Time over money is just an excuse
Why are people wired in the fast-delivery instead of the right/better delivery mindset?
When building products, you will always face the question, “When will it be done? Can we deliver it faster?”.
I always struggle with these questions. Being fast is important, but getting things right is more important. And getting things right is hard, so you got to learn fast. Still, the concept of fast-delivery is imprinted very deep into people’s minds.
What is driving your team?
I’m not saying speed is not essential. Not at all. You want to learn fast to get ahead in the market with a great product, but that’s the critical issue, learning to get things right at some point. You want to create/validate the hypothesis, you want to improve solutions, you want quick feedback.
Are we going in the right direction? Are we really solving a customer’s problem? Are we learning anything? Those are the questions that should be driving a team.
However, what we experience usually is far from this scenario. We end up trying to discover fast, so we can develop even faster and deliver things as soon as possible. The question that is driving the team here is, “When will this be ready?” But what does this say about your company?
The paying by the hour example
A couple of months ago, I watched a video of a designer explaining to an audience why paying people by the hour is a way of punishing good workers. He would charge 18k (dollars, I guess) to build a new logo in 2 months.
His logic was:” If I’m fast, I get paid less, if I’m slow, I won’t get more money and…” well, you get it right?
The plot twist came when someone from the audience intervened, “I would pay more if I think it is worth more. More importantly, can you deliver it faster if I double the payment?”
The message the person is trying to convey is that he values time over money. First of all, that is probably not true, but why does he need to get a logo faster? To get more things done? Wich goal is he trying to accomplish? This is just another way of saying that money is in the driver’s seat.
I don’t know other constraints he may have had, but before that, shouldn’t he be asking how the work to be done would capture the essence of what they do? Or will this new brand/logo be worth more in a few years than the one they have today? Is this new logo solving a real problem other than getting the manager off my ass?
The audience is not worried about whether the job in question is the correct one. The raised concerns are paying by the effort, getting the job done (no matter what the job is), and getting it done as fast as possible.
This is one picture of people prioritizing solutions over problems. This is the “Just get it done” culture.
Conclusions, so far…
So far, it seems to me that this is a top-down cultural thing. If all you care about is your metric, your goal, your company, you will end up with this “deliver at any cost” mindset.
To avoid this, what I’m trying is:
- Going to a few team meetings and watching the questions that are being raised. What concerns are being considered? What is driving the team’s mindset?
- Bolstering the idea of the outcome being more important than the output.
- Trying to align with the teams, the expected outcomes, and the opportunities (the problem space).
- Helping to map product KPIs, making sure they reflect concrete customer outcomes
Companies/products fail when they just try to solve their own problems. Increasing your product revenue is not a customer issue. You really want customers to engage, consider their problems first. If you don’t care about them, they won’t care about you. Simple as that.
