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|In: Organizational Effectiveness|Last Updated:

I’ve told my share of “dumb user” stories. Whiteout-on-the-screen is a popular entry. I’m fond of the using-a-bulk-tape-eraser-as-a-diskette-bookend story. My all-time favorite has the punch line, “Well, your first problem is, that’s not a modem, it’s an answering machine.”

You don’t hear as many “dumb IS analyst” stories. Here’s one: “We don’t have time to do it for you, and we won’t give you the tools to do it yourself.” Another favorite: “I don’t care if you’ve solved your business problem – your data model isn’t in third normal form!”

The all-time classic goes like this: “No I haven’t been on the factory floor. Why would I want to do that?”

This New Year I resolved to eschew dumb-user stories altogether. They have too much in common with ethnic humor – even if the gag is funny, it’s generally in poor taste, and ties your thinking into stupid stereotypes.

For example (you were wondering when I’d get to the actual topic, weren’t you?) it renders computer training programs completely ineffective. Start with a dumb-user premise and you’ll design boring, basic, pointless computer classes that convey so little information that attendees wander away muttering about their wasted time.

When you’re teaching (and I’ve done a fair amount of it in my career) your audience believes what you tell them. Tell your class that computers are complicated and they’ll believe you. If, on the other hand, you tell them the truth – that computers greatly simplify many complex tasks – they’ll believe that instead.

How has the myth arisen that computers are hard to use? I hosted an InfoWorld Electric Forum on this subject awhile back, and the consensus was remarkable. Computers have become increasingly hard to setup and maintain, in lockstep with a trend towards extraordinary ease of use. In this they have a lot in common with automobiles. Very few of us have the specialized knowledge needed to even tune a modern engine. Driving, however, has become easier: push on the gas to go, push on the brake to stop, turn the wheel to steer. Cars no longer have the manual chokes, standard transmissions, or crank ignitions that used to complicate learning to drive.

Hmmm … push and steer. Sounds a lot like “point and click” doesn’t it?

Computers seem hard to use for two basic reasons. We’ll address one of them this week, and save the other.

Computers make such a huge number of different things easy to do that just keeping track of them all is daunting. Want to change fonts? Easy. Bullets and numbering? Easy. Standard deviations? Same answer. And on and on and on.

In fact, computers and the Internet have this in common – the hardest part of using them is finding what you’re looking for among all the other stuff. The actual operation is simple. And even here, there are so many different routes to each operation (menus, button bars, the right mouse button) that you can generally figure things out without much difficulty.

When you teach, emphasized that every single task is easy, and establish three goals for every class: (1) Make sure to clarify the concepts (folders are like their paper equivalents – you use them to organize your files). (2) Help everyone succeed in the actual operation a few times, so they knew they’re capable of it. (3) Make sure everyone knows how to look for the functions they needed, so they have the confidence to poke around among the menus.

And give them a bit of great advice: For each project, add precisely one new technique to their bags o’ tricks. (In a very short period of time, they’ll master an awesome assortment of skills with very low stress.)

This teaching style will go along way to making your end-users self-sufficient. Of course, there’s a downside to all of this: you’ll have far fewer dumb-user stories to swap with your friends.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Do you believe in astrology?

Me neither. Still, a few years ago when I worked in product development for awhile, my boss and I regularly finished each others’ sentences. The rapport was immediate and strong.

The weirdest moment of this relationship came when our whole team took a personality inventory. When they were scored, I grabbed our profiles and held the graphs up to the light. They were perfect overlays.

Here’s the weird part: Fred was born just one week before me. Happy birthday, Fred.

Our mutual personality profile hit the target. The evaluator explained that people like us have no trouble with well-defined procedures. As long as we are the authors, that is. Otherwise …

Which may be why I flinch whenever I read about organizational maturity models, the need for clear procedures, and the importance of repeatable, predictable results. It’s the words. We need to give this idea to marketing for a complete makeover. Do you want to be repeatable and predictable? Sounds awfully dull, doesn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong. Manufacturing systems (and any system that produces large numbers of the same kind of item is a manufacturing system) had better produce repeatable, predictable results. I, for one, want every pill in my Exedrin bottle to have exactly the same contents as every other pill.

Data center operations fits the manufacturing model very well, too. If your data center doesn’t run by well-defined and documented procedures, you probably have a pretty big mess on your hands.

Systems development is a different animal. Don’t blindly apply a manufacturing metaphor to it: the fit is less than perfect, which is one reason programmers commonly rebel when managers try to institute quality initiatives. The best programmers are creative sorts, and when you use words like “repeatable and predictable” to them, they have an immediate, gut-level reaction.

To these folks … and they’re usually the ones you depend on the most … a focus on process and procedures sounds a lot like premature embalming.

Here’s the dilemma: we already make too big a fuss about designing a database, some screens, and a bunch of reports. You’d think that by now we’d be good at it, but development projects still go in the tank more often than not. One of the many reasons: We think of every new project as something new and unique, instead of it being just one more database, a bunch of screens, and some more reports. In other words … it’s the same old stuff, so we ought to be able to establish a repeatable, predictable practice. Sigh.

There is a sweet spot in the middle of these positions. That’s the difference between understanding current best practice and slavishly adhering to one-size-fits-all procedures.

So welcome to the magic boundary separating professionalism from bureaucracy. Professionalism includes an understanding of best practices. Bureaucracy means a shift of power from people to rules. And once you transfer power from people to rules, you’ve begun to slide from performance to mediocrity.

Sure, you need to organize people into processes and services. But when you do, define “process” as “here’s our current procedure, which we’re always ready to dump in favor of a better one, or ignore when it doesn’t fit the circumstances.”

Dale Dauten, who writes the syndicated “Corporate Curmudgeon” feature, once wrote that companies start by having “… a leader, employees who think they’re important because they are, and customers who think they’re important because they are.”

Companies lose their souls when leaders become managers, putting their faith in rules and procedures instead of employees who are important. Make rules and procedures … repeatable, predictable results … means to an important goal. Ask employees to focus on that goal. Employees should use procedures when they make sense, and their creativity and judgment when those make sense.

Which, of course, is always.

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