Planning for Problem Prevention
Feeding pigeons taught me about debugging plans.
“Well, that quickly went south”, uttered my wife from the back of the car as she clutched a shoebox in her arms.
“I just hope Pigwidgeon will be okay” I responded, glancing at the shoebox via the rear-view mirror. As the traffic light turned green, I resumed our drive to the local bird sanctuary.
“Why did you let Percy out?”, asked my wife.
“I thought the pigeons would notice him! Why did you throw the peanuts so close to the house?”, I retorted.
“I didn’t know you’d let Percy out!”
We both sighed, and agreed reality had ganged up on us. Could we have done anything differently?
My wife and I had been trying to get closer to our goal (in purple) of caring for all living beings. Unfortunately, our garden had no living beings to care for - so we installed a bird bath. This attracted pigeons, which we could then feed and nourish, allowing us to get closer to our goal.
Unfortunately we gave the plan no deliberate thought. If we had, we’d have predicted a likely side-effect (in orange): scattering peanuts directly on the grass perfectly positions the pigeons for a cat confrontation.
Deliberate thought would have allowed us to simulate, debug, and improve our plan in advance (perhaps by adding cat containment). Deliberate thought would have given us a better chance of being greeted by the future we’d wanted.
Something in my head clicked. Simulating, debugging, and improving plans in organisations could be a cheap way of insulating ourselves against mistakes - before we even begin work.
A plan to improve sales by setting targets for the sales team could be deliberately thought through, and the likely negative side-effects predicted.
Suggests Michael Crichton:
“We [humans] think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds - and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own.
“We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.”
The takeaway? Simulating plans on paper is a cheap way of avoiding embarrassing and expensive mistakes before they even happen. A poor man’s Minority Report, and a pigeon’s saving grace.
