Cold Sores and Rice Cookers: A Story of Cause and Effect

A few weeks ago, I developed a cold sore on my lip. One of my wife's relatives had the perfect cure, so she directed my wife to wipe the condensed water on the inside lid of our rice cooker with a paper towel. My wife then applied the moistened paper towel to my cold sore after I failed an attempt to squirm away. The relative sensed my skepticism about the cure, and told me, "Believe me, I'm 72 years old. It works."

Well about a week later the cold sore was gone. "See, it works!" another in-law told me.

So I wondered out loud, "How did people cure their cold sores before the invention of the rice cooker?"

I explained to my kids, who watched the whole thing unfold, that the body has a natural ability to heal itself and that it is a logical fallacy to think that if A precedes B, then A is necessarily the cause of B. The name of this fallacy is POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC, which is simply Latin for what I told my kids; "after this, therefore because of this."

Only moments ago, I learned from my wife that the relative who recommended the cure got a cold sore herself and was looking for some spray thingy that supposedly helps.

I asked, "Why doesn't she just use the rice cooker?"

My wife replied, "She did, but it didn't work."

Icees, Softdrinks, and Redundant Systems

A year or so ago, I took my kids to see a movie. They both wanted an Icee. Unfortunately, all three Icee machines weren't working. My youngest child cried.

"Curious coincidence", I thought. "How could all three machines go down simultaneously?"

A few months ago we went back to the same theater. This time, not only were the Icee machines down, but none of the soft drink machines were working either.

"Very curious," I thought. So I asked to speak to the manager.

Turns out, all of the soft drink machines get their CO2 from the same machine, which is in a backroom of the theater. And there was a leak in the one pipe leading from that room to the refreshment area. Still not sure how that would affect the Icee machines. Do those require CO2 also?

Root cause: No redundancy of CO2. Single point of failure.

So I started watching the customers standing in line. Most of them ending up not buying anything when they found out there was no soda available. Although there were refrigerators with bottled and canned drinks, no one was buying them. Apparently people don't buy a lot of vitamin water when they go out to the movies.

For amusement, I made an educated guess as to how much sales they lost and convinced myself they were losing money hand over fist.

Thinking back to redundancy, I realized that if they were to dump all the vitamin water down the sink and stock the refrigerators with bottles of soda from Costco, they could start making money again.

When I suggested that idea to one of the employees, he told me, "that wouldn't work. People wouldn't buy it."

To which I responded, "I'd buy it."

Anyway, it became quite clear that neither the manager nor the employees were interested in solving their problem, and it was just about time for my movie to start anyway. So I moved on.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the accountant had a heart attack when he looked at that store's cash flow for the month.

True Leadership and Firefighting

Someone posted the following on our internal social media site after a company leadership summit:

“Anyone can manage when things are going well, but it takes a true leader to lead when they are not”.

Sounds insightful, but is it true?

Why are things going well for the first manager? How did they get that way if he is mediocre?

Why are things not going well for the second manager? How did they get that way if he is great?

Soggy Sandwiches and the Five Whys

My daughter told me about a friend of hers who throws away her turkey sandwich every day at lunch time.

So I asked her why her friend does that.

"Because every day, the sandwich is soggy," she said.

I asked, "Are you sure it's not because she doesn't like turkey?"

"No, it's because every day the sandwich is soggy, and she doesn't like soggy sandwiches."

Makes sense to me. "Why is it soggy every day?" I asked.

"I don't know," she answered.

So I tried a different question, "Why doesn't she tell her parents that she doesn't like soggy sandwiches? Maybe they can figure out how to make sandwiches that aren't soggy if she tells them."

"I don't know," she answered again.

Right now, my daughter doesn't seem too interested in identifying the root cause. But I will let you know if that changes. I'm sure if she asks "Why" enough times, we'll get to the bottom of the soggy sandwich situation. Until then, her friend will continue to throw them away. After all, who wants to eat a soggy sandwich?

Are Formal Peer Reviews Valuable?

Are Formal Peer Reviews Valuable?

It depends. Do you think they are valuable? Or do you think they are a waste of time? In either case, you are correct.

If you think they are valuable, you will do them right. And they will help you find defects in important documents or source code.

If you think they are a waste of time, but are mandated to do them anyway, you will only go through the motions with a Checkbox Attitude. And they won’t be valuable at all. You will then notice afterward that they didn’t help at all, providing you "evidence" that you were right. A self-fulfilling prophecy. This will cause you to resist peer reviews even more next time, and do an even worse job next time. A positive feedback loop.

The same is true of any process improvement tool.

Which is why I believe that:

1) Management should never force employees to use a process improvement tool they don’t believe will be helpful, because the employees will end up being right!

2) Instead of mandates, management should focus instead on convincing people, using evidence, that such tools can be helpful.