Liberal in what you accept

Larry Wall is one of my heroes, and the title is a reference to a line from his 2nd State of the Onion address, from 1998:
People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept.
(From http://wall.org/~larry/onion/thumbonion.html)
In both computational and personal contexts, this means taking on yourself the work of understanding what other people or systems are saying, and then again taking on yourself the work of carefully elucidating and enunciating your message, such that others will understand the content you are trying to get across.
In practice, this is not that easy. Culture and language barriers mean that even careful transmissions are not understood at all, or misunderstood. When there is a project to be completed, there needs to be clear communication across the entire team — which is why it helps to understand the communities of shared language, approach, and objectives within a large team or company.
I have been developing a framework for running projects, especially using freelancers. I believe that some basic business analysis beforehand will save you, the business owner, both money and time, and make you an attractive client for honest freelancers. I suggest that you view your business as a group of neighbourhoods, connected by bridges. You can simplify your process improvement by keeping the work within a neighbourhood. Some of the time, you have to change the bridges, the communication links that cross boundaries.
Business processes happen in one of two ways — on a schedule, or as a response to an external event. Scheduled processes are often just delayed responses to an external requirement (a law or regulation), or a way to organize work that can run on a different timescale than external events (like re-stocking inventory weekly instead of every time an item is removed).
For our purposes, scheduled events and external events can both be considered signals emitted by an external actor. Businesses exist to respond to those external signals in such a way as to exchange value with an external actor to the benefit of both the external actor, and the business.
However, the process — from receiving a signal, to providing something of value with the external actor, and receiving something of value in return — is usually complex. It has multiple steps, multiple internal actors involved, and several decision points along the way. At this time, we are going to treat this complex process as a black box, and just consider inputs and outputs. In fact, this post is only going to deal with inputs.
Today’s retail businesses are moving to “omnichannel” retailing, where customers can interact with physical stores, online sites, apps, chatbots, and phone calls. In each case, the store will try to track the customer’s identity and desires, in order to present what the customer wants with as little friction as possible.
The customer starts interacting with the retail business by sending a signal of interest — by walking into a store, by browsing a site, opening an app, or starting a conversation (with a chat bot or a call centre).The business responds by presenting options, and asking for more information.
At some point, the customer may send a ‘buy’ signal, after which the business will activate the fulfilment process, providing what the customer has purchased.
The goal of the business is to accept buy signals through every possible channel, and to provide a trustworthy, repeatable experience of purchase fulfilment no matter which channel was used.
This makes for a very expensive effort for the retailer. There are alternatives.
If you want a Savile Row suit, you have to go to Savile Row. The suitmakers benefit from the exclusivity of their customer interface. They don’t spend any energy on advertising, marketing, or sales, beyond renting real estate on the most famous suit-making street in the world.
Tesla Motors has eschewed the dealer network and sells all of their cars online. Their business model has no room for the retired sports star who slaps his name on some real estate and buys a bunch of inventory on spec. Since the maintenance on electric cars is minimal, there is no profit in it, meaning that Tesla can offer a basically infinite warranty, remove dealer markup from its prices, but price a lifetime of service into its (online-only) offering.
Your business process will have a specific set of inputs that activate it. You may be considering adding new inputs, like an omnichannel retailer. You may be able to restrict inputs, like a Savile Row tailor. You may be able to remove a whole class of inputs, including their associated costs, like Tesla.
It may be that your need for process improvement is actually a need to make changes in how your business process accepts inputs from the external world.
Remember, the external world of a process is often other internal processes within your company. Events can be defined as when a packet of value, information or money crosses a bridge between neighbourhoods, either within your company, or between your company and the outside world.
Think carefully about how adding or removing event signals from your business process can change the cost structure or the reach of your business.
