Why everything takes longer than we think it will

Think about the countless times that you've been wrong about estimating the length of time it would take to do something, to get somewhere, or complete some type of task or project.

Something always goes wrong along the way, some unforeseen circumstance puts you or the people and systems you are counting on behind schedule, or we simply, (and fairly consistently), are overconfident in our own ability to gets things done in a given amount of time.

Why is that the case so often, why do is seem like we are constantly explaining away missed deadlines, or alternatively, griping about the inconvenience that other people's missed deadlines have on us? Well, it turns out there might be a (sort of seems fake but I am going to pretend it is scientific), law that will help us to explain this all-too-frequent phenomenon.

It's a simple little observation that is called 'Hofstadter's Law', named after American professor and author Douglas Hofstadter and it reads as follows:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Even the more famous and fictional Hofstadter is in on the game:

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

— Leonard Hofstadter (@TheRealLeonardH) October 25, 2012

The 'law' tries to describe and help us understand just how difficult it is to accurately estimate the time it will take to complete tasks of any meaningful complexity. And the kicker is the law is recursive in nature - even taking the law into account doesn't prevent us from failing to underestimate the time needed to complete complex tasks.

It is a kind of cruel equation - we think task 'A' will take four hours - we take into account Hofstadter's Law and add a couple of hours to the estimate - but Hofstadter's Law itself kicks in AGAIN, to remind us it will STILL take longer than we estimate.

What can we do about this seemingly irrational but often true observation about our weakness in estimating the time required to complete tasks?

Maybe we should think first about the available time we have, and what realistically, and based on past experience we can reasonably expect to accomplish in that time. Rather than looking at a complex project, or even a series of tasks and trying to count up how much time they will take, (and inevitably underestimating), thinking about the available time first, will force us to think more critically and probably come up with more reasonable expectations of what can be accomplished. 'What can you get done in three hours?' is a much easier question to answer than 'How long will it take you to write this article?'

So the next time you are faced with the prospect of estimating how long it will take to complete a complex undertaking remember the wise words of our friend Hofstadter, and do your best to not fall into the trap of thinking 'This time it will be different', because it never is.

Mapping the ideal candidate

Don't worry - this isn't a political post...  

Just a quick take for one for an Election Day, then we can get back to riling each other up on Facebook.

I wanted to share this excellent mind map found on the Nordstrom Innovation Lab careers page.  Titled ''What We Want in a Teammate", the mind map is an interesting and novel way for an organization to attempt to communicate what they see are the important traits, characteristics, and behaviors in theor organization.

Pretty cool, right?  And while I admit to not actually visiting the careers page of every organization in the world, I will state unequivocally that this is the first 'Candidate Profile Mind Map' I have ever seen.

The Nordstrom Innovation Lab describes itself as "a lean startup operating inside of Nordstrom" and as a place where "We move through ideas quickly, using whichever technologies make sense. Our process incorporates methodologies and practices from Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile, and lean thinking."

I don't know much else about the Innovation Lab, including if indeed they are very innovative at all, but I do think it is a smart idea for an older organization in a seemingly un-sexy industry, (retailing), to try and position themselves on their careers site as a place not at all like most potential candidates would expect.

What do you think - is creating a Mind Map of the ideal candidate a good idea?

Could you create one for your organization if you tried?

Note: This Lifehacker piece from a couple of years back has links to several free Mind Mapping tools in case you are interested in playing around with these ideas.

The Last HR Pro not on LinkedIn

Last week I had a chance to present to a great group of about 100 or so HR, Talent, and Recruiting professionals at a local SHRM event in Virginia. I like getting to these kinds of local HR gatherings - they provide a much better view into the real concerns and challenges in the HR trenches, and usually are bereft of the collection of often jaded and a little too smug and ironically detached, 'professional' conference attendees. Sure, I get it, you are sick of hearing the 71st talk on 'Why Social Media is Important for HR', but in case you have not realized it, actually attending the same presentation dozens of times at events all over the country make you the one who is a little weird and out of the mainstream, not the HR pro at a 300-person company that is trying to figure out how, if at all, having a Twitter account will help her get her job done.

But back to the point - at the session where I was talking to the group about changes and trends in workforce technologies, naturally the use of the public, or consumer social networking sites was brought up, I think in the expected context of how they are being used for various aspects of the talent acquisition function. I asked the attendees to share some examples of how they are incorporating these networks in their organizations, and a few folks shared what they were doing to share job openings and company information on Facebook and source candidates on LinkedIn. Nothing unusual here, a few attendees, (maybe 10% of the group), had some 'active', (not just trolling for candidates), activity on social networks, but what was interesting to me was as the conversation continued, one audience member told the group she had never created a personal LinkedIn profile. I pressed her as to why she was not on LinkedIn, and she promptly replied, 'I just don't have time for it. I'm busy'. I jokingly suggested she was the last HR pro not on LinkedIn.

The group continued to discuss both social networking and other kinds of new technologies that are impacting the workplace and the practice of HR, but I could not get out of my head that in late 2012, there was still one smart, engaged, (she took the time to attend a professional development and networking event), and experienced HR/Talent pro that had not found her way to LinkedIn, if nothing else to set up a shell profile on the site. I even came back to her a couple of times later in the session when the conversation shifted to mobile technology, and how the usage patterns in consumer tech are effecting enterprise tech, I think my comment was 'You are all on your iPhones, updating your Facebook and checking out who has viewed your LinkedIn page, well except for you, (giving a mock-disgusted look towards the one LinkedIn holdout).'

The point of all this? 

I guess a couple of things stood out after thinking about it a little longer.  One, there still exists a pretty significant knowledge and value perception gap between most of the front line, working HR professionals and those of us that think about and use new technologies every day.  There are really still very few 'real' HR pros out there that are as obsessed with this stuff, as it just does not move the needle for them on their day-to-day. Two, while participation and use of these social technologies might level the playing field to some extent between larger and better-financed organizations and smaller ones, that effect is limited. A couple of audience members from very large organizations shared what they are doing with social and branded talent communities, a level of commitment and effort that simply can't be approached by smaller companies.

Last, and maybe the only fascinating part of this entire post, is that after taking some good-natured ribbing from me, (and even the presenter that followed me), the HR pro who had been the one LinkedIn holdout approached me at the end of the day to let me know that she would be, after all, setting up a LinkedIn profile when she got home.

Good for her!

And bad for you, the 'savvy' HR pro who is all over social media and social networking - that is one more competitor for talent that you have to worry about.

Have a Great Week!

Forecast, Upside, Pipeline and Staying on Offense

I ended last week with a piece titled Playing Offense on Social Media, a story about how sometimes being aggressive, even snarky, but essentially leaning forward and playing offense in social media can be a good strategy for organizations, (and even individuals), that are active in social media and social networks.

To continue the 'offense' theme, I want to share another similar take, this one from the world of sales, (and even if you are not 'in' sales, let's face it, we are all selling something), titled 'Play Offense When Predicting Revenue', from the Feld Thoughts sales blog.  

In the piece, Brad Feld shares a simple way to change the way sales managers think about their sales pipeline, essentially instead of assigning a generic 'probable close rate' to every deal in the pipeline, e.g., 'We have 10 active deals, we think 75% will close this quarter', Feld recommends sales teams divide the pipeline into three buckets as follows:

Forecast - These are the deals we BELIEVE (in CAPS), will close this quarter. We are committed to them, and any deal in this group that does not close, will be subject to a detailed review and post-mortem

Upside - These are deals that MIGHT close this quarter. We are working them, but can't commit to a close this quarter.

Pipeline - These are deals that WILL NOT close this quarter, but are being worked. These should move into the Upside or Forecast buckets soon, or will fall out as lost opportunities.

According to Feld, the positioning of deals into these discrete categories, most particularly the 'committed' portion of the forecast bucket, creates more accountability in the organization, and provides a better mechanism for inderstanding the sales process, the customer decision cycle, and the skill and capability of the sales team.

Then the sales team and managers revisit this list each week. Sometimes deals  fall out of Forecast into Upside based on new information. Last week you thought there was a 100% it was going to close (forecast), now you no longer have certainty but there's still a chance. And, if there's no way it'll close this quarter, it should go in Pipeline.

This discrete planning helps allocation your efforts - most of your short term energy should be on Forecast deals, some of your short and some of your long term energy on Upside deals, and the balance of your long term energy on the Pipeline.

I kind of dig it, simple, keeps the team focused, and as we like to say around here, keeps you playing offense, not just sitting back and wiating for (hopefully) good things to happen.

Forecast, Upside, Pipeline - what other parts of your business could benefit from this simple breakdown?

Have a Great Weekend!

Does it work on an iPhone?

Earlier this year I had the good fortune to attend the Recruiting Innovation Summit in Mountain View, California and additionally serve as one of the judges at the event's Recruiting Tech start-up contest.

It was a fantastic event and experience even though at the time I wondered if I personally added much value to the contest. You see while the other judges were asking really pointed and pertinent questions like 'How will you monetize?', and 'How big is the addressable market for this solution?, I was coming up with insightful queries like 'Will this work on an iPhone?'

At the time I felt kind of dumb, as if that trivial sounding question sort of proved I did not really get what was important for tech start-ups and the depths of my understanding of the market were well, not that deep.

But I was thinking about it all again recently, (I know I need more hobbies), and I have concluded it really was not such an obvious and shallow question after all. Because when I think about tech at all these days, doesn't matter if it is consumer tech or enterprise tech, the 'mobile' question is almost always part of the first five minutes of the conversation.

Either the solution is purpose built and is mobile only or the providers are furiously trying to adapt or re-imagine their offerings for mobile.

Finally, I thought about it this way - would I want to adopt ANY new technology for any reason that did not natively, easily, seamlessly and logically work on whatever mobile device I have?

So my lame questions at the Recruiting event were, I think, not so lame after all.

And this post, which is actually sort of lame itself, did indeed help me to prove a point to myself. It is the first post I've ever done completely on my iPhone.

And if this somehow gets botched up after I hit 'publish', I'll probably start looking for a new blog host.

Have a great day all!