to fine-tune the balance of something in precise fashion in order to achieve a desired outcome, as in “I think we need to better titrate how we blend logic and emotion in the new marketing campaign”; derives from the process in chemistry of adding incremental quantities of a reagent to a test substance until a desired reaction occurs; also used in medicine to describe the process of adjusting a pharmaceutical dosage until the optimal trade-off of symptom relief and side effect minimization is achieved; coined by someone who spent too much time in the laboratory, or who wishes to co-opt the credibility of white-coated scientists by using their terminology; not likely to be understood when used in a business context, but as listeners would be loath to expose their own ignorance by asking for clarification usage of this jargon is unlikely to be questioned
I’m a management consultant and writer serving organizations both large (Fortune 500) and small (nonprofit) on a range of strategic issues
What’s knowable and actionable: lessons from medicine
Finding what matters
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a group of scientists and physicians given the formidable responsibility of sorting through the wide array of tests available for major diseases and deciding which should be part of the national standard of care. These are weighty decisions, because in the world’s most expensive health system insurers are required to pay for those tests the group deems beneficial.1 Fine-tuning when to recommend diagnostic screenings is especially fraught, as getting these decisions wrong leads to unnecessary, costly, and painful medical interventions. Conversely getting them right can help catch disease earlier when treatment is more effective, giving patients greater quality of life.
This group’s decisions often hinge on what is known as clinical significance: if knowing something makes zero difference for a therapeutic approach or is as likely to cause harm as benefit, then it is not worth investing resources to get that data. For instance DNA tests can fall into this category, as the impact of certain genes is currently unknown. For those possessing some unusual variant, finding that out would engender agita but not much else. Read more…
- When it comes to cost it’s not even close, with the U.S. spending over $10,000 per person on healthcare, about 18% of GDP, with runner-up Switzerland around $8,000 and a steep dropoff in the numbers after that. ↩
- And/or potentially undermining society and the fabric of democracy, depending on your point of view. Also the term unicorn technically only applies to non-public companies but we’ll relax the definition. ↩
- In the process drastically weakening the positions of real estate agents and brokers, which was a bonus or drawback depending on which side of the table you sat on. ↩
- Yes that’s the actual term, and it pretty much means what you expect. Who knew doctors were so whimsical? ↩
big hands on little maps
an obscure expression apparently of British military origin that suggests a degree of crudeness of analysis such that finer details are glossed over, as when someone with particularly meaty paws attempts to point out a location on a smaller map; failing to assess the exact geographical features of a particular area can lead to significant complications when battle strategies are executed; in a business context the term may suggest imprecision, lack of nuance, tact, or subtlety; can be a way to derogate a leader whose big picture perspective is too lofty to be useful when it comes to implementation; related to slice butter with an ax, which indicates a more willfully overbearing approach
No safety net, fewer options, and the value of constraints
Only one shot
The magazine National Geographic was a pioneer in the use of photographs as a way of capturing and presenting the essence of a subject to new audiences. Its contributors would spread out to obscure locations equipped with an array of cameras and related equipment, carrying hundreds of rolls of film.1 When shooting was done the exposed film would be carefully transported home, developed, and reviewed in detail at editorial meetings at headquarters. Only a select few photos would make it into an article, and every month just one would merit the cover, framed by the iconic yellow border. A photographer could literally take thousands of frames to produce the dozen or two that would ultimately make it into print.
But for a 1997 cover article on Minnesota’s northern wilderness, veteran photographer Jim Brandenburg upended this entire paradigm. His concept was typical save for one critical, self-imposed constraint: he could only take one picture per day, for 90 days straight. All of them were to be printed in a complete series. This raised the stakes considerably, given the vagaries of an outdoor environment where little was controllable. There would be no do-overs, no opportunity to retake a poorly-lit or out-of-focus shot, no chance to switch lenses or fix an equipment failure, no backup if wildlife behaved unpredictably. This being the pre-digital era, there wasn’t even a way to check the outcome of a shutter press until the film was processed back in the darkroom. Read more…
- Nowadays a few postage stamp-sized memory cards will suffice to hold even more images, which has presumably shrunk the luggage requirements of photographers. ↩
- The replication crisis that is roiling the social sciences has reached this study, with reports that these jam findings cannot be validated. The nuances of the concept may not be fully developed, but the idea that having lots of options doesn’t necessarily improve things seems robust, and borne out by personal experience. #anecdata ↩
- 100 years ago you pretty much knew you’d marry the person from one farm over and that settled it until death did you part, but the modern world of endless swiping and matching apps seems to be bringing on the aptly-named dating apocalypse. ↩
- Mash this up with the more recent YOLO phenomenon we have a perfect storm of acronyms. As the ancient teacher writes in Ecclesiastes, a chasing after the wind indeed. ↩
- This need for self-reliance in navigation was in fact the default condition of travelers from the beginning of human history up until about 10 years ago. ↩
dry powder
analyses or work products that are prepared but kept in reserve for intense times when additional output will be required, as in, “We don’t need to share the findings from the customer survey at tomorrow’s meeting, let’s keep some dry powder for the next quarterly business review”; more generally the term refers to a resource of some kind that is kept at the ready for immediate deployment when needed; commonly used in finance to refer to liquid reserves or assets that can be readily converted (for investments, debt payments, etc.); drawn from the former military need to manufacture sufficient quantities of gunpowder, transport it, and maintain it in firing condition wherever needed in the theater of battle; powder that became wet from rain, improper storage, etc., would no longer be suitable for use, a condition which could be discovered at inopportune moments
Coupons, tax laws, and valuing your time
Rise and shine
At the turn of the twentieth century the new category of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals was blossoming. One of the newer entrants was a product named Grape-Nuts, created by an entrepreneur named C. W. Post and still available on shelves today. It was notable then and now for containing neither grapes nor nuts, but also for being the first target of an innovation that has gone on to influence industries around the world: the coupon. Bearers of these incentives issued by Post would receive 1 cent off the price when purchasing a box.1
This is a roundabout way of providing a discount; instead of requiring shoppers to keep and produce a slip of paper at the store, why not simply reduce the price and make life easier for both buyer and seller? The answer is fairly straightforward, especially for anyone who has spent significant time hunting through junk mail or the internet in search of minor savings. Coupons are designed to identify those people who value the potential discount more than the time they spend acquiring it. The effort they demonstrate through this process means they can ultimately pay less than others who make a different calculation.
This is known as price discrimination, and it’s an effective way of sorting customers according to their ability to afford your product.2 Read more…
- In a strange alignment of history, Post’s only daughter would use part of her staggering fortune as inheritor of the company to build Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s current vacation retreat. So when Xi Jinping has a tête-à-tête in Palm Beach with the President, just remember Grape-Nuts made it happen. ↩
- To be more specific, this works due to something called marginal cost. If a sandwich costs me $5 to make and for one John is willing to pay $10 and Priya $8, I make the most if I sell to each of them at their maximum price. Because it’s hard to know exactly how much someone will pay, and probably illegal to charge different prices, I price it at $10 and get Priya a $2 coupon that John won’t bother redeeming. Problem solved. ↩
- At the peak of the frenzy tickets were selling for thousands of dollars on the secondary market but nobody seemed to regret going, so okay I guess. ↩
- This isn’t purely altruistic, because having hordes of young theater-lovers creating a public spectacle only adds to the hype of the show, and these tastemakers are far more likely to tweet about it afterwards than the distracted hedge funder sitting in the dress circle. ↩
- Actually, since the back of the airplane always touches down first, you could argue that those up front arrive last. ↩
stack hands around
this rare specimen (only two reported usages in the wild) means to convene together to agree on a plan of action; evokes the practice of a huddling sports team forming a circle, with each member placing one hand in the center, as it prepares for an important game or decides on a specific play; the leader or captain’s hand is usually the first in the stack, with all others placed on top of it one-by-one; in this manner each person signals their alignment with and commitment to the agreed approach; this phrase may be followed by the object of discussion, as in: “Let’s stack our hands around the new Middle East strategy”
Credible commitments and work-life balance
Costly signals
In 1519 explorer Hernando Cortés landed on the eastern coast of present-day Mexico with the mission of continuing the Spanish conquest of the empires covering Central America. The task was daunting given his small crew, the unfamiliar terrain, and natives who understandably weren’t so keen on being colonized. Discontent and thoughts of outright mutiny brewed among his soldiers. In response he ordered that the ships on which they arrived be scuttled, ensuring that retreat to safety would be impossible for anyone harboring second thoughts.
Now all else being equal, coming out of battle with a victory while keeping your fleet of expensive boats afloat is preferable to the alternative of contemplating how to sail back across the Gulf of Mexico once you’re done conquering. Yet this wasteful act was actually productive, because it sent the unmistakable signal to Cortés’s men that retreat would not be an option. They had to fight and win or else be destroyed. Read more…
- Pretty much no one is good at multitasking. And yes, that includes you. Instead of doing one thing well you do two or three things poorly, an observation that research is increasingly bearing out. In some unexplored level of irony, these footnotes themselves have the effect of distracting you from the flow of the narrative, making reading this a form of multitasking. ↩
- It’s not likely that an investment banking analyst spending 350 days per year in the office generating redundant Excel models and superfluous slides at the whim of a VP is making some grand contribution to the human condition, but he (and in the world of finance it is disproportionately “he”) is showing to the highers-up how much pain he will endure on behalf of the company (of course in hopes of sharing in the jackpot a few years hence). ↩
- Another reason why this cycle continues is to make sense of the sacrifices that were already made, as with the fraternity brothers who haze pledges not because they want to, but because they were hazed themselves. It would all be for naught unless you could at least inflict the same on someone else. ↩
- This need to look busy is well understood, as shown by the “boss button” on the NCAA college basketball tournament web player, which instantly replaces the game with a fake but convincing-looking spreadsheet that can be quickly toggled if one senses a manager about to glance at the screen. Such a feature would have been helpful for the hapless yet grandly named Edward Greenwood IX, a New York City employee who was summarily fired when Mayor Michael Bloomberg happened to catch him playing solitaire.↩
- This quantification has been taken to its extreme endpoint by the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, which is publicly known to record all meetings and rate employees on individual metrics with an assiduousness that puts the fantasy football players scouring NFL stat sheets to shame. ↩
- For instance if you’re an astronaut crewing missions on the International Space Station then bravo for you, but you probably won’t be making it to junior’s soccer game on Saturday morning. ↩
put a stake in the ground
to assert a point of view or take decisive action at a relatively early stage, where much remains unknown but a working hypothesis must be adopted for progress to be made, as in, “I know all the options are risky, but you need to put a stake in the ground for where we invest next”; the phrase may be interjected when a deliberative process has so far yielded waffling or equivocation and a more robust, confident plan is required; derives from the former practice of claiming unsettled territory by driving wooden stakes into the ground, thus marking off the area claimed as one’s own; the one who puts his or her metaphorical stake in the ground is similarly defining a position that will then need to be managed and defended; when used as an imperative this expression can be a roundabout way of telling someone “We don’t have the facts yet, so make a guess by the deadline”
pressure test
to assess the quality of a particular idea or analysis by subjecting it to more intense scrutiny of some sort; derives from engineering, when the structural soundness or seaworthiness of a vessel is determined by applying atmospheric or liquid pressure up to its design limits, at which point poorly-designed objects can fail dramatically; in the business context a pressure test can send metaphorical shards in the direction of the unwary creator of the tested work; similar to stress test; the variant kick the tires has less serious connotations, and suggests a more cursory review
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