I’m a “fix or repair” guy.

I differentiate myself from “throw away and buy new” guys. I have a tendency to drive cars beyond what others might call “their useful life.” I own too many things held together with twisted wire and duct tape. I get unreasonable pleasure from improvising a solution with available materials in my shop rather than making another trip to Home Depot.

As such, I imagine myself to be a good guy to have on a backpacking trip, because if equipment breaks when we’re in the middle of the woods miles from REI or Eastern Mountain Sports, I can always “jury-rig something up.” I’m proud of this skillset, but it has its limits.

In times of change businesses all-too-often default to the quick fix. “Can you patch the software?” “Do a workaround,”  “I know we really need to hire someone, but give it to Mary she’ll figure out how to get it done.” I understand the allure of the improvised solution, the quick fix, but it isn’t always a good idea.

Years ago, I worked for some clients in oil and gas exploration and production in the western US. I used to hear things like “Time to cowboy up,” or “Git’er done!” You don’t hear that so much anymore – too many process safety incidents have claimed lives.

In VUCA be Agile

There has been much written about the constant change of the current business environment. It is described as Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and/or Ambiguity  (VUCA). VUCA was coined by Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus in 1987. The US Army War College picked up the term in the 1990s for use in military strategy.[caption width=”276″ id=”attachment_2332″ align=”alignnone”

In 2014  Nate Bennett and G. James Lemoine in a Harvard Business Review article, recommended analyzing which was the dominant condition and acting accordingly. For example, build in slack and redundancy to cope with volatility or collect data and experiment to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Unfortunately the language of VUCA has found greater adoption with many leaders than the solutions that Bennett and Lemoine recommended.

Another sign of the change affecting leaders is the methodology Agile. Agile was originally an idea to speed up the software development cycle. Software development was a serial process  -concept – design- develop- test. This was sometimes called the waterfall process as it flowed down and you had to complete one phase before starting the next, which was time consuming..

Agile was a series of quick design-develop- test loops (sprints) by multidisciplinary teams who met daily (scrums) to get to rapid prototyping. Apparently, it worked pretty well, if you had the right people and were disciplined about the process.

Then Agile was applied to all strategic planning,  innovation and improvement processes.

The words behind VUCA and the words behind Agile entered the business lexicon; the discipline behind the processes not so much.

In a strategy discussion with a senior leadership team on leader kept using the acronym VUCA. This raised everyone’s anxiety level to the point that I finally showed the Bennett and Lemoine diagram and we began to work on what was of most concern, the uncertainty of a new technology introduced by a competitor.

I was in the middle of a continuous improvement project at a diversified financial services company when one division rejected the methodology we were working with. “Agile is much faster,” they asserted.

After three months and a sizeable investment they rejoined the corporate improvement initiative.

“We tried to do everything at once. Nobody was defining what needed to be improved.”

In change be suspicious of “silver bullets” or “quick fixes.” Details are important.

“Time, oh sweet, sweet time”

Another important factor is the time horizon of the change. This is critical when examining cost. There is initial cost, maintenance, and other life cycle costs. A friend is on the board of a townhouse condominium complex. He complained to me recently.

“These places were built in the1980s. It is time for new asphalt shingle roofs. We have two bids one is for 50% more than the other. Everyone wants to go the cheaper contractor. But it’s apples and oranges. The first guy is going to put a course of shingles right over the top of the shingles that are there. The more expensive roofer is going to take off the old shingles, remove the vapor barrier, check the roof sheathing and replace plywood where he has to replace the old tarpaper vapor barrier with newer material before replacing the shingles.”

“Do they last the same amount of time?” I asked.

“Well, the shingles have the same life 20- 30 years. The issue is the vapor barrier. If the tarpaper holds; it’s fine. If not with two layers of shingles you are not going to know where the leak is coming from and with the extra layer of shingles some of the runoff may run across the skylights. That probably won’t cause a problem for five years or so, but if or when it does it will be expensive.”

“Seems like a case of initial cost vs. lifetime cost” I said “Do you have the money to do it right for the long term.

“Yeah, but it is just hard for some to spend 50% more now.”

Some might make the argument that taking the low cost fix is the better deal because many people will move before any maintenance issues arise. Many businesses have short term time horizons, because in a VUCA world, who knows what will happen. But here is a case where it seems like we do know that if we take the short term approach we will be in for some long term problems. What is the cost of unintended consequences? How many roof leaks and leaky skylights would it take for the quick fix to be more expensive?

In times of change consider decisions from multiple planning horizons.

You may decide to go with a quick fix, but at least you will act with awareness of the long term.

“Jeanne is going on maternity leave, can we hire a temp to fill in for three months?”

“We have no budget for that, Paul. You and your team can pick up the slack for three months.”

The team did pick up the slack. Mostly the manager, Paul, picked it up. Unfortunately Jeanne had a difficult delivery and didn’t come back for five months and when she came back it was part-time at first, but she did come back and the team did the additional work without the cost of a temp. However, within a year, Paul and two team members left for other jobs. No one looked at the budget strain of hiring three new staff and rebuilding cohesiveness in the new team.

Sometimes you have to do a quick fix. Sometimes you fix something with duct tape. But remember where the quick fix is and have a plan to fix the consequences. Duct tape doesn’t last forever and using it on people isn’t recommended.

The quick fix’ll git you ef you don’t watch out.

The title of this post comes from combining the title from the book “Beyond the Quick Fix” by Dr. Ralph Kilmann and the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “Little Orphant Annie,” which my parents used to read to us every Halloween.  Annie told “witch stories” with the moral “The Gobble ‘uns’ll git you ef you don’t watch out,”