Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m.

So today I want to talk about measurement. I want to talk about testing. How do you actually know that what you’re building is going to solve your problems? And I’m going to start with this. Everything in life is multi faceted. Okay? Everything there are multiple aspects to every problem that you’re trying to solve. There’s multiple aspects to every issue that you’re trying to solve and overcome. And nothing is just hey, yes or no answer. Nothing is just simple, two plus two equals four. It’s not like that in and so I’m just going to back up, before I get into this, and just talk about the principle how everything’s multi faceted.

The other thing that multi faceted brings up is life is deep, and normally, the solution to your problem is not what you’re currently facing. There’s a problem, right? If you picture this as a tree, right? You have a problem. You have a root system, a trunk of a tree, and that tree is producing fruit, right? And so it’s producing problems. So it’s like, oh, I have this pain point. I’m frustrated. The company is not going where I want it to go. It’s not doing the things I want to do, and you’re solving all the face value issues, but you’re not actually solving the problem. See, a problem produces issues. A problem produces frustration points and pain points.

And the reason why I’m saying this is because problem solving is much deeper than simply, okay, I’m just going to get rid of the issue that I have. And an example of this is, okay, I just have a lot of customers who are screaming and yelling. They’re upset, and it’s like, okay, the issue is the customer screaming and yelling. The problem is, what are you doing during the customer journey that’s getting your customers upset?

This is known as the Theory of Constraints, by the way, and it is interesting, because this is how everything in life works. Everything in life works that there’s a constraint that is a problem causing issues that you have to deal with, or fires an issue to me, I define as a fire, and when you are only dealing with the fires, and you’re not actually dealing with the problem that’s causing the fires within the company, or whatever you’re trying to build, right? The software doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re trying to build, you are not actually going to ever put out your fires, they are just going to reproduce over and over and over again.

So the reason why I’m bringing this up is, how do you actually measure and how do you actually test what you’re doing to see if it’s working? And to give you an idea of this is what I’m talking about, is correctly identifying the problem. And to give you a more practical example, is, okay, I have a cash flow problem in my company. I don’t have enough money coming into my company. And it’s like, normally, what we’re like, what we do is like, Well, cool. Let me just take out a loan. I need, of course. Let me just go open a line of credit. Okay, you’re, you’re fighting a fire now putting a band aid on solution versus, oh, let me fix my lead flow.

The problem will be solved with leads, because you have more leads, which means you have more opportunities for appointments, which means you have more opportunities to close sales, which means increase in cash flow. So it’s actually your lead generation that’s broken, that’s causing your issue, right? Lead generation, that or it’s you, and in the sales process you are not charging enough, but let’s just assume it’s lead generation right now okay so, I’m giving you that as a practical because it’s like, how do you test that right? And so the way that I look at testing is, okay, here’s issues and fires that keep coming up. Okay, we changed this. Did that solve the issues and fires? Yes.

So an example of this is, I was talking to a leader the other day and about their team, and they’re like, hey, my team just takes my time. They’re constantly asking questions. They’re constantly doing this, and it’s really taken a lot of time, and it’s frustrating to deal with. And I was like, okay, cool. Let’s talk about implementing a rule to where you have to go to Google for 15 minutes before you’re allowed to call anybody or ask anybody a question, it solved that. The real problem was is people were just taking the shortest route to get the answer they needed, which is just ask somebody, right? However, that can be detrimental, and then that’s crippling, because nobody in the team is self reliant.

And so the issue was, okay, cool. My time is being taken in small increments, because I have to lead the team, and I have to do these things, but then the actual problem producing that was interdependency within the team, which needed to be built out. And all of this to say is you’ve got to know how to measure and then you’ve got to know how to actually solve the problem.

So first up is Band Aid. Okay, I gotta band aid the fire. I call it, you know, you got to bail water because your ship is sinking. The water in the ship has got to come out of it. But then at the same time, I got to plug the holes in the ship. Right? Plug in holes is the problem. Water in the ship is not the problem. Water in the ship is a result of having holes. And that’s how you tie everything back. And if it’s money. Related issues. Every decision you should make, you should be able to see in your money, right? You should be able to see the finances of what you’re doing. If it’s team related issues, you should be able to view this in productivity as a team, in interdependency, and be able to measure these things. And there’s a lot to this. It’s a lot more than what I’m talking about, but I think this is a great first step.

Anyways, guys, I’m over catch you later. Peace.