Recently, for a variety of interesting and uninteresting reasons the logic driving the selection of my projects and company affliations warrants explanation. Why?
Well, you, the reader/partner/associate, can decide if my explanations pertain to you, matter to you or make any sense at all. Most likely this exposition concerns me alone – a letter to myself. I figured that we’re all not so different though – so perhaps you, too, struggle in finding or creating projects that matter to you and this essay might help you in your processes.
I value projects and experiences with non-trivial consequences.
I think of consequences as both direct outcomes as well as side effects, learnings, connections and follow on projects.
Non-trivial is the crucial concept here. Non-trivial is somewhat hard to define as you almost have to assign that status to a consequence retrospectively. Let me leave that concept alone for a moment and instead focus on the trivial.
Trivial consequences in projects and business include:
- Money alone – getting rich to get rich, getting rich as the only outcome
- Fame alone – fame for fame’s sake
- Career Move – an outcome that only moves a career forward regardless of the other consequences
- Isolated Impact – it impacts you and you alone
- 1000 Monkeys – an outcome so trivial that a 1000 monkeys in a short amount of time could produce the same result
- 1 Monkey – worse than a 1000 monkeys is 1 monkey “in the right place and the right time regardless of experience or skill” could produce the outcome
- Been Done Before – an old project with a new audience does not add value (usually)
- Time and Space Dependence – a non repeatable “stuck in time” outcome. i.e. pet rocks in the 80s.
- Can’t Explain To Mom – a project that doesn’t impact mom or is too embarassing to tell mom usually is trivial
- and combinations of any or all of the above.
Generally projects and companies with trivial consequences are easy to spot. Thought experiments following the format “suppose this all worked out perfectly” generally reveal whether the basic consequences would be trivial.
I certainly have knowingly worked on projects and companies with trivial consequences. Generally I work in such situations if the methods (work) is appropriately trivial (cost effective). In fact, I cannot avoid, nor do I think anyone can avoid, a certain amount of trivial work – its often the trivial work that pays the bills in the short term. Also, trivial work serves as practice or warm up or learning steps to non-trivial work.
The challenge involves avoiding trivial consequences requiring non-trivial methods. Many projects require elaborate set ups and execution (and generally a lot of people). Finding simple ways to do things is very difficult (it requires thought! and practice!). However, more damaging to the pursuit of non-trivial consequences is our (my!) confusion between methods (the pursuit, the work) and the consequences (the outcome, the goals). I often fall into the trap of “if the work is hard, the outcome must matter!” Wrong! … usually.
In short, I do trivial work if and only if the methods are or can be made trivial (usually through the use of a computer or sub contracting).
And now the hard stuff! Non-trivial outcomes can be hard to predict. The metrics for non-trivialness are not obvious nor standardized. The outcomes typically maintain challenging contingencies and/or are the result of hard to spot initial conditions.
This much I’ve identifed about non-trivialness in projects:
- There is a barrier to entry/getting started – usually not monetary barrier – it is a skill, experience, concept barrier
- The number of people potentially impacted is not small, that is, there is a generalization possible
- Cut and Paste Is Not Enough – it is not a simple repackaging or reordering – synthesis or genesis must be involved
- Unknown personal impact – you cannot predict its rebounding impact on you (your methods, your personal network, your experience)
- Discomfort – it involves a level of discomfort, a struggle, a slight doubt about whether you can pull it off
- Beauty – there is something beautiful in the methods and the result. Perhaps a cleanliness or cleverness or visual beauty or structure – hard to define in words but easy to spot, hear, taste, feel.
Amazingly, non-trivial results often do not require non-trivial executions. I can think of our best modern example – Google PageRank. Hugely impactful and can be explained in laymans terms in one page. I have many other examples for interested people (and, no, most of them are not computer or internet related!)
I suppose we can evaluate whether the original question or problem statement generating a project or company is trivial or non-trivial. Usually though I do not see much correlation between the original question and the eventual execution. I prefer to look at the current state of affairs to judge trivialness. Again, we have many examples where the original question is quite trivial but the results are not or the eventual executed project is not (see James Burke’s “Connections” series for a fun exposition of such phenomenon)
I want to attack the idea of “homeruns” in business head on. Many people seek the big idea in business, the big success, the huge windfall. I conjecture most pursuits of the business homerun fail because the Get Rich outcome is trivial. It is trivial to Get Rich in method and outcome. Where does fortune alone lead? If I had a big bag of money, what would I do with it? Methods of just getting rich are tried and true – sell sex, invest in stocks, drugs, organized crime, arbitrage (fuel, clicks, tickets), corporate ladder hopping and variations on those themes. Many people engage in these things – usually without knowing how trivial it is (so they do a lot of work!). This is not for me.
Homeruns in business, the kind I like, are not predifined. I don’t think “homerun” has a generally applicable definition. I don’t know the distance to the fence. I don’t even know if I’m playing baseball. (metaphors suck so lets drop them.) Point is… I don’t look for what is an obvious business success because if it were obvious (a) everyone is already doing it (b) it’s probably not as successful as it appears.
The key effort for business sucess seems to be in creation of value through conversion of resources. Can I take my raw materials (experience, insight, networks, handiwork) and produce something people will buy or rent? That is, can you take something without a price (that isn’t already in monetary/market form) and get the market to price it (value it)? Yes, there’s a way to make money by reducing the cost of something that already has a price and so forth. Again, that is trivial in most cases (though there are cases where reduction of cost is not a trivial task and the reduction in price resulting takes something with small impact to a very wide audience). Again, for some margin management works for them. For me it does not.
Defining and refining the project selection strategy is non-trivial and this is not my final effort. The methods are trivial – write it down, test it, edit, test, repeat. (oh, and don’t go broke while testing project selection / creation strategies!)
What you are describing in the non-trivial scenarios is Risk. I think also the way you describe trivial and non-trivial projects is a bit inconsistent, you’re describing trivial projects by the outcome, while non-trivial by the risk. Additionally, some of your trivial outcomes are centric to almost every business and project manager: money & fame & career move. Then again, I might have misunderstood some of your points. Nice read!
PM Hut,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, you are right in a sense about my inconsistent. That’s some of my point. A known outcome IS trivial. Unknown outcomes are sometimes non-trivial, and thus they have risk. I am not drawn to risk, I am drawn to the unknown (potentially non trivial!)
Yes, you are also right that trivial outcomes are centric to almost every business and PM. Most businesses are trivial.
I make no judgment on ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’.
How do you select projects? employers?
This review is a classic ‘stream of consciousness’ example of what is going on for a person on the edge… certainly a good edge. The writer wants to contribute in big ways and is just coming to frame what that means. This is the process…the process that Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin went through as did Willie Loman. Willie Nelson did it as well and found his voice and his ladder toward non-triviality by eschewing the pundits and perfecting his vision constantly refined and defined through weed and alcohol just as Gonzo (Dr. Hunter S. Thompson) executed his visions. So much for methods…
Consider the following…
****[I want to attack the idea of “homeruns” in business head on. … I conjecture most pursuits of the business homerun fail because the Get Rich outcome is trivial. It is trivial to Get Rich in method and outcome. Where does fortune alone lead? If I had a big bag of money, what would I do with it? Methods of just getting rich are tried and true – sell sex, invest in stocks, drugs, organized crime, arbitrage (fuel, clicks, tickets), corporate ladder hopping and variations on those themes. Many people engage in these things – usually without knowing how trivial it is. This is not for me.]
This blog entry is an attempt to hit just such a “homerun”. There is a lack of generalization to others based assumptions that are subjective, i.e., what is *trivial* and what isn’t trivial…as in “It is trivial to Get Rich in method and outcome.” All descriptive properties mentioned are subjective; what is ‘rich,’ what is ‘trivial’ and what has ‘value’ which complicates transfer for some. While the interrogatives that follow that statement (above) are common and mettlesome, they are not everyone’s issue and, again, depend on what each reader has learned to ‘value.’
But the spark here can’t be denied. What we read here is writing and publicizing what is of value to you in the context of what you provide… now and presumably in the future.
That is something that is not reinforced in life, business, work, sports, etc. which is more complex for the person doing it than can be stated here. Its complexity, in short, is what keeps the rest of us from stating what it is we value (and not) and revising it on a regular basis that approaches the frequency we consider our 401K donations. To leave it at the ending cascading challenge is pivotal…
****[Defining and refining the project selection strategy is non-trivial and this is not my final effort. The methods are trivial – write it down, test it, edit, test, repeat. (oh, and don’t go broke while testing project selection / creation strategies!)]
At some point we’ll have framed what it is that we value; we’ll lose count a million tests later and hopefully look around and discover the complexity and the methods led to just the right consequences.
How to generalize? Good question.
I did attempt to state it was mostly relative to me and it was my personal exploration.
However, I do propose there are general concepts at play in this exploration.
Trivial, though used relatively here, probably has some level of degree for each person – trivial is what is “easy”, “without consequence”, “not valued”,”not impactful”. Those aspects are, of course, relative to the person.
Is there an absolute measure of triviality? No. Is “trivial” a general concept. yes.
Richness, that I can not make a general case for. I should perhaps state my Get Rich as Succeed without Effort or something to that effect. This too is has a relative scale, but there’s something general about “getting ahead” without expending much of ones own energy.
In some sense I’m trying to get at STRUGGLE as a general function. The tugs of changing values, of success and failure, of leaving trusted methods behind… and so forth. Exhausting all possibilities – moving into uncomfortable situations to grow, learn. Those are my struggles, maybe not yours, but you do have struggles. Struggle fuels learning and vice versa. Struggle enhances selection by consequences (perhaps helps it work faster)….
I don’t know. Riff on that and see what comes out.
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of selecting projects (maybe some PMs out there has the luxury of refusing projects and/or selecting projects).