Have you ever invented something to solve a problem, only for that supposed solution to make the problem even worse? You know how we say there’s always a problem for every solution. So, to avoid situations like this, we have to first understand the kind of problem we’re dealing with. Every problem can be categorized into 4 buckets: you have clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems. When you’re faced with a problem, the first step is to identify which bucket the problem belongs to. We have to know what type of problem we’re facing so we don’t end up creating a solution that introduces even more problems.
Remember when I said that whenever we’re moving from a traditional tool to a custom tool or changing systems in general, we do not want to create a situation where people are taking more steps than they did in the previous tool. That creates more friction, not less. The goal is to reduce friction.
If reducing friction is the goal, then we cannot go around creating extensive, complex solutions that don’t really serve anyone except perhaps the C-suite, who want to see all the fancy dashboards and impressive features. I highly doubt that’s what most people want. Even if some people do, not everyone does. You don’t need to go around looking for solutions that end up creating even bigger problems. There’s a problem for every solution. If you’ve ever created a solution and you think it’s supposed to work well, you have more problems arising. We don’t want that in the tools that we set up or the systems or processes that we set up. We want to understand who we are doing things for.
We want to understand their problems, and we want to be able to solve them. And we want to check if the solutions that we offered are not causing any more problems. If you’re moving people from a traditional tool and the problem has always been with adaptation, with using the tools, with logging in, with adding things, with completing things, they say it’s too complex for them. They have to fill in so many fields. And we move to something that should be a simpler setup. We do not want to have more steps than we had in the other tools. We want to create a simpler experience. If we have more steps in this new setup that is supposed to be simpler, then we have achieved nothing. We have just created more work for people and added a lot more friction. And made it a more difficult environment, a more difficult tool to use. And I’m very sure your employees or your team members will be wondering why you even had to move, because things are a lot more complex for them.
You have more features because with the no-code tools or any of these tools, the features add up very fast. When you see the possibilities with all of them, you want to keep on adding, you want to keep on improving. There’s nothing wrong with improving or having more features, but it should be handled tactfully. You should understand and know the things that are vital to you. You don’t just create a feature because you think it would look nice. If it doesn’t serve a purpose, why are you taking the time and all the steps to create this solution? Know what your people will use, know what would help them.