The Monday Morning question

Hard-learned life lesson.

Over the many years I've been in business, delivering technology to support business and building crazy things, I almost always come to a situation where my client says something along these lines: 'I need you to build X to have the following functionality Y.' Goes without saying that the implicit expectations were also 'do it yesterday' and 'make it cheap'. For years, I was running into these requests and sadly, many of these requests ended up not that great or sometimes even really bad.

It took me a long time to understand why this is happening and also how to deal with situations like this.

First, my client and I never spoke the same language. My client had a problem with their supply chain management system. The tech solution was completely clear in their head. I understood the technology. But I didn’t have their background knowledge and years of experience to fully understand the problem.

That said, while my client talked, I was able to architect a solution right there and then, including an estimate how long it would take to make it happen. Once my client finished talking, I mesmerized them with the description of the most genius solution the world ever saw. To further impress, I used highly precise language of technology. I interpreted the silence from the client as a sign of complete awe. I couldn't comprehend that they didn’t understand a word I was saying.

I am sure you can see why this rarely went well.

Never ending struggle.

It took me years to understand what went wrong and years of learning how to improve things.

Over the years, I came up with the Monday Morning concept.

Let me give you an example and since everyone talks about AI it will nicely make my point.

You are a tech person and a non-technical customer or a colleague comes to you and says: "We should implement AI to help us with our sales. What AI should we use to improve our sales?" It is a great opening line!

The correct answer is: "That's a great idea! For me to better understand what I need to do, imagine it is Monday Morning and everything that you expect from 'AI' is in place. Please, explain to me what it does, all the features it has and how all the features and functionality contribute to increased sales."

As you can imagine, sometimes the conversation is really short and saves tons of time, money and energy. However, sometimes it leads to a deeper conversation and very different outcomes. It is quite possible that the current technology doesn't properly support the sales process and rather than selling, people are fighting the tech to get even the basics done. But even then, mapping the sales process is very important to identify where exactly the issue is. Only then you can devise a solution.

And then you have situations where adding more technology is here just to cover the problem and eventually to become a scapegoat where we have a mix of a wrong strategy, a failing product, and a bad sales process, etc. I am sure you encounter situations like that.

Another example is a request from the Marketing department. "We need to decrease our customer churn. We need AI to tell us which customer is most likely to leave us." Totally reasonable request. It is Monday morning and here is a list of 1,000 customers who most likely won’t renew their contracts. Now, what are you going to do about it? Give them an offer they won't be able to refuse? What about if they already made up their mind and will leave regardless?

Perhaps a better question to ask would be "Why are customers leaving and what would make them change their mind?" Is this something AI can answer or should we call all the customers who already left and ask them why they did?

But the beauty (in the eye of the beholder) of the Monday Morning is that it applies to many situations outside of tech. While in a business setting, when somebody comes to you with an idea, you can use the same process to fully understand it. The important part is that this way all the energy is focused on understanding the idea or a problem without making it personal.

You can also try the same approach during a hiring interview. "You are hired and starting on Monday. Tell me what you are going to do that Monday and the next five Mondays after? How will we be able to determine that you are even working here?"

It is also a good defense against buzzwords. "In order to succeed, we have to align our synergies." Perfect. "It is Monday morning and we aligned all our synergies. Please, do tell me what that will look like."

I am sure that by now you can see that there are endless opportunities to apply this process. What I like is the simplicity of the question. It is the shared language and experience encapsulated here. We all experienced Monday morning and through that we can share how to build better things going forward.

The recurrent pattern? Make every day a Monday morning where you find the answer to your biggest challenge.