Analysis Paralysis

Thanks to John Moore (who passed it on from Piers Young and a list of others) for the link to the following story:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group: fifty pound of pots rated an A, forty pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an A. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

I love this story. It reminds me of a few experiences I've had:

A few years back I served a brief stint as Market Intelligence Director for jobs.com. Several of the guys on the exec team came from a big 5 consulting firm. Every week I'd produce a report with a laundry list of all the competitive activities for the week -- new programs, new products, etc. -- and recommend a few immediate actions that would at least keep us in the game. But no, analysis paralysis was the dominant mindset and nothing ever got done. Funny how the company rapidly went under.

More recently I've consulted for a couple companies who just weren't sure whether they should invest in marketing activities. I recommended that we spend a small amount to test some ideas; if they work, we'll roll them out systemwide. If not, it wasn't a waste: we'd just try something else. Like the famous quote by Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Unfortunately my clients were a bit too risk-averse... just like the quality group theorizing about perfection.

Of course, it's all well and good when it's someone else's money... but a bit tougher to apply it to one's own personal life (Yes, I too have been guilty of analysis paralysis!) It does take some courage to make a decision based on available information and stop second-guessing yourself. I think too often we can doubt our gut feeling because our brains are in overdrive, and we forget that 'gut feeling' is really the summation of unconscious brain calculations...

Comments

[Kelly L Taylor]

This is a beautiful, uplifting story - to be successful we must be willing to make many mistakes - and learn from them. A resonant quote is this (though you may not think so, at first):

It is far easier to critique someone else's attempt than to create perfectly the first time.

It sounds like a don't-be-a-critic mantra, but I use it for reverse effect. I tell the team to draft the report, product, etc. The draft is the hardest part, but it gives the group a vision, even if it only crystallizes what-we-don't-want. That was more information than we knew when we had nothing to look at. Begin the work, then shape it as it grows.

[Manish Verma]

Your story is very nice. Actually iwas finding something on google and got this. I need a help if you wish. I have a competition on "1+1 is the new mantra of marketing". Can you send me something on this. Please sent soon .Its urgent. Thankyou.
Manish Verma .

[David Foster]

Absolutely fascinating story, which I have linked...thanks for passing it along.

[Graham]

an interesting analog to the pottery story is the development of software component models by microsoft and ibm.

microsoft developed and released an early version called COM (component object model) which was widely critized by the development community as not being particularly elegant, whereas ibm spearheaded the development of a "more pure" model called CORBA (common object request broker architecture).

microsoft quickly evolved and refined their COM model while the rest of the community continued to critize it and work on the more academic CORBA approach.

in the end, COM+ (followed by .NET) evolved to a pretty darn good technology that is installed and used in thousands of applications, whereas CORBA has been relegated after years of effort to an also-ran.

there is a lot to be said for the "ship early and ship often" approach versus "design until perfect and then ship".