
Obliquity – driving goals indirectly
A counterintuitive method for maximising your success
In a previous post, I tried to identify the problem Facebook is really trying to solve. It became clear through the research that Facebook is on a pretty straight forward mission “to make the world more open and connected”. Whilst many companies strive to have a big hairy audacious goal and publish to the world, it is also clear that many companies don’t continually focus on their mission. Instead, it is all too easy to get bogged down in the nitty gritty of the everyday struggle to get revenue in the door. Other companies seem to skip the big problem statement completely and focus only on selling what they can in order to get a deal. Facebook, however, have a big mission that is not focused on revenue — more on this later.
Thinking a lot about goals, visions and mission statements made me remember a Tedx talk I heard a few years ago by John Kay — Obliquity: How Complex Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly. In the talk and in the book of the same name, John talks through some detailed case studies of businesses that have failed by taking a direct approach.
This idea of achieving complex goals by almost ignoring the direct objective seems entirely counterintuitive, but as Paul Graham says about start-ups — focus on the counterintuitive — I’m not sure if this is necessarily what he was thinking about the time, but I think it absolutely applies in this instance.
Happiness can also be viewed from the same perspective. John Stuart Mill once wrote:
“I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. The only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of other, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way”
It’s in this final sentence “Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way” that has struck me the most. Can it be true that by setting our goals on something that provides value happiness, prosperity or impact to a small (or large) portion of the world, that we are more likely to be happy, great or successful ourselves? Or indeed are the products we create more like to succeed by taking an oblique approach?
If you read The Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg you will see additional statements that seem to take an oblique approach:
“we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services”
“We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.”
It is quite clear to me that this is taking an oblique approach. Focus on building better products, build a strong company and the rest will follow.
Being an educator, I’ve often thought about my time at school and have long felt the same approach can be taken with education. This was exactly the approach taken with my own education. In my hometown, there were two schools connected through a school foundation and similar in many ways to the external observer — we wore a similar uniform, studied the same subjects, had similar performing sports teams. However, they were entirely different in their approach to providing an education.
My school focused on nurturing and supporting talent, providing a well-rounded education, effective learning (not teaching) and fostering a love of learning in students. Their primary goal was not driven by grades or school league tables but on the individual.
Conversely, the partner school focused entirely on academic success, grades and league tables.
Can you guess which school performed the best in terms of league tables? — of course, the school that I attended. My school took an oblique approach to academic success; not having it as a goal or target, but knowing that providing the best education meant that academic success would come along the way. I’ve often thought that my love of learning started when I did my MA in Creative Education, but perhaps it’s been with me since then.
The final example that I have personally seen of how complex goals are best achieved indirectly has been in the work I’ve done in Digital Transformation within Financial Services. I have been fortunate enough to work on some pretty large scale change programmes within some major retail banks. Two of those banks had broadly the same drivers for the change programmes they were embarking on — to increase the customer adoption of digital (online and mobile) channels to do basic banking transactions. They were doing a classic digitisation of banking approach rather than creating a digital bank — for more on the difference you should read this great post by Jason Bates.
The first bank decided they wanted to create the most digitally savvy workforce on the high street. Together we created learning programmes, supported by their digital advocacy model and a strong (and oblique) marketing campaign. I remember at the time people asking why are they doing TV commercials about older people organising walk-football matches on Facebook. To many, it made no sense. However, the oblique view that they took meant that people of all ages, genders, classes, and backgrounds adopted digital products, not at this stage banking products, but they were doing digital nevertheless. The genius behind this move is that the move from Facebook to online banking is a far narrower gap than jumping straight into carrying out financial matters on the big scary internet.
By contrast, the other bank wanted to focus solely on getting people to use the banking platform — they took the direct approach…
In all of these experiences, obliquity works. You must first identify the real Job To Be Done and the problem you are trying to solve, then look at every possible solution, even if it means taking what appears to be a longer route.
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Cheers
