View from the Fishbowl: Why?

I was fascinated with Mike Liddy (technical co-founder of FDR) and his ability to dissect problems into subsets and attack them. He had a very simple process that was very effective. Mike would come into a meeting (invited or not) and just observe. I still remember the first time I ever met him; it was…

About the Author: William Fisher, a partner at Treetop Ventures in Omaha, is a regular guest contributor to Silicon Prairie News. In his series, View from the FishBowl, Fisher calls on his experience as a business executive and technology investor to lend his advice to entrepreneurs in the Silicon Prairie.

Fisher has served as a director for several prominent public companies and private firms, and he currently serves on the boards of Prism Technologies, Lodo Software and FTNI. To read his full bio, including a listing of companies he has been involved with, visit treetopventures.com.

Contact Fisher at fish@treetopventures.com.

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Photo by Wade M via Flickr

I was fascinated with Mike Liddy (technical co-founder of FDR) and his ability to dissect problems into subsets and attack them. He had a very simple process that was very effective.

Mike would come into a meeting (invited or not) and just observe. I still remember the first time I ever met him; it was right after I joined FDR and we were trying to decide what approach to take to handle a certain problem that an exec from USPS contract had posed for us. This executive wanted us to provide them with the ability to do online inquiries on our postal data base. I really didn’t know who Liddy was; I just sensed that the rest of the room seemed somewhat unsettled because he was there.

The leader of the session presented the alternatives and his recommended approach and there was some banter between various members of the group. Clearly, there were alternatives and we needed to decide which way to go.

Then, without fanfare, Mike looked at the presenter and said “Why?”

Somewhat stunned, the presenter said… “Excuse me?”

Mike said it again. Why? It seemed to me like a pretty easy question; why are you proposing to solve it this way? The presenter stumbled as he tried to recant the various issues but it came down to being able to create an online system that would be easy for the postal employees to do inquiries on.

Why? There it was again. Why?

I was witness to a fairly painful process of everyone trying to figure out how to explain it to Mike; it was a sight to behold. Finally, one of the other observers asked Mike if he was asking why we were looking at doing it that way or why we were considering doing anything at all. To everyone’s amazement, it was the latter.

What amazed me wasn’t that the group had studied a variety of alternatives to select the best one; it was that Mike asked them the simple question they should have asked before they even started on the evaluation. Why are you doing anything? [Later, I found out that we had a fixed price contract with the USPS and this would cost us more but we wouldn’t be able to bill them…yikes]. However, I earned an important lesson as it relates to human behavior and especially on the customer support side of the business. Left to their own, people want to please the customer (nothing wrong with that). However, while it is important to please, it is more important that the business relationship be considered and honored. Too often the desire to have a happy customer ends up with a deal that isn’t the right one for the company.

Over the years, I have found myself asking this a lot to my team or to customers. Why? You would be surprised the answers you get and the amount of project work that you can say “no” to.

(BTW: This works especially well until you run into the marketing guy who poses “Why not?”)

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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