Last week was about patio furniture and designing spaces to drive behaviors.  This week is about patio furniture, making decisions, and establishing requirements. 

Before purchasing the new patio furniture, my wife, kids, and I had a few conversations about what we wanted out of the furniture.  We had talked about A LOT of different things.  It began to feel a little overwhelming.  Then, I sat down with my wife and we whiteboarded requirements.  I’m dead serious.  Few things are better than whiteboarding with a loved one 😉  We listed what were requirements vs nice to haves.  The initial list of requirements was too long, so we ended up narrowing it down to 3-4 things that we absolutely needed to have.  This level of clarity made the buying decision less overwhelming and so much easier.  Now, we could look at all the options and say, “Out of all of them only X number meet our 3-4 requirements.  If those meet our requirements there is no longer a wrong choice.  Let’s just pick one and go.”

What does this have to do with anything?  It’s easy for major projects or big decisions to feel daunting.  It’s easy to become paralyzed by all the pressure that comes with these.  I believe that most of the time when big projects or decisions are daunting, it’s because we are not clear enough on what success looks like.  If we can clearly articulate the 3-4 things that would make us choose one option over another or if we can outline the 3-4 things that will make a project successful, then it’s so much easier to deliver.

The challenge- Have you identified the success requirements?

Bonus real world application– The other day I was talking to someone about skill development.  They listed off about 10-15 topics that they could focus on.  It was A LOT.  They asked me which ones I thought we should invest in.  Instead, I asked, “What is are the 2-3 things that these people need to be able to do.”  They responded, “They need to be able to do X, Y, and Z.”  My next question was, “Can they already do X, Y, and Z?”  The person replied, “They can already more or less do Y and Z.  X is the biggest gap.”  This gave us clarity on our requirements.  We didn’t need to tackle everything.  We needed to create interventions that would drive the knowledge and enhance the skills, so people could do X.  All of a sudden an overwhelming list of 10-15 things, turned into a much more manageable 3-4 things to do.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry