Upstream: How to solve problems before they happen

by Dan Heath

The specialization inherent to organizations creates great efficiencies. But it also deters efforts to integrate in new, advantageous ways.

That’s one reason why we tend to favor reaction: Because it’s more tangible. Downstream work is easier to see. Easier to measure. There is a maddening ambiguity about upstream efforts.

“inattentional blindness,” a phenomenon in which our careful attention to one task leads us to miss important information that’s unrelated to that task.

The seed of improvement is dissatisfaction.53

I choose to fix this problem, not because it’s demanded of me, but because I can, and because it’s worth fixing.

why tunneling

When your emphasis is always forward, forward, forward, you never stop to ask whether you’re going in the right direction.

The first thing to realize is that “creating urgency” is basically coopting the power of tunneling for good.

Surround the problem with the right people; give them early notice of that problem; and align their efforts toward preventing specific instances of that problem.

No child should have to hit the green zeroes on a roulette wheel to succeed in life. A fair and just society is built on fair and just systems.

Let’s not sabotage upstream efforts by subjecting them to a test we never impose on downstream interventions.

the “power of proximity.”31

I am persuaded that in proximity there is something we can learn about how we change the world ….”

When people are rewarded for achieving a certain number, or punished for missing it, they will cheat. They will skew. They will skim. They will downgrade.

Grove pointed out that if you use a quantity-based measure, quality will often suffer.

“As you think about a system, spend part of your time from a vantage point that lets you see the whole system, not just the problem that may have drawn you to focus on the system to begin with,”

“Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.

Organizations are constantly dealing with urgent short-term problems. Planning for speculative future ones is, by definition, not urgent. As a result, it’s hard to convene people. It’s hard to get funds authorized. It’s hard to convince people to collaborate when hardship hasn’t forced them to.

When it comes to innovation, there’s an accelerator but no brake.

And that’s how upstream victories are won. An inch at a time, and then a yard, and then a mile, and eventually you find yourself at the finish line: systems change. Be impatient for action and patient for outcomes.

Don’t obsess about formulating the perfect solution before you begin your work; instead, take ownership of the underlying problem and start slogging forward.

“Try and leave this world a little better than you found it,”