By Ko Ito
July 31, 2024
Jogging is my hobby and I have participated in over 80 marathons. When I first started, I lost weight and improved my record at every competition and was highly motivated. But soon I could not break my own record, and now I just keep running for my health.
The same goes for the stages of development in society. In immature times like postwar Japan, all efforts at improvement were rewarding because results were immediately seen. However, in today’s mature society, the quality of all products and services is high. Business operations are the result of many years of kaizen, a Japanese word that means “continuous improvement,” so it is extremely difficult to improve furthermore. There are many cases where the side effects of a solution outweigh the improvements.
Here are some examples of side effects of solutions.
Adding lanes on a highway ultimately increases congestion. While more lanes may initially increase speeds in some areas, they lead to more congestion in spots where lanes cannot be added, like tunnels and bridges. This reduces the overall traffic capacity of the road. Traffic capacity will be at its maximum when all vehicles maintain a speed of 80 km/h and a distance of 40 meters between vehicles according to the study by Professor Katsuhiro Nishinari, a Jamology researcher in Tokyo University. This optimal balance is disrupted by adding lanes.
Excessive sterilization weakens the immune system and increases the risk of infections. Nevertheless, hand washing is essential to prevent infectious diseases like COVID-19. However, sterilization can also kill microorganisms (resident bacteria) that are the source of immune system and increase the risk of infection. It is not easy to keep an optimal balance that eliminates viruses while leaving resident bacteria.
Barrier-free access can reduce physical activity and accelerate aging. While it’s important to provide barrier-free access for the socially vulnerable, excessive accessibility can decrease physical activity among seniors and speed up aging. We should overindulgence and remember that physical challenges enhance our ability to live.
Food aid to reduce starvation increases the population and the poverty rate. Food aid is the same as feeding pigeons in a park. The increase in a particular species disrupts the ecosystem’s balance, and in the worst case, leads to its extinction. For this reason, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) does not provide food aid, but rather aids through capability transfer, such as teaching how to cultivate rice, dig wells and so on.
Biases that Lead to Partial Optimization
Our brain has several biases that lead to partial optimizations. Our brain prioritizes ideas that are easy to recognize. For example, when we have fragmentation in business operation, we come up with the idea of integration. Fragmentation should have the same number of benefits as integration, but we prefer integration to fragmentation because our brain cannot recognize fragmented items.
Also, when we have a task that depends on a particular individual, we will suggest standardization. From a manager’s perspective, such dependency is troublesome in terms of resource utilization. But from an employee’s perspective, it is the very reason to hone their skills. They just want to be told, “You’re the only one I can rely on.” If it’s a standardized job that anyone can do by simply following a manual, there’s no reason to put in more effort than wage.
The same goes for automation versus manual work. Automation brought dramatic improvements in the 20th century, but now the side effects of automation might be more serious than its effects. Small kaizen can be made for manual work every day, but just like the race between the rabbit and the tortoise, temporary speed-up comes at the expense of continuous improvement and flexible optimization depending on the situations.
The brain struggles to recognize many individual elements, so it links multiple events to find a root cause. For instance, we might connect low motivation, poor quality, and numerous customer complaints through causal relationships. We might think, “A lack of manpower causes low quality, which leads to customer complaints, and then employees lose motivation,” concluding that “it’s all due to a lack of manpower!” However, each problem has its unique causes, so even if you hire people, nothing will be resolved.
Listening to customer feedback is important, but simply accepting their requests will not solve the problem. It’s like a doctor prescribing medicine without a proper diagnosis. Although a doctor’s diagnosis is not always correct, doctors who fulfill patients’ requests often receive praise.
They are common brain habits for all people, regardless of whether they are the buyer or the seller, so there are many cases where the budget for a project is approved without noticing these biases. Even if you want to understand the current situation, your customer may want a quick response and a solution.
How to Eliminate Ambiguity
To avoid these fallacies, you need a clear understanding of the current situation and be aware of ambiguity.
Examples of ambiguous expressions include customer, strategy, management degrees (enormous, frequent, slow, real-time, better, optimal, efficient), and buzzwords (AI, IOT, Cloud, RPC) . Numerical expressions might be improvement rate, costing, profit margin, and ranking.
Ambiguity will cause discrepancies, leading to misjudgments, rework, and project failure. Ambiguity exists in every language. Every word can have an infinite number of meanings. “Yes” can be used in a negative sense, and “white” can be expressed as black depending on the context. Tanka and poetry allow for multiple interpretations by readers, but in business it can be troublesome as it creates discrepancies.
However, if you can recognize ambiguity, it’s not difficult to resolve the discrepancy by asking for an example. An example is an episode such as who, when, where, what did they do and what happened, and it turns general conceptual expressions into unique story. You can ask for several different examples or expand the time frame of the story by asking what happened before and after.
Questions about proper nouns and measurements are also effective to eliminate ambiguity. For example, multiple partners can be rephrased as four companies: A, B, C and D with proper nouns, and frequent delays in delivery as twice per month with a delay of 2-3 days with a unit of measurement.
Numerical expressions are often believed to be objective, but this is only true in technical papers and specifications. Most business numbers are ambiguous and open to countless interpretations. For example, the cost of a ramen shop will change depending on the purpose of showing the cost. It may or may not include the store’s rent, electricity, water and gas bills, staff’s wages, inventory of ingredients, and depreciation of the refrigerator.
Yukichi Fukuzawa mentions a fundamental premise for discussion in his book, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, as below:
"Light and heavy, long and short, good and evil, and right and wrong are ideas that arise from comparison. If there is no light, there is no heavy, and if there is no good, there is no evil. Therefore, lightness means lighter than heavy, and good means better than evil, so they cannot be discussed without comparing each other. This is the basis of the discussion."
Most problems in developing societies were simple linear, but in mature societies, you must find an equilibrium point between multiple values within a whole system. To avoid partial optimization, you need understand common brain biases, recognize language ambiguities, reduce discrepancies by asking questions, and identify trade-offs in our system. After assessing the current level of each value, try reversing them. This may reveal hidden value.
Freelance Trainer, Translator and Course Developer
Consultant and Trainer, International Institute for Learning
Ko’s experience spans over 15 years, and he has provided various online and offline trainings in Project Management, Business Analysis, Leadership, and Agile, after working with several American IT companies including DEC, HP, and Intel.
Ko also has courses in several schools including the National Institute of Technology, Keio University, and Ishikawa IT Center Business School. Additionally, he has worked as a trainer at Botswana Public Service College in Africa.
Ko earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and MBA from Waseda University in Tokyo. He finished his Doctoral Program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Innovation Management. He is the first Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®) in Japan.
Visit Ko’s social media links to learn more.
Facebook: facebook.com/ko.ito2
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ko-ito-japan
Twitter: twitter.com/ko_ito
