efficiency – My Mental Model

Power Vs. Efficiency

I’ve been trying to understand power. What is it? Why do people want it? What does it help you accomplish? Is it something I should pursue?

A younger me sought power for the sake of doing good. Average me could do some good, powerful me could do lots of good. Seemed like power was only a bad thing when in the hands of bad people. I suspect that’s the understanding most people are under. I’m not so sure.

Consider this… If we accept this idea that only good people should be powerful, then we’ll actively look to empower those who we think are good while tearing down those who we think are bad. Sounds like most of history right? But who gets to decide who is good and who is bad? It’s not always so obvious. And what happens when the powerless become powerful? Do we achieve balance? Or do we create another dominance hierarchy?

The first quote that ever stuck with me was, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So by empowering someone, what are we really doing? If we look throughout history, the powerful have never been without corruption. It didn’t matter at which point in history, or which culture, or which political ideology you followed, power corrupted all. Yet when we see corruption among the powerful and call foul, our first instinct is to take the power from them.

That’s probably the beauty of democracy, the power of the people is distributed among the people. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.

So is everything just about power? Being the oppressor or being the oppressed? I doubt it. There has to be another level to this.

What about me? What would I do if I had power? As someone who prioritizes integrity and the good of others, how would I be corrupted. What if my intentions were to do the best I could for everyone I was responsible for. What if my inner circle included everyone? Why doesn’t that sound like power?

I have an idea.

What if power was the anti-thesis of efficiency? Here’s a simple example: You have someone within a company who gets to hire any person of their choosing for a position. When that person hires their friend instead of the best candidate, it’s a demonstration of power. When that person hires the best candidate, it’s a demonstration of efficiency. It doesn’t matter how powerful a person is, as long as they’re making the best decision for everyone involved, it’s an exercise in efficiency. It only becomes an exercise in power when those involved disagree with the decision being made. Why would you need to impose your will when your decisions are best for everyone and are being welcomed by others?

This idea of only the good should be powerful… there’s another level to it. The reason why we have such a hard time agreeing on who should be powerful is because we have such a hard time agreeing on who (or what) is good. If we could come up with a decision which we universally recognized as good… it would be because it was what was most beneficial to those involved. If that decision was to the immense benefit of everyone involved, I have a hard time perceiving that as power. Taking everyone’s needs into consideration and deciding what was best for everyone involved seems like a remarkable if not impossible exercise in efficiency.

Perhaps we’ve established two ends of a spectrum.

Business Ideas: Take-a-Tic App

So I was at the city’s development permit office the other day and just like the DMV or any other government run admin set-up, they asked me to take a ticket and wait for my number to be called. Problem is that this office takes about a day to get through the queue. No joke, I’ve shown up at 9am up in the morning, only to be told at 445pm that they wouldn’t be able to get to me today.

Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. I did arrive early in the morning and I did take a ticket but I didn’t stay there all day. The ticket system that they have is digital and there’s a city URL which lets you monitor your queue so that you can go about your day and pop back in when your number is close. That’s definitely a step up from having to commit and entire day to waiting in that line without knowing if they’ll get to you… but not by much. It did however give me an idea.

A few years ago, a new steakhouse opened up in a trendy part of town and apparently it had the nicest patio in the whole city. A few friends and I were hanging out at a friend’s place a few blocks away and thought we’d try them for dinner. When we arrived, we were told that it would be an hour wait. We were about to decline but they suggested we take what looked like a puck with a bunch of blinking lights on it. Apparently, this contraption would blink and buzz when our table was available. We figured sure, why not. We went to a restaurant a few doors down and started with a few drinks but ended up ordering food anyways. Ironically, the thing didn’t buzz until we were back at my friend’s place a few hours later. Now it’s a coaster.

That was the first time I had seen one of those, but I’ve seen them plenty more since. I don’t like it. There’s a better way of doing this.

What if… there was an app for that?

Let’s call this app take-a-tic, a shameless rip off of a friend’s company, Picatic. I swear I’ll come up with a better name if I ever pull the trigger on this. Anyways, the idea is that this is line-up management software. Whether you’re a restaurant, a city by-law office, or somewhere in between, this just seems… more efficient.

Imagine walking into the DMV and seeing a crowd of people that probably amounts to a wait time of at least an hour. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So you head to the front counter and ‘take-a-tic’. Instead of getting a piece of paper with a number on it, your position in the queue is loaded into your app. It would be fun to think of all the paper we’d save but I’m far more interested in all the time we’d save. Imagine being able to leave and getting a notification of when you should head back. Imagine the app using your GPS, knowing how far you’ve gone, how long it’ll take to get back, and then takes that into consideration for when to send you a reminder. Imagine being notified at the most inconvenient time and being able to hit the snooze button and let a few people go ahead of you without losing your place in line. Not bad right?

While the convenience is certainly there for the user, it needs to make sense for the business as well. There are more demands on our time than perhaps ever before and when a business says their cost savings is more important than your time.. it tends to not go over well. When you show your customers that you value their time, you tend to end up with happy customers. As with any scalable app, data analytics come into play and in this case, could help businesses better manage their queue. Finally, and perhaps the most obvious: cost savings. Without any need for hardware or physical tickets, the only real cost is the subscription to the service.

My first thought when looking to poke holes in this was nobody’s going to download an app just to wait in your line. If they have the choice between that and the blinking coaster, they probably take the blinking coaster 8 out of 10 times. But… what if everyone used the same app? What if you downloaded the app for dinner a few weeks ago, but through out the year was able to use it at several other businesses? What if every long lineup was equipped with this tech? Well, now it has merit. And if everyone is using it, it opens up a few more possibilities.

What if you were thinking about going to the DMV today but wasn’t sure about how to schedule it in? What if you could open your app, search the DMV, and see what their queue was like today? What if it came with comparisons to last week and this time last year? What if you could even jump in the queue from home? I’ll admit that last one might create more problems than it solves.. but maybe not.

If you were to give someone the ability to lineup from home, then you’re likely going to boost your no-show rate. But what if there was a way to screen for that? If everyone was using the app, perhaps businesses would have the ability to view a user’s no-show rate. Or maybe it would make sense for the business to set the bar for who can line up from home. For example, I probably show up to 95% of my commitments on time or early. If a business could see that, they would have no issues with me jumping in the queue from home. But lets say my no-show rate on the app was 50%, businesses would have the option to bounce that request.

What this all amounts to is efficiency of time. I’m the first to avoid a place if it has a long line up. 45 minute wait for brunch? No thanks. Line up to get in the club? Ya right. Might be able to fit you in at the bar in about an hour? Bite me. But there are some lines you can’t avoid. For those, I’d love to have access to something like this. If it was mass-adopted, imagine how many hours could be used more efficiently. Who knows, something like that might even boost GDP, haha.

The Future of Advertising

Part of my degree was in marketing so I tend to see advertising through a different lens than most. The other part of my degree was in psychology so I can’t help but see the psychological component as well. One dynamic which I find particularly interesting is in how we actively tune out the noise for traditional advertising, but when we see someone we respect engaging positively with a brand, we take note. The Starbucks cup or the Lululemon tote bag may be a bit played out today, but both are great examples of how this works.

Years ago, I was watching TV and noticed how the characters on the show had to avoid mentioning specific brands – likely because they didn’t have approval and seeking approval would’ve required legal paperwork and perhaps a fee. In certain instances, it actually made for rather awkward speech. In reality, we actually reference brands and products on a regular basis, in our regular speech, for the sake of accuracy. Which means that not being able to use brand names in certain areas of media actually hurts the dialogue. Wouldn’t it make sense to write the dialogue as you would naturally, and then approach the brands mentioned in a positive manner for ad revenue?

There are certainly some complexities to this strategy, but I doubt they’re beyond our ability to solve. Based on how I’ve seen things progress, I think this is actually being done now to some extent. What a concept, letting a character talk about their Mercedes or BMW, let them talk about their iPhone or Android, let them talk about their favorite restaurant or coffee shop. Script writers would have to maintain integrity so that it didn’t come off as a plug or mini-infomercial, but I don’t think that would be too difficult. The idea isn’t about sneaking an advertisement into something we’re already paying attention to, it’s about letting a brand impression exist where a brand impression would already naturally exist.

So maybe we’re starting to turn that corner, but where does it go from here? I have an idea.

Right now, AI and computer vision allow YouTube to recognize most copy-written material and then defers action to the original owner. As AI and computer division develop further, they won’t just be able to recognize the content, they’ll be able to recognize what’s in the content. Watching a movie, and see a sweet car that you’ve never seen before? No problem, hit pause, hover your mouse over the car and see a few quick details. Super interested? Click on the details and you’ll head straight to the website. Now imagine being able to do that with clothes, foods, toys, and everything else.

If we approach this correctly, I can’t help but think it would be a massive win-win for everyone. No more advertisements. No more commercials. No more jingles. And especially no more manipulation of public perception in the hopes of earning a sale from someone who doesn’t actually need or want your product. If this done correctly though, I think the biggest winners may actually be the businesses.

Rather than guessing at where to advertise, how to advertise, and how much to spend on advertising, just paying per click. Every time someone sees a piece of media that includes your product and someone wants to know more about it, there’s your point of monetization. Next-level pay-per-click advertising. Effectively, you’re only paying to connect people to your product, when they’ve shown an interest in your product. Not only is that a more streamlined approach, it builds trust rather than degrades it.

Efficiency is my North Star. When someone sees something they’re interested in, they want to know more about it. If they learn more about it and they want to buy it, they want a quick and easy way to complete that transaction. Businesses want to provide those details and the option of that transaction to potential customers, however, they would prefer to only spend their advertising budget on people who are interested. This strikes me as a remarkably efficient approach compared to what’s out there now.

Thinking it through a little further, I know there are bound to be a few hiccups. What happens if someone you don’t like is wearing or using your product? What if you’re just getting started and you need to get your product out there to begin with? I could come up with a few other issues that would exist in today’s unspoken rules of advertising but I can’t help but think that it’s just not that complicated. If you’re on the alt-left and someone on the alt-right is wearing one of your products? Grow up. Appreciate the extra revenue, and appreciate that if they’re wearing your stuff, you may have more in common with them than you might think. Just getting started? Send free products out to influencers who would appreciate them. If you have solid product, they’ll show it off and you should end up with a cascading effect. If you send your product out to the people who would appreciate it, and they don’t? Maybe you picked the wrong influencers, or perhaps your product just isn’t very good. Regardless of what obstacles I come up with, the solutions don’t seem very far away.

I’d estimate we’ll have the tools to do this within about 10 years. Whether or not major industry players are interested in challenging the status quo is a different story though. But this is why ‘revolutionary’ has become the holy grail of doing business. Whoever breaks that mold, I’m rooting for you.