by Jared Goralnick
Running a business is about making decisions. One of the choices I’ve been grappling with is in which areas of my business to increase staff size as our workload increases. Frequently I have to decide which initiatives to focus on in a given week, month, or quarter. In the shower I realized another way to think about my quandary: less cold water.
In my shower I have the most basic sort of faucet handles: one knob for hot and one knob for cold. The more you turn each of them, the more pressure you get of the hot or cold–pretty simple. While I can’t speak from experience, I’m guessing that most people adjust their faucet to a familiar position, make sure the temperature and pressure are all right, and then hop in.
What happens next demonstrates to me that the most intuitive application is not always the best use of the faucets. At this point it’s not usually about the pressure, it’s about getting just the right temperature as fluctuations arise. If it’s too cold the most logical thing is to turn the hot knob to make it hotter. But that’s not always the best approach; after all, turning up the hot means you’re going to run out of hot water sooner than before.
Back to the business scenario, for me turning up the hot water is akin to bringing on more fulltime people. Turning down the cold water is similar to finding ways to hand off the non-revenue generating activities of the business. Bringing on fulltime people requires a lot of management time through the hiring and training, and ultimately will require there to be enough work for that individual. Outsourcing the non-revenue producing activities comes with predictable fees and very little risk. It frees up the existing workforce to focus on what they’re already good at, which also happens to generate revenue.
However, I bring up this metaphor not just for the specific situation to which I’ve applied it. Many decisions have similar parallels. Hot water approaches generally require more effort but, if sustainable, mean more results…just as adding hot water will not only warm the temperature but increase the pressure. Cold water approaches are the alternative, less common approach–the way to keep doing what you’re doing and find a creative way to solve your problem. Cold water approaches in business often involve handing over the responsibility for that problem so that you don’t have to spend much more time on it. It may be cheaper, it may not be…but ultimately it will be less stressful and get the job done equally well.
Such a simple metaphor; hopefully it’ll help in your own problem-solving…
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