The magic button

With a little practice, you can start to notice when your “system improvement” ideas are getting bogged down in feature planning without identifying the desirable outcomes first.

But it can still be hard to distinguish. After all, whatever you build will eventually consist of certain features and functionality, right?

Here's a question I sometimes ask my clients to help make the distinction:

Let's say I build for you a magic button. It will be ready tomorrow.

You won't really know how it works, but when you press the button, it will solve this problem.

What do you get out of that? And why is that important to your mission?

Those two questions represent your desired outcome and its value to your work.

And once you know those two things, you'll be able to build that magic button in a way that does what is needed within an appropriate level of investment.

That’s how you make improvements that really matter, and leave the alluring “it would be so cool” stuff alone.

All the best,
A.