How we decide

Moving to Florida in 2018 has been mostly positive. Y’all and ma’am are great and I use them each day. The weather is wonderful. We also make a boil.

A low-country boil (minus the pesky crawfish) is a holiday and weekend staple. Boil water with seasoning; add potatoes, corn, onions, sausage, shrimp, enjoy. The ratio of work to taste is very low. It’s a good deal.

But making it the first time was hard. We had friends over and I didn’t want to be the person who gave everyone food poisoning or served potatoes that tasted like dirt. The whole meal went great, if not a touch spicy, and each subsequent preparation has been slightly easier even for serving a crowd.

There’s a lot of other options we could do as well. We made a lot of chili when we lived in Ohio. We could order out, make sausage stuffed potatoes, or any number of things. But we don’t. We make a boil.

A boil is familiar. It’s easy. The opportunity cost is opaque. Will <other meal> be better? We don’t know. Let’s make a boil.

A lot of decisions are like this. Opportunity costs are hard to quantify.

During the late teens one bit of regular startup advice was that a product had to be 10x better than the existing option. While JTBD offers a slightly different approach, the idea is a good one. People do switch from one thing to another all the time but it’s often because the decision to do so is easy.

Making a boil in Ohio: hard.

Making a boil in Florida: easy.

Organizations then can consider how to dial the friction up or down. To keep serving people, make it easy for them to stay. To serve new people, make it easy for them to switch.