weeks. That delays their onboarding, and we’re practically wasting their resources for the first month.

I looked a little closer at the process, and it seems that Ops tickets are a key contributor to those delays. However, we don’t have good metrics for tickets right now, and so we can’t really diagnose where the problem lies or how to fix it.

What I would suggest is to establish a consistent way to measure the performance of such tickets. With that, we can identify key bottlenecks, brainstorm potential improvement areas, and measure if those improvements have the desired impact over time. What do you think about establishing key metrics and reviewing them with Ops leaders every week?”

You would have caught my attention on the second one, as no one likes employees who are eager to contribute but are constraint by systems or processes.

Bonus tips for emails

• Spend time and energy on formatting – White spaces and paragraph breaks emphasize the structure and flow of your thoughts! Nobody wants to read a solid blurb of text and re-engineer the logical structure.
• Re-read your message twice – Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes. If you have no context at all, does what you wrote still makes sense?

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Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First
A practical guide to living healthier, happier and more successful in 52 weekly steps
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9781077278929

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If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.