On efficiency, planning and how it’s ok to say “I don’t know”

I don’t understand why there’s so much duplication of effort in homes and offices everywhere. I was thinking about my most recent visit to Sudbury and the thought of duplication came to mind when I was reading the local paper. In it, there was an article that briefly mentioned the new growth plan for the city. WTF, Sudbury. “New” growth plan? I left more than four years ago and the city was still planning its growth, still complaining about the mediocre immigration rate and still trying to fix the downtown core.
So I wondered, “where are the researchers?”. I mean, surely some great leader of a city the size of Sudbury has managed to introduce growth and fix the same kind of issues that Sudbury has been dealing with, right? There has got to be at least one successful mining community somewhere in the world today. One that has managed to expand its economy and not make it so dependent on natural ressources. One that has found a way to introduce more culture as well as make the city appealing to talented individuals looking for work. If there has been one, there might also be many. Therefore, there has got to be some sort of a model that works, a framework that could be applied, at the very least as a beginning towards change.

But I’m not seeing this anywhere… I can’t seem to find any information about strategies that have worked and that Sudbury leaders might be contemplating to put into action. I’ve only been finding articles listing the various debates and meetings that have been held where everyone has given feedback from their perspective (business, infrastructure, academics, etc.). Dudes, it’s the same old thing – it’s all been said before. Isn’t it time to study what’s been done before, what has worked and what hasn’t? Isn’t it time to say “hey, we have a tiny budget of 3 billion dollars for this plan… let’s research what kind of changes could be made for that price and then present that to the committee”.

I’m all for innovation, especially when it’s applied on top of things that have been proven to work. It’s great to approach problems from a different perspective and possibly even improve the results that were produced the last time a similar problem was solved. However, in situations where you’re accountable to tax payers or you’re wasting time at work or at school with methods that have been proven to fail, then trying to innovate isn’t the right thing to do. Problem is, how do you know what method to use at any given time?

I tend to approach any complex issues (that I don’t know how to fix) with the following questions:

1) Can I fix it in five minutes?
2) If not, is there anyone around me who might have the answer?
3) If not, run a google search or consult a manual or book that might have the answer (if it’s quicker than a google search).
4) If a significant amount of time has been spent on searching without finding an answer, hire an expert.

Done. Usually, it ends with google but sometimes it’s good to hire. For example, trying to style and redesign my blog has turned into a gigantic nightmare because I just don’t have the time nor the want to learn PHP and CSS. I’m having to weigh the amount of time that it would take to learn what I need to learn to make it look the way I want it to look vs. the time and money that it would take to just hire someone to do it for me. Still not sure which way I’ll go… so I end up with the last option:

5) Hire an expert if you’re willing to pay the price. Else, sit on it until you’re willing to pay the price or figure out how to fix it on your own.

From a city perspective, it’s much more complex than using a simple approach like that. But it just feels like there’s something missing. It feels like Sudbury is constantly in the planning process because there’s a lack of certaintly. A lack of “Yes, we have solutions! We’re confident that we’ve examined all of the ways that we could expand and grow this city and we’ve found methods that have worked. We’re also introducing a few ideas of our own. Let’s plough ahead with optimism!”

From a personal perspective, can we please, please, please stop trying things over and over again because of it’s cute for our egos to come up with our own solutions? How many hours have I wasted at work waiting for a colleague who had decided to try to figure something out, spending hours on a problem that could have been resolved by a five minute search on Google? I’m not advocating “competence by Google search”! I’m merely suggesting that every now and then, it’s really good to realise that we don’t know EVERYTHING and that it’s alright to look things up. Most of all, it’s really important to not encourage people to pretend to know everything, particularly our politicians. I’m always weary of someone who isn’t comfortable saying “I don’t know” once in a while.

And sadly, there are too many people out there who are too afraid to say “I don’t know”. This is costing us way too much money in wasted time, wasted resources, wasted technology. During my early years in IT, I had to listen to some of my service desk colleagues bullshit employees who had computer questions. They used a bunch of big words that didn’t make sense (especially with women) simply in order to impress instead of admitting that they didn’t know how to fix the issue. These were the same guys that wasted everyone’s time when they didn’t know how to fix something because they refused to look it up.

As I was researching a few things for test automation for work the other day, it got me wondering if the resistance to automation and to doing research before presenting solutions might be related. Both really present a resistance to change, a resistance to efficiency. But why is efficiency avoided? I read in The Economist that Germans call a mobile phone a “handy” because of their passion for efficiency. So, is it a cultural issue? Is it solely an egotistical problem? That we’d rather figure things out on our own rather than let someone else take the credit?

I don’t know but I find it all so very interesting that we do these things to ourselves and that we tolerate it from the people who control our money, our workplaces and our cities.

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