Lakitu Lessons in Management

Super Mario Kart taught me about management.

“I swear the joystick is stuck”, I shouted as my cart fell off Rainbow Road, again. “I can’t turn!”

“You suuuuck! We all know who’s washing the dishes tonight!”, my wife lovingly retorted.

As Lakitu used his cloud to hoist my cart back onto the track, and positioned it to face forwards, something in my head clicked.

In organisations, ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ is often separated. Managers choose which problems to solve, and the solutions with which to solve them (the ‘thinking’). Implementing the solution is left to project teams (the ‘doing’).

And there is little overlap: managers have little time to be involved in the doing, and project teams are given a solution to implement with only a limited understanding of the problem it is meant to solve.

An example. Seeing fewer-than-expected sales leads generated by her team, the Head of Marketing may choose to roll out a new customer relationship management tool. A project team is then charged with ‘doing the doing’, but they are given only a limited understanding of the original problem (something is causing fewer-than-expected leads to be generated in a given period).

This separation of ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ leads to two interesting effects.

Firstly, evaluating a solution requires an understanding of the problem it’s attempting to solve. In this case, the value of a new customer relationship management tools lies only in its ability to improve lead generation.

If project teams are given a solution to implement, without an understanding of the problem the solution is attempting to solve, then they have sticky joysticks: they can only proceed forwards.

So, separating ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ discourages the team from doing the right thing.

At every twist and turn of the project, managers - who have an understanding of the problem to be solved - must be called upon to make decisions. But managers are busy, and - like Lakitu - there is a delay before they are available to reposition the project.

So, separating ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ introduces inefficiency in the form of delays.

The takeaway? Efficiency and effectiveness come from keeping thinking and doing together, thereby requiring less Lakitu.

Image credit: snesaday.com