You are not thinking it through

 

"You are not thinking it through" is the comment that I got from my team lead when I suggested a solution for an issue. 

We were having an issue with the software system that we were developing. 

In technical terms, the report which we were generating for the client's dashboard took more time than we expected. Everyone was so involved in it, thinking of creative ways to make the dashboard faster. The issue was that there was so much data that's being loaded to the back-end system, that it took more time to process. 

And out of nowhere, I had a brilliant idea. (I thought). And I went on saying this to my lead (the architect of the system), and in a matter of seconds, he told me that I did not think it through. 

This was a great eye-opener for me. It might have been a small comment, but that comment pointed out a problem with the way I think. 

One of the issues that I have when thinking is, sometimes I think too deep, sometimes I don't think deep enough. 

And knowing when to do what is much as important as thinking itself. 

Thinking back at the comment which I got, at that moment itself I realized that I didn't mentally go on implementing the very solution that I suggested. When I started implementing it mentally, I realized that it's not possible to implement the solution. 

Thanks to the working from home arrangements, I didn't have to go through the humiliation of that awkward moment. But, my lack of discipline to think through a solution made me sit back and reflect on my approaches to solutions. 

From that moment on, whatever the situation that comes to me, I make it a point to really think it through before suggesting something to the team or anyone.

 It's true that we should make mistakes. 

It's only from that mistake that I learned and made an improvement, but we don't have to keep making the same mistakes again and again. 

In one of the family situations that came after a couple of days of the incident, everyone was on board with a particular idea. And out of curiosity, I tried to implement the entire process in my head. 

Now, this is a two-way street because in one way we cannot think of everything that's going to happen in the future and try to connect the dots, so we have to make a leap of faith and just try it. 

And also on the other hand, why we have risk analysis, and all the reports are to avoid the obvious mistakes that we could be making in the future. 

So I did that analysis/the imaginary implementation on my head, and practically the trade-off that we were getting because of the decision the family was about to make was not so great. So I pointed out the very obvious problems that we might come across in the future and convinced them that unless we take some precautions for the consequences of this decision, it will not be a good option to proceed with that decision. 

While writing the above story, it reminded me of one of the Ted talks that I watched about failing the projects in Google. The idea was that if someone in the Google X company (If I recall right), was able to stop a project, that person will be rewarded. 

When you really sit back and think through, you realize, this incentive has been put in place by Google, for the same reason, that we all want wishful thinking where things work. We don't want to think that something would fail. 

So, in order to avoid future mega failures, that might pop up during the production of a project, google came up with the strategy of rewarding its employees, if they were able to convince the team to stop the project before it proceeds further. 

This is a form of thinking it through at the enterprise level. I guess there's some truth in it to it then. I shall link the video below. Until next time, keep ekxplo ring (pun intended) and have a great time.

 Cheers.! 

The Ted Talk is The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure | Astro Teller