Why a step function stands between you and your dreams, and you better not ignore a mystery ingredient

Why do we get stuck? The eight causes of plateaus.

Today, I discuss the third reason people get stuck in life, this time in a more mechanical, practical way. Skip ahead to buy the book or the online course.

Step functions, choke points, erosion, mystery ingredients – read on and you’ll be surprised how often your life ends up in quicksand for very logical, and solvable, reasons.

1. Step functions

Have you ever returned a rental car an hour late and been charged for an entire additional day. Why can’t you buy 65 more minutes? Nope, you have to buy 24 hours. This happens with cell phones, too. Exceed your 2 Gig data allowance by one byte, and you have to pay for another gig of data (making that a very expensive byte!)

Yes, these things are maddening and unfair. But for the purposes of Getting Unstuck, I’m going to call it a Step Function.

Step functions are all around us, and they are really vexing because they often stop our dreams dead in their tracks. The most classic step function: You want to start a business, but you can’t because you don’t have $100,000 in the capital.

A function, as it’s defined in the field of mathematics, has input and output, action and consequences. Step on the gas a little more (input) and you go a little faster (output). Sometimes though, this input to output relationship isn’t so smooth. If your car is at a standstill in snow, you might have to floor it before the car starts moving (and then it’s really moving!). This concept of a sudden “step” from stopped to moving after you hit a threshold is one of the most important flow issues because it can often be mistaken for getting stuck.

I call these things that happen in chunks “step functions.” You want to add just a little more of something, but that thing is only available in bundles. The result it a jump in cost, effort, or benefit. Bakers know this rule well; it hits them right between the eyes every time a recipe for cookies calls for a pinch of baking powder, and they need to buy a whole box. Grocery stores, naturally, don’t tend to sell by the pinch. That painful purchase can have a happy ending, however. If you decide to bake two batches of cookies, your cost-per-pinch actually goes down because you still only need one box.

Airline loyalty programs are usually step-functions – after you fly some number of miles, you hit a threshold and then, boom, you move to a new status and get an extra bag of peanuts when you fly (given airline cutbacks, you may only get one extra peanut, not a whole pack). Step functions are not inherently good or bad, they are just the way some processes work. But if you don’t recognize and plan for them, they throw off the theory that incremental effort yields incremental reward.

The key to beating step functions is to use a little creativity and smooth them out. Here’s an example: The story of a man who started a restaurant for only $5,000….by finding a complementary peak with a business partner.

2. Choke points

A chokepoint is the part of the system that breaks first and slows everything else down. Failing to identify a chokepoint can bring a gushing flow to an unexpected trickle. When you hit a choke point, the whole system can slow or even stop. It’s the equivalent of tripping a circuit breaker by plugging in one too many strands of Christmas tree lights.

A common cause of plateaus is not recognizing when and where choke points will occur. For example, insecure managers often hit a plateau because they make themselves a choke point; they micromanage, approve every tiny decision, and put other people on hold while they deliberate. Their part of the business is held back by their need to ponder, consider, and digest. You know who they are: walking “blocking issues.”

Merely understanding chokepoints exist is often enough to unclog the drain. But if this is something that is brand new, it may be best to leave this to professionals like Sarkinen Plumbing, as they'd be able to get the job done when it comes to unblocking drains.

3. Erosion

Imagine an Easter egg hunt. Think about when kids find the eggs. About 90 percent are discovered in the first few minutes. Then it takes an hour or two to find those last few eggs. Poor kids. They may not know it by name, they are getting a harsh exposure to erosion plateaus.

No matter how hard they hunt, the same effort yields fewer eggs as time passes. The problem is that even though effort remains constant - kids hunt just as hard in the first 10 minutes as they do in the next 10 minutes - their reward for that effort decreases: fewer eggs are found as time goes on. When we consume a resource that is fixed (or replenishes slower that the rate we consume it) erosion must occur.

Erosion plateaus tend to happen smoothly. There is no sudden drop in effectiveness or flow that often comes with a step function or chokepoint; effectiveness just gradually falls.

Good timing is the solution to erosion plateaus. A beachcomber looking for lost treasure in the sand on a popular beach is better off spending 30 minutes at dawn every day than spending eight hours on Monday morning. This is also an example of another critical lesson from erosions – identifying the difference between replenishing and non-replenishing resources.

4. Mystery ingredients

Why does your chicken noodle soup never taste like the one mom used to make? Why does this diet plan work for everyone except me? It might be due to a factor I call “the mystery ingredient.” Failure to identify a mystery ingredient is another common cause of plateau. It’s why your raspberry pie never tastes quite as good as the one grandma used to bake.

The defining characteristic of a mystery ingredient is that even the chef doesn’t know what it is. The mystery ingredient could be changing market conditions, interpersonal issues between co-workers, or just a team member with a can-do attitude. It’s the elusive catalyst that makes things work.

Outsourcing is a good example. In the early days of outsourcing, India looked irresistible. There was a large talent pool of technologists, workers were fluent in English, and the labor rate was a fraction of the US. On paper, success seemed inevitable. In the gap between cost savings charts and actual implementation, though, something happened: India’s economy boomed. The average salary for IT workers went up by double digits annually between 2000 and 2009. Technology centers like Electronics City in Bangalore saw new office buildings go up every week. People would resign at one company in the morning and be able to get a job paying 10% more than an afternoon at a company across the street. The boom led to unexpected changes; employee turnover went through the roof. That meant people had to be retrained on the policies, procedures, and tools by their new employer. Companies that weathered the storm recognized the mystery ingredient: people who moved from the home office to India and managed employees on the ground there. On-site managers were able to adapt to changing conditions and align the goals of the company with actions in a fluid situation.

Plenty of companies find their results suffer when they lay off employees who didn’t seem productive. Why? Maybe that person was the glue that held a department together in ways that don’t fit into a spreadsheet. Maybe she was the only staffer who could smile even on rainy days

Respect mystery ingredients, or suffer the consequences.

Learn more about Bob’s new book, Getting Unstuck, and the companion online course.