Efficient Means to Meaningful Ends

The Eurostar taught me about goals.

Dan Heath recently noted:
“In 2007, Eurostar completed a major upgrade of its rail route, which cost roughly 6 billion GBP. The goal had been to speed up the route, and it was a success: The one-way travel time was shaved from 155 minutes to 135 minutes. Mission accomplished.

“The British advertising guru Rory Sutherland was unconvinced. ‘For 0.01 percent of this money, you could have put wi-fi on the trains, which wouldn't have reduced the duration of the journey, but would have improved its enjoyment and its usefulness far more,’ he said in a 2011 speech. ‘For maybe 10 percent of the money, you could have paid all of the world's top male and female supermodels to walk up and down the train handing out free Château Pétrus to all the passengers. You’d still have 5 billion pounds in change, and people would ask for the trains to be slowed down.’

“When we lock into a particular goal too quickly, we blind ourselves to alternate routes forward that might have been better and easier. If we want to reset the way we work, we need to start asking a new question: What’s the goal of the goal?”

Russell Ackoff furthers: “Every means can be considered to be an end, and every end a means. For example, buying an automobile can be considered a means for obtaining personal transportation, an end. Personal transportation can be considered to be a means for getting to work, an end. Getting to work is a means for obtaining income, and so on. Every less-than-ultimate end can be considered a means to a more ultimate end.”

The takeaway? Asking ‘why’ allows us to understand the ultimate goal. And understanding our ultimate goal allows us to uncover more efficient means (‘how’) of getting there.