As a family we used to play this Nintendo game called Overcooked 2. The goal was to make food orders. My high school experience at Wendy’s was never this fun.
In Overcooked, your team must notice orders (they look like thought bubbles), prepare the order (cook meat, chop vegetables, wash plates clean), and deliver the requested combination.
Like all good games, it’s was just hard enough. That ‘hard enough’ meant there was no doubt about the order. The NPC doesn’t fib or change their mind.
Life’s different.
Life is a game of telephone.
“The goal is to flatten the org structure, not to the point where no one knows who’s in charge, but flat enough so ideas move fast,” Brad Jacobs wrote.
“I’ve seen org charts where there are nine layers between the customer and the CEO. That’s bureaucracy. The shorter and more direct the line from problem to decision, the better.”
We also tend to measure the easy thing not the right thing. It’s the easy metrics that get us in trouble.
In my high school class it’s easier to see “time on task” or “quietly working diligently” than learning. So teachers, me included sometimes, get lost and track who’s not doing their work.
That can be a good proxy. If someone is watching YouTube all the time, they probably aren’t learning. But, man, I’ll tell ya, these kids are an enigma wrapped in a riddle. You just don’t now.
So sometimes, usually after a calm Sunday, I head back to work wary. Wary of telephone and wary of easy metrics.
The Waiter's Pad 