The business world is littered with dead documents that do nothing but waste people’s time. Reports no one reads, diagrams no one looks at, and specs that never resemble the finished product. These things take forever to make but only seconds to forget!
If you need to explain something, try getting real with it. Instead of describing what something looks like, draw it. Instead of explaining what something sounds like, hum it. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.
The problem with abstractions (like reports and documents) is that they create illusions of agreement. A hundred people can read the same words, but in their heads, they’re imagining a hundred different things!
That’s why you want to get to something real right away. That’s when you get true understanding. It’s like when we read about characters in a book, we each picture them differently in our heads. But when we actually see people, we all know exactly what they look like.
When the team at Alaska Airlines wanted to build a new Airport of the Future, they didn’t rely on blueprints and sketches. They got a warehouse and built mock-ups using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts. The team then built a small prototype in Anchorage to test systems with real passengers and employees. The design that resulted from this getting real process has significantly reduced wait times and increased agent productivity.
We Said This: That’s the path we all should take. Get the chisel out and start making something real. Anything else is just a distraction!