Create Simple Working Solutions

A little bit about me 

Growing up, I believed that excellence meant being omniscient. I had to consider every possible outcome or setback and account for it in my recommendations to then only be considered ‘good’. However over my 2 years at Mavericks, I realise now that this is the furthest from the truth. 

When I first started at Mavericks, I was fresh out of Junior College. I never worked a day in my life and just escaped 2 intense years of memorising model answers and regurgitating it in the exam. Coming into Mavericks, I wanted to excel. I wanted to show that despite my young age and empty resume, I too, could contribute to the team and the company. 

‘The Big Bang’ Project 

The project that really kickstarted my growth as a Maverick was when I had to revamp our training plan template for the Mission Control Team. At first, this sounded like an easy fix… I mean I probably just had to move some cells around in the Google Sheet and maybe add some colours to make it more eye-catching. 

But during the review of my first draft, I realised I severely underestimated the importance of this task. My end product would be the FIRST THING that any newcomer sees and eventually shape their way of thinking about this programme and hence their growth. The recent newcomers needed better guidance to keep track of their own learning milestones and finding the right training documents for their tasks. So, what the new template really needed was to house information and details to set our newcomers up for success in their role and the team. Specifically, a way to track progress, categorise tasks, serve as a directory for training resources etc. 

Draft 2 was an absolute mess. With all my new requirements and information, it’s safe to say that I was completely overwhelmed. I had all these half-drawn ideas in my head, all the requirements bouncing off the walls of my brain & absolutely no vision for how this task would turn out. My personal version of excellence meant that I wouldn’t have allowed myself to move on from this draft till I found that it was absolutely perfect – perfectly addressing every requirement, is aesthetically pleasing, and is user-friendly for our new Mavericks. 

My Retrospective 

Looking back, what held me back was not only my definition of excellence but also the timeline I allowed myself to achieve perfection. I thought that every review with my teammate had to be perfect. The bar for excellence was in the clouds and I gave myself approximately 4 hours to reach it. It’s no wonder that I was unsuccessful every time. 

Definition of excellence 

Mavericks taught me that excellence isn’t about considering all the edge cases and accounting for all the unknowns. In practice, excellence means that your solution not only solves a real problem, but a real problem that you are facing NOW. 

Time spent solving a problem that may or may not happen in the future is time lost on learning something new. This also is heavily dependent on whether your anticipated outcome will happen at all. Imagine committing a whole day’s worth of effort into preparing yourself for a situation that doesn’t even happen!

Not only that, but the more edge cases & extra ‘fluff’ that you account for, the more  you over-complicate and lose sight of the problem that started this in the first place. Someone once said to me that if the world didn’t have any problems, we would all be out of jobs – I couldn’t agree more. Whether you’re a consultant, a doctor or even a student, you will always have problems to solve. Your solutions should always address the main problem – otherwise can you really call it a solution? 

I now find excellence in a Simple Working Solution. Something that is straightforward and directly addresses the problem at hand. Nothing fanciful and with none of that extra fluff. Don’t forget that the Simple Working Solution can evolve over time to meet future requirements. It is a continuous evolutionary journey where the most important problems are solved and the most important benefits realised first. That will be be best balance of investment in time and effort vs business values and benefits

Timeline to achieve excellence 

I also learnt that timely feedback is a key ingredient to success. Mavericks’s Way of Working emphasises heavily on getting iterative feedback on your work. I know that it’s human nature to want to get feedback once all is said and done – I mean who can resist the pure elation when a task you spent 2 days on gets approved in the first review? 

But my time here has slowly changed me to want to chase small wins instead of big ones upfront. Small wins will progressively accumulate into big wins! It’s also very likely for you to get tunnel-visioned or carried away when you have a huge project to complete and that may result in wastage. What I recommend is to work in small ‘sprints’ as we call it in IT.

If I were making a salad, I would try each ingredient to make sure they’re fresh and tasty before mixing it all into one bowl. (In this case, small wins = crispy lettuce/fresh tomatoes etc. The big win = a delicious salad!) 

And also, whose to say you can’t celebrate the big win on top of all your small ones! 

To end off

My key takeaways are: 

• Work Towards A Simple Working Solution. Your solutions must directly address the problem at hand, the solution can always evolve over time once new scenarios come your way. 

• Get Iterative Feedback! You could even get feedback on your plan of approach to the task! It’s better to make sure you’re on the right track 20min into the task than know that you’ve strayed from the task after 5 hours. 

• Stay Hungry. Use the feedback you get at each iteration to motivate you for the next iteration. Celebrate your small wins and go forth to seek more! 

Thank you Mavericks for teaching me the Right Way to do things & I hope this article has helped you too :)