Stop Decorating The Fish

Stop Decorating The Fish, Which solutions to ignore and which problems really matter, by Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag, North River Press, 2020

Most solutions attack the wrong problem?  Do you agree?  

When the authors talk about memorable false solutions to heavy problems, they are showing us how we deceive ourselves into thinking we have solved a problem when we may have actually just clicked ahead to "apply."  Turns out happens a lot.  Kind of like the plastics story in Chapter 4, "More training and communication."

Did you know?

Between 1998 and 2015 the world doubled its supply of plastic.  And every American, every year creates more than 250 pounds of plastic waste.  We're still incinerating, we're burying, and in smaller percentages (9%) Americans are recycling.  Despite generally supportive and positive messaging and public response, the trend and the piles are getting bigger.  And in fact, say the authors, the plastics pile is a perfect example of applying solutions to the wrong problem.

Think of it this way, they say.  If the solution called  "More training and communication," number 4 of their Seductive 7 false solutions worked, we'd be looking at fewer problematic landfills, grocery packaging and distribution turned upside down, and other new problem-solving solutions.  But that hasn't happened - at least not yet - and here's why:

*  new plastic is one of the cheapest raw materials

*  recycling is labor intensive, therefore expensive disposal

*  just producing plastic bottles from recycles requires significant new equipment investment

*  plastic can be recycled a limited number of times

*  many plastic products - deodorants, small plastic parts, etc, cannot be recycled.

Clearly while the focus was only on the visible plastic problem - recycling -  according to the authors, "While it is possible to educate people about the importance of recycling, it is almost impossible to get people to act against financial incentives.  It is easier and cheaper for manufacturers to use new plastic than recycled plastic... The current system consumes cheap new plastic while leaving the cost of disposing the waste to the public sector through a hidden cost.  No amount of education and outreach can overcome that."

This little book is packed with other powerful examples of problems attacked by the wrong, and often very expensive solutions. "Seductive 7 Case Study 1, More Technology," illustrates how we have come to lean on powerful but limited tech to solve basic business problems.  In this case, $200M invested in a new very fast system failed to address a basic business processing problem.  Although the new system speeded up processing time, elapsed end-to-end time did not improve.    Here the authors' warning reads loud and clear - the "more technology" illusion -  or lets add a new capability or tool - gets beaten  by basic business problems every time.  Define and solve the business problem first, then decide what, if any, tech apps will improve the customer experience.  

We are of course seeing this same painful phenomenon  now across the US as various states and local health departments as well as federal leaders and agencies use faulty tech and repeated messaging to solve the basic Covid 19 shortage - we are seeing inappropriate and awkward web-based solutions to big basic vaccine shortages and logistics problems.  Despite the limits of certain vaccine scheduling apps, their usefulness would be salvaged were we flooded with dosages.  Solve the production availability problems first, and the tech will follow.. .

Stop Decorating The Fish is a great tool to start teams on rethinking their problem-solving process.  Its a short quick read highlighted with illustrations that tell the story.  There is no way a good production strategy group could fail to take a new path here, and that's the beauty of this little smart book.  We are ready to look at solving some very big problems and we don't have a lot of time, although we do unfortunately have endless pools of money, to discover we may have attacked the wrong ones.  

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Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com