understanding
The Downside of Easy (or, the Upside of a Good Challenge)
As a young boy, I was “that kid” who would take everything apart, often leaving a formerly functional alarm clock in a hundred pieces in a shoe box. I loved figuring out how things worked and how components worked together as a system. When I was 10, I spent one winter completely disassembling and reassembling my Suzuki TM75 motorcycle in my bedroom (my parents must have had so much more patience and understanding than I do as a parent). It was rebuilt by spring and ran like a champ. Beginners luck?
By then, I was hooked – I enjoyed working with my hands and fixing things. That was a valuable skill to have while growing up, as it provided an income and led to the first company I started at the age of 18. There was always a fair degree of trial and error involved with learning, but experience and experimentation led to simplification and standardization. That became the hallmark of the programs I wrote, and later, the application systems I designed and developed. It is a trait that has served me well over the years.
Today, I still enjoy doing many things myself, especially if I can spend a little time and save hundreds of dollars (which I usually invest in more tools). Finding examples and tutorials on YouTube is usually easy, and after watching a few videos for reference, the task is generally manageable. There is also a sense of satisfaction that comes with a job well done. And most of all, it is a great distraction from everything else that keeps your mind racing at 100 mph.
My wife’s 2011 Nissan Maxima needed a Cabin Air Filter, and instead of paying $80 again to have this done, I decided to do it myself. I purchased the filter for $15 and was ready to go. This shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes. I went to YouTube to find a video, but no luck. Then, I started searching various forums for guidance. There were plenty of posts complaining about the cost of replacement, but not much about how to do the work. I finally found a post that showed where the filter door was. I could already begin to feel that sense of accomplishment I was expecting in the next few minutes.
But fate and apparently a few sadistic Nissan Engineers had other plans. First, you needed to be a contortionist in order to reach the filter once the door was removed. Then, the old filter was nearly impossible to remove. And then, once the old filter was removed, I realized that the width of the filter entry slot was approximately 50% of the width of the filter. Man, what a horrible design!
A few fruitless Google searches later, I was more determined than ever to make this work. I tried several things and ultimately found a way to fold the filter where it was small enough to get through the door and would fully open once released. A few minutes later, I was finally savoring my victory over that hellish filter change.
This experience brought back memories of “the old days.” In 1989, I was working for a marketing company as a Systems Analyst and was assigned the project to create the “Mitsubishi Bucks” salesperson incentive program. Salespeople would earn points for sales and could later redeem those points on Mitsubishi Electronics products. It was a very popular and successful incentive program.
Creating the forms and reports was straightforward, but tracking the points (which included generating past reports and adjusting activity from previous periods) presented a problem. I finally considered how a banking system would work (remember, there were no books on the topic before the Internet, so this was essentially reinventing the wheel) and designed my own. It was very exciting and rock solid. Statements could be accurately reproduced at any time, and an audit trail was maintained for all activity.
Next, I needed to create validation processes and a fraud detection system for incoming data. This was rock solid, but instead of being a good thing, it became a real headache and source of frustration.
Salespeople would not always provide complete information, might have sloppy penmanship, or engage in other legitimate but unusual practices (such as bundling and adjusting prices among items in the bundle). Despite that, they expected immediate rewards, and having their submissions rejected apparently created more frustration than incentive.
So, I was instructed to turn the fraud detection dial way back. I let everyone know that while this would minimize rejections, it would increase the potential for fraud and the volume of rewards. I created a few reports to identify potentially fraudulent activity. It was amazing how creative people could be when trying to cheat the system, and how you could quickly identify patterns based on similar types of activities. By the third month, the system was trouble-free.
It was a great learning experience from beginning to end. It ran for several years after I left – something I know because I was still receiving the sample mailing with new sales promotions and “Spiffs” (sales incentives) every month. My later reflection made me wonder how many things are not being created or improved today because it is easier and less risky to follow an existing template.
We used to align fields and columns in byte order to minimize record size, overload operators, and other optimizations to maximize space utilization and performance. Our code was optimized for maximum efficiency because memory was scarce and processors were slow. Profiling and benchmarking programs brought you to the next level of performance. In a nutshell, you were forced to understand and become proficient with the technology used out of necessity. Today, these concepts have become somewhat of a lost art.
There are many upsides to being easy.
- My team sells more and closes deals faster because we make it easy for our customers to buy, implement, and start receiving value from the software we sell.
- Hobbyists like me can accomplish many tasks after watching just a short video or two.
- People are willing to try things they may not have tried before if getting started were not so easy.
However, there may also be downsides for innovation and continuous improvement, simply because ‘easy’ is often considered ‘good enough‘.
What will the impact be on human behavior once Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes a reality and is in everyday use? It would be great to look ahead for 25, 50, or 100 years and see the full impact of emerging technologies, but my guess is that I will see many of the effects in my own lifetime.
Ideas are sometimes Slippery and Hard to Grasp
I started this blog with the goal of becoming an “idea exchange,” as well as a way to pass along lessons learned to help others. Typical guidance for a blog is to focus on one thing and do it well to develop a following. That is especially important if you want to monetize the blog, but that is not and has not been my goal.
One of the things that has surprised me is how different the comments and likes are for each post. Feedback from the last post was even more diverse and surprising than usual. It ranged from comments about “Siri vs Google” to feedback about Sci-Fi books and movies to Artificial Intelligence.
I asked a few friends for feedback and received something very insightful (Thanks Jim). He stated that he found the blog interesting but wasn’t sure of the objective. He went on to identify several possible goals for the last post. Strangely enough (or maybe not), his comments mirrored the type of feedback that I received. That pointed out an area for improvement, and I appreciated that as well as the wisdom of focusing on one thing. Who knows, maybe in the future…
This also reminded me of a white paper written 12-13 years ago by someone I used to work with. It was about how Bluetooth would be the “next big thing.” He had read an IEEE paper or something and saw potential for this new technology. His paper provided the example of your toaster and coffee maker communicating so that your breakfast would be ready when you walk into the kitchen in the morning.
At that time, I had a couple of thoughts. Who cared about something that only had a 20-30-foot range when WiFi had become popular and had a much greater range? In addition, a couple of years earlier, I had a tour of the Microsoft “House of the Future,” in which everything was automated and key components communicated. But everything in the house was all hardwired or used WiFi – not Bluetooth. It was easy to dismiss his assertion because it seemed to lack pragmatism. The value of the idea was difficult to quantify, given the use case provided.
Looking back now, I view that white paper as having insight. If it was visionary, he would have come out with the first Bluetooth speakers, car interface, or even phone earpiece and gotten rich, but it failed to present practical use cases that were easy enough to understand yet different enough from what was available at the time to demonstrate the real value of the idea. His expression of idea was not tangible enough and, therefore, too slippery to be easily grasped and valued.
I believe that good ideas sometimes originate where you least expect them. Those ideas are often incremental – seemingly simple and sometimes borderline obvious, often building on another idea or concept. An idea does not need to be unique to be important or valuable, but it needs to be presented in a way that makes it easy to understand the benefits, differentiation, and value. That is just good communication.
One of the things I miss most from when my consulting company was active was the interaction between a couple of key people (Jason and Peter) and myself. Those guys were very good at taking an idea and helping build it out. This worked well because we had some overlapping expertise and experiences as well as skills and perspectives that were more complementary. That diversity increased the depth and breadth of our efforts to develop and extend those ideas by asking the tough questions early and ensuring we could convince each other of the value.
Our discussions were creative, highly collaborative, and a lot of fun. We improved from them, and the outcome was usually viable from a commercial perspective. As a growing and profitable small business, you must constantly innovate to differentiate yourself. Our discussions were driven as much by necessity as intellectual curiosity, and I believe this was part of the magic.
So, back to the last post. I view various technologies as building blocks. Some are foundational, and others are complementary. To me, the key is not viewing those various technologies as competing with each other. Instead, I look for potential value created by integrating them with each other. That may not always be possible and does not always lead to something better, but occasionally it does, so to me, it is a worthwhile exercise. With regard to voice technology, I believe we will see more, better, and smarter applications of it – especially as real-time and AI systems become more complex due to the use of an increasing number of specialized chips, component systems, geospatial technology, and sensors.
While today’s smartphone interfaces would not pass the Turing Test or proposed alternatives, they are an improvement over more simplistic voice translation tools available just a few years ago. Advancement requires the tools to understand context in order to make inferences. This brings you closer to machine learning, and big data (when done right) significantly increases that potential.
Ultimately, this all leads back to Artificial Intelligence (at least in my mind). It’s a big leap from a simple voice translation tool to AI, but it is not such a stretch when viewed as building blocks.
Now think about creating an interface (API) that allows one smart device to communicate with another, like the collaborative efforts described above with my old team. It’s not simply having a front-end device exchanging keywords or queries with a back-end device. Instead, it is two or more devices and/or systems having a “discussion” about what is being requested, looking at what each component “knows,” making inferences based on location and speed, asking clarifying questions and making suggestions, and then finally taking that multi-dimensional understanding of the problem to determine what is really needed.
So, possibly not true AI (yet), but a giant leap forward from what we have today. That would help turn the science fiction of the past into science fact in the near future. The better the understanding and inferences by the smart system, the better the results.
I also believe that the unintended consequence of these new smart systems is that they will likely make errors or have biases like a human as they become more human-like in their approach. Hopefully, those smart systems will be able to automatically back-test recommendations to validate and minimize errors. If they are intelligent enough to monitor results and suggest corrective actions when they determine that the recommendation does not have the optimal desired results, they would become even “smarter.” There won’t be an ego creating a distortion filter about the approach or the results. Or maybe there will…
Many of the building blocks required to create these new systems are available today. But it takes vision and insight to see that potential, translate ideas from slippery and abstract to tangible and purposeful, and then start building something cool and useful. As that happens, we will see a paradigm shift in how we interact with computers and how they interact with us. It will become more interactive and intuitive. That will lead us to the systematic integration that I wrote about in a big data / nanotechnology post.
So, what is the real objective of my blog? To get people thinking about things differently, to foster collaboration and partnerships between businesses and educational institutions to push the limits of technology, and to foster discussion about what others believe the future of computing and smart devices will look like. I’m confident that I will see these types of systems in my lifetime, and I believe in the possibility of this occurring within the next decade.
What are your thoughts?
The Power of Simplicity
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
In the first part of my career, I didn’t care much for consultants. My experience was that they would come in, tell you what to do, and then leave victoriously while we were stuck trying to implement something that just wouldn’t work. They seemed to make everything seem so complex—often to justify their cost.
Then, I met an amazing consultant who shared something valuable with me. He explained what he believed differentiated a true consultant from a contractor (something I wrote about a decade later in a Tech Republic article). He then made me aware of the Einstein quote above. This was one of those pivotal moments in my career.
For many years, I have met many interesting people. Some seemed to try to intentionally obfuscate even the easiest things to make themselves seem brilliant. Others took such a circuitous route that you sometimes forgot what you were trying to understand and fix. And sometimes explanations were just so tangential that the main point was lost entirely. There are likely many reasons for these experiences – some intentional and many not. The real lesson learned is that it wasn’t just consultants who can be incomprehensible and that clear and comprehensible communication is critical to effectiveness.
Just think about the power of a well-crafted “elevator pitch” when you meet someone new or the ability to quickly explain how your company differentiates itself from the competition (making you the more interesting, better, or safer choice in your prospect’s mind). Or being able to articulate your business strategy in a way that people understand (and can explain to others), which also interests them enough to want to learn more and become part of making that happen.
The best consultants, as do the best employees, managers, executives, and business owners, have this ability to explain something simply. While this is only one attribute of success (likability, powers of persuasion, integrity, luck, etc. are others), it is something that can be taught, developed, and consistently applied.
The power to “explain it simply” is the power to make a difference through better understanding.
Teaching & Learning in a Business Environment
In the past, I had occasion to teach technical courses, often to groups of 20 or more people. It was always interesting. There were one or two people trying to prove how much smarter / better than you they were. There were one or two people who were there just so they didn’t have to work. But most of the people were there to learn. You figured out who was who pretty quickly. Even so, falling into the trap of labeling them and then only focusing on a subset can be problematic.
My teaching approach was to ask people about real issues (current or past) and use them as case studies for the class. This made the lessons more tangible for everyone. People were forced to develop an understanding of the problem with incomplete knowledge, ask clarifying questions, and then offer suggestions that may or may not work.
Sometimes someone would suggest a solution that just seemed completely off the wall. You wanted to understand their line of thinking to show them a better way. Occasionally you would find that their unorthodox approach was brilliantly simple and/or highly effective – and very different from what you expected.
Every time I taught a course, I would learn something. Different perspectives lead to a different understanding of the problems at hand, which can lead to creative and innovative solutions. The best ideas sometimes come from the places where you least expect them.
Even with the most seasoned teams, there are opportunities for teaching and learning. You may hear questions or statements that initially lead you to believe someone doesn’t understand the problem or goal. It becomes easy to dismiss when you don’t feel they are adding value.
But, if you take the extra effort to drill into their thinking, you could be very surprised. If nothing else, your team should feel more motivated and empowered with the process, leading to them taking ownership of the problem and finding a solution. Results improve when everyone is focused on a common goal and feels their contributions matter.
Everyone wins as long as you give them the chance.
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 