‘Roideal’ Thinking

11 Jun 2010 by paulrutherford

This posting starts with a double declaration of love.

I love TED. A TED video is an 18-minute workout in the best mental gym in town.

What marks it out is the practicality of the thinking on display. TED is a virtual venue for genuine innovation – the solving of problems, rather than the stylising of presentation or the academic examination of angels on pinheads.

If the worldwide web only had one site, it would have to be TED.

Second declaration: I love Rory Sutherland.

Let me be clear – this is unrequited, Platonic love from afar. We don’t exchange notes or cards or flowers. But his two TED pitches make my heart skip a beat.

Sutherland looks at the world with a fresh pair of eyes, notices spaces for new solutions, and asks “why not?”

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

In the more recent of his talks, he focuses on the inverse relationship between money and effectiveness, his basic thesis being that it’s the small stuff that can make the greatest difference.

Like the example of a World Health Organization inoculation program, and the ‘reward’ of a kilo of lentils for mothers who participated.

As Sutherland says: ‘in a business or government context, a solution so trivial as to be embarrassing.’

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkLcwHmnPV4

At 10min30sec he sets out a simple graph (even creative thinkers need a 2-by-2 matrix to sell an idea), charting the relationship between money and effect:

• Big Money / Big Effect = Strategy

• Big Money / Little Effect = Consultancy (a cheap gag, but funny nevertheless)

• Little Money / Little Effect = Trivia

• Little Money / Big Effect = ?

He then sets a challenge: what should we call the activity he’s talking about?

IT’S ALL IN A NAME

Sutherland suggests that an organization needs a Chief Detail Officer to lead the charge on this, to “sweat the small stuff” and to be champion of inverse proportionality.

But what’s the label for their practice? What’s the verb? What’s the banner under which it gets focus?

What’s the question the rest of the organization can ask to check on performance?

The responses posted on YouTube are a list of current words, such as ingenuity, inspiration, tactics, common sense.

Which rather miss the point.

If the deliberate search for this type of solution is going to be formally established, it needs a new label.

(Like Quality or Business Process Engineering or Six Sigma.)

So I noodled this over a cup of coffee at lunchtime, in search of a new term.

A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE

The core principle is the relationship between input and output.

An obvious image is the lever, a simple machine that multiplies force. A little bit of pressure here, a huge amount of force there.

Nope. Can’t use that. Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe hijacked ‘leverage’ a long time ago. And in light of recent events, it really doesn’t carry the most positive connotations.

Then again,a lever needs a pivot point. But so does a dancer, and that’s too artsy for the business world in tough times.

How about a ‘fulcrum’?

That’s better! Good engineering word, ‘fulcrum’. Sounds scientific. Sounds technical. Sounds practical.

But put it into Google, and it turns out to be an energy company and an Evangelican forum.

So how about using it as the root of a hybrid term, one that links with business and finance:

Fulcrunomics? Fulcrumomics??

(Hey, listen: Entire publishing phenomena have been built on flimsier notions.  Stay with me here.)

The trouble with both words is that they are: a) ugly to look at; b) impossible to say.

Back to the coffee cup.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The thought of linking to the finance function set another group of mental cogs grinding, and I remember sundry grillings from CFOs and FDs and VCs wanting to know the payback on proposed spend.

Return on Investment.

(We might be on to something here.)

The difference is that Sutherland is directing attention not just to money, but to the quality of thinking, the effectiveness of true creativity.

Return on Idea. R-o-Idea.

THAT’S the question the organization should ask itself everyday:

“What’s our R-o-Idea?’

Language evolves, and R-o-Idea easily morphs into Roidea,  which a good phonetic partner to ‘Trivia’ in Sutherland’s grid (like the ‘Strategy’ and ‘Consultancy’ pairing in the other quadrants).

Roidea: n: a collection of high-return actions and programs, initially dismissed as being too simple

Roideal: n: a single low-cost-high-efficacy solution

Roideate: v: to actively seek and promote low-cost answers to potentially costly problems

Roidish: adj :  deceptively straightforward, easy to underestimate, more effective than expected

And with that, I pass the baton back to Mr Sutherland, in appreciation for challenging some of my perceptions and showing me the world in a slightly different way.