5 ms·

This video exemplifies for me the 5 wrongs with business school yuppies: * Smart looking guy in a fancy suit * Confidently talks about stuff he doesn't ha

by moe 15y ago

This video exemplifies for me the 5 wrongs with business school yuppies: * Smart looking guy in a fancy suit * Confidently talks about stuff he doesn't have a clue about * Applies over-simplified abstractions completely detached from reality * Draws wrong and ill-conceived consequences from said abstraction * Never realizes it's really the guys in the trenches who keep his bacon afloat by politely ignoring his pointless ramblings and just quietly cleaning his mess after him. But yes, next time our "server crashes" I'll apply the "5 why's" for team motivation. A good laugh never hurts, especially when you make it a proportional investment.

hartror 15y ago
A point by point response to your points: 1. What is wrong with a suit? 2. He cofounded IMVU and had a number of failures before that, he has plenty of time in the trenches to back up his assertions. 3. A short 3 minute video is hardly the place to go into depth perhaps a blog post? [1]. 4. Huh? Saying it doesn't make it so, perhaps some explanation. 5. See #2 [1] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/how-to-conduct-five-whys-root-cause.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/how-to-conduct-... ps I didn't down vote you.
- moe 15y ago
  1. Nothing, but I had 5 bullets to fill and he thankfully served the stereotype. 2. Anyway, skipping the bullets now. What bothers me about this "presentation" is that it's the prototype pointless "biz-speak" ramble that many of us have to deal with every day. He packs a nugget of truth ("when shit happens, ask why!") into a truckload of superfluous verbal padding and tries to sell it as some sort of great revelation, all the while completely ignoring the reality of the situation™. Over here in the real world root-cause analysis falls under common sense for every engineer worth their salt. We are naturally inclined to fix problems at the source, simply because we don't like fixing stuff in the middle of the night, because we hate fixing the same thing repeatedly, and because we like paychecks. However, his video lacks the tiniest bit of acknowledgement of reality, where the answer to the third 'why' usually amounts to something like "because the boss decided to outsource this" or "because the deadlines make no sense" or "because 3 people are doing the work of 8 here" or "because the product manager is incompetent" or "because they wouldn't listen when we told them 5 times this would happen". Yes, these are people-problems, too. But you rarely see those addressed, presumably because these shiny polished biz-school fortune cookies tend to conveniently ignore how the fish, more often than not, stinks from the head. I could go on for a while on his rosy misconceptions about "proportional investment at every stage of the problem" (duh! can it be that simple!) and "training", but this is getting too long already and I'm going to be voted to -8 and beyond either way.
  - hartror 15y ago
    Of course root cause analysis is common sense, anyone with a couple of braincells to rub together gets it as soon as it is explained to them. However as I understand it Ries' drive is for it to be a institutional practice, you are right an engineer will get to #3 as you say and there it will end. However if the entire company has taken up the practice it won't stop there. This is especially true if root cause analysis isn't used to assigning blame but fixing issues. As to management and people issues, he addresses that directly in the video talking about management issues being part of the process. So this aspect isn't ignored and is promoting them being addressed. I am certainly interested in what misconceptions there are is in "proportional investment at every stage of the problem" as I have used this stuff successfully in the past.
    - moe 15y ago
      Well, you can formalize common sense only so much before it turns into parody. I've been in these meetings too often where one (or more..) of the managers would follow their formulaic script, repeatedly uttering these catchy phrases without ever grasping the kernel of the issue. Yes, "proportional investment" sounds awfully catchy. Yet it's simply not applicable in any kind of interesting situation. You can't "proportionally invest" into fixing a cronjob that shouldn't exist in first place but had to be rushed as a bandaid to meet unrealistic requirements. You can't "train" a manager to make reasonable trade-offs when he has a track-record of doing the opposite. These are literally the two most common root-causes that I have seen. And it would be great if the "5 why's" were ever executed consequentially, but they are not. In this type of meeting the analysis always ends before it gets to the point of questioning the guy who was calling the shots that went in the foot. The cases where the formulaic "5 why's" are actually applicable are the uninteresting ones, the easy ones, the no-brainers. It's the cases where the intern screwed something up - yes we shouldn't give critical stuff to the intern. Or the cases where not enough headroom was planned - yes we should be more conservative. In short: It's the cases where nobody important gets hurt by the conclusion. I have never seen a people-problem being solved by someone following a catchy formula. You either have the common sense to identify and the balls to tackle these kind of problems - or you're likely part of the problem in first place. But in functional teams all of this isn't even something anyone talks about... Which makes videos like the above seem so surreal and detached from reality.
kevingadd 15y ago
I sat next to Eric Ries for months and worked with him personally. He knows about everything he talks about in that video and it's completely accurate. And the process worked. Don't be a dick.
- theblogdoctor 15y ago
  Correct. Eric knows what he is talking about and is also a very inspiring speaker. I think the whole suit took away from Eric's message. I remember the 5 Whys from Robert Scoble's interview with Eric Ries way back in April of 2010. In it, Eric is really raw, sincere and "himself". Here is that video. I have moved the start time of the video to the section where Eric talks about the 5 Whys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&t=12m33s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&t=12m33s
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I agree completely, thought I was the only one who saw it much like you. Eric Ries deserves credit. He knows his stuff, he worked his way up, he has a lot of great advice we can learn from but lets not just let him ride on his past successes here. This cannot be his best work. Unfortunately this does end up sounding like it came from some stereotypical higher-up that's totally detached from reality. The 5 why's? How about we save the cute names for it and call it what it is: wrapping up common sense in a cute name and selling it as innovative. Besides that I don't like how he oversimplifies the root cause of these problems he's talking about. He's pretty much saying that all problems in your company can be traced to people. It's a person that is always the problem according to this video. That's not so. The problem can be people or it can be ridiculous processes like going through "the 5 why's" or it can be anything else in the world including a random act of god. Hopefully Ries bounces back with something better. Hopefully he hasn't peaked like the business school version of a pop star who's 15 minutes are up.
- kevingadd 15y ago
  If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes? If making it a process with a name that's rigidly followed isn't the solution, what is? It's not a complicated process that requires certification. It's simple enough to be described completely in three minutes. I'd also love to see an example of a problem you've encountered that is actually pure technology, since virtually all modern technology is created and maintained by humans. I've run into lots of crazy hardware and software problems, but pretty much all of them had a human involved here or there that could help make things better.
  - moe 15y ago
    If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes? One failure that I see very frequently is that the analysis reliably stops at the invisible line between the trenches and the management. I.e. the people-problems are very well identified by everyone in the room, but nobody feels like calling out the guy who sits on the other end of the table in your next "performance review". It just doesn't seem like a good idea. This is something that I'd like to see people like Eric talk about. Because either I live in my own personal bubble here or that is a much more common problem than people not knowing how to trace back a technical issue to people and processes. In fact, every engineer I know could sing you a song about it. But again, perhaps I really just happen to live in a particular bubble far away from Harvard...

by moe 15y ago

hartror 15y ago

A point by point response to your points: 1. What is wrong with a suit? 2. He cofounded IMVU and had a number of failures before that, he has plenty of time in the trenches to back up his assertions. 3. A short 3 minute video is hardly the place to go into depth perhaps a blog post? [1]. 4. Huh? Saying it doesn't make it so, perhaps some explanation. 5. See #2 [1] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/how-to-conduct-five-whys-root-cause.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/07/how-to-conduct-... ps I didn't down vote you.

moe 15y ago
1. Nothing, but I had 5 bullets to fill and he thankfully served the stereotype. 2. Anyway, skipping the bullets now. What bothers me about this "presentation" is that it's the prototype pointless "biz-speak" ramble that many of us have to deal with every day. He packs a nugget of truth ("when shit happens, ask why!") into a truckload of superfluous verbal padding and tries to sell it as some sort of great revelation, all the while completely ignoring the reality of the situation™. Over here in the real world root-cause analysis falls under common sense for every engineer worth their salt. We are naturally inclined to fix problems at the source, simply because we don't like fixing stuff in the middle of the night, because we hate fixing the same thing repeatedly, and because we like paychecks. However, his video lacks the tiniest bit of acknowledgement of reality, where the answer to the third 'why' usually amounts to something like "because the boss decided to outsource this" or "because the deadlines make no sense" or "because 3 people are doing the work of 8 here" or "because the product manager is incompetent" or "because they wouldn't listen when we told them 5 times this would happen". Yes, these are people-problems, too. But you rarely see those addressed, presumably because these shiny polished biz-school fortune cookies tend to conveniently ignore how the fish, more often than not, stinks from the head. I could go on for a while on his rosy misconceptions about "proportional investment at every stage of the problem" (duh! can it be that simple!) and "training", but this is getting too long already and I'm going to be voted to -8 and beyond either way.
- hartror 15y ago
  Of course root cause analysis is common sense, anyone with a couple of braincells to rub together gets it as soon as it is explained to them. However as I understand it Ries' drive is for it to be a institutional practice, you are right an engineer will get to #3 as you say and there it will end. However if the entire company has taken up the practice it won't stop there. This is especially true if root cause analysis isn't used to assigning blame but fixing issues. As to management and people issues, he addresses that directly in the video talking about management issues being part of the process. So this aspect isn't ignored and is promoting them being addressed. I am certainly interested in what misconceptions there are is in "proportional investment at every stage of the problem" as I have used this stuff successfully in the past.
  - moe 15y ago
    Well, you can formalize common sense only so much before it turns into parody. I've been in these meetings too often where one (or more..) of the managers would follow their formulaic script, repeatedly uttering these catchy phrases without ever grasping the kernel of the issue. Yes, "proportional investment" sounds awfully catchy. Yet it's simply not applicable in any kind of interesting situation. You can't "proportionally invest" into fixing a cronjob that shouldn't exist in first place but had to be rushed as a bandaid to meet unrealistic requirements. You can't "train" a manager to make reasonable trade-offs when he has a track-record of doing the opposite. These are literally the two most common root-causes that I have seen. And it would be great if the "5 why's" were ever executed consequentially, but they are not. In this type of meeting the analysis always ends before it gets to the point of questioning the guy who was calling the shots that went in the foot. The cases where the formulaic "5 why's" are actually applicable are the uninteresting ones, the easy ones, the no-brainers. It's the cases where the intern screwed something up - yes we shouldn't give critical stuff to the intern. Or the cases where not enough headroom was planned - yes we should be more conservative. In short: It's the cases where nobody important gets hurt by the conclusion. I have never seen a people-problem being solved by someone following a catchy formula. You either have the common sense to identify and the balls to tackle these kind of problems - or you're likely part of the problem in first place. But in functional teams all of this isn't even something anyone talks about... Which makes videos like the above seem so surreal and detached from reality.

kevingadd 15y ago

I sat next to Eric Ries for months and worked with him personally. He knows about everything he talks about in that video and it's completely accurate. And the process worked. Don't be a dick.

theblogdoctor 15y ago
Correct. Eric knows what he is talking about and is also a very inspiring speaker. I think the whole suit took away from Eric's message. I remember the 5 Whys from Robert Scoble's interview with Eric Ries way back in April of 2010. In it, Eric is really raw, sincere and "himself". Here is that video. I have moved the start time of the video to the section where Eric talks about the 5 Whys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&t=12m33s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&t=12m33s

billpatrianakos 15y ago

I agree completely, thought I was the only one who saw it much like you. Eric Ries deserves credit. He knows his stuff, he worked his way up, he has a lot of great advice we can learn from but lets not just let him ride on his past successes here. This cannot be his best work. Unfortunately this does end up sounding like it came from some stereotypical higher-up that's totally detached from reality. The 5 why's? How about we save the cute names for it and call it what it is: wrapping up common sense in a cute name and selling it as innovative. Besides that I don't like how he oversimplifies the root cause of these problems he's talking about. He's pretty much saying that all problems in your company can be traced to people. It's a person that is always the problem according to this video. That's not so. The problem can be people or it can be ridiculous processes like going through "the 5 why's" or it can be anything else in the world including a random act of god. Hopefully Ries bounces back with something better. Hopefully he hasn't peaked like the business school version of a pop star who's 15 minutes are up.

kevingadd 15y ago
If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes? If making it a process with a name that's rigidly followed isn't the solution, what is? It's not a complicated process that requires certification. It's simple enough to be described completely in three minutes. I'd also love to see an example of a problem you've encountered that is actually pure technology, since virtually all modern technology is created and maintained by humans. I've run into lots of crazy hardware and software problems, but pretty much all of them had a human involved here or there that could help make things better.
- moe 15y ago
  If it's common sense why do so many companies fail at identifying and addressing root causes? One failure that I see very frequently is that the analysis reliably stops at the invisible line between the trenches and the management. I.e. the people-problems are very well identified by everyone in the room, but nobody feels like calling out the guy who sits on the other end of the table in your next "performance review". It just doesn't seem like a good idea. This is something that I'd like to see people like Eric talk about. Because either I live in my own personal bubble here or that is a much more common problem than people not knowing how to trace back a technical issue to people and processes. In fact, every engineer I know could sing you a song about it. But again, perhaps I really just happen to live in a particular bubble far away from Harvard...