Dealing with Pain Points

Pain Points - Lessening the Pain
Pain points are always present. They are things that are unstable, things that will become unstable and your "overhead" that never gets done. Whatever they are they consume time, effort, emotions or resources that would be better spent elsewhere. They are there and never done once. They also usually have a commonality. So what to do? Pick one, maybe the biggest, that you can do something about now and do something about it.. Even if you only lessen the pain slightly, but are doing something about it, and you will approach the pain differently as you continue to beat it down.

When I worked with a youth soccer club registration refunds were a major conflict between parents and the club. All staff and board members had tales of uncomfortable conversations on the topic. We decided to write and publish the club refund policy, formulas and FAQ for each level of play with examples. These FAQs provided standard answers, consistently messaged. It was immediately much easier for everyone. Where the policies and formulas were still unclear we at least had a framework to work to a solution. It took three years from first publication, to a final stable form. In this time we found the kinks and unusual scenarios and worked through them. Even in the interim period the conversation was much different in that it focused on the individual fairness perspective but from a known basis. Each year was easier and made the next one even easier.

In one Computer Community we had troubles with Unix handles expanding to eventually stopping the central machine. We saw that SAR results were warning that this was coming. We used bash shell parsing on scheduled SAR results and through manually timed ftp email transfers built sub-hour monitoring during the business day. Based upon 80% or 90% capacity indicators we were able to trigger remote modem connects in time to catch and reset capacity before they slowed operations. This was a case of pain points ( customer system stoppages ) avoided and the pressure put on our office to get them back operational in the softest possible time. This got deployed to twelve customers dispersed over 900km of geography in 2 provinces and 1 state in 2 different countries. For our customers, they barely noticed that their systems were no longer slowing or stopping at times throughout the business day. To us it meant we didn't receive irate phone calls of the system stopped during a critical run. For us it also meant that we didn't need to send someone on site at our expense. For us it was a much less stressful time knowing that we had something in place to give a warning about our clients operational situation.

These are a couple of examples of picking a pain point and doing something about it. Picking it because we knew it had value for us. Picking it because we knew it had value for our customers along the way. Picking it because we saw something that we could do to maybe make it better. But how does one tell if it is all worth it? What is the value of doing something different rather than handling it like you always have handled it?

How do you value Pain Points?
Pain points are interesting because they are very personal as to how they affect or impact the individual or individuals involved. Many of them are personal in nature but organizations and groups can have pain points as well. The process to lessen them are the same. Even if they don't stop you from sleeping, figuratively or literally, they affect things that impact you and your life. They impact things like your performance reviews, your interactions with stakeholders, the service level targets you support, your status updates and/or the quality work that you do or want to do. All of these things apply at either the individual level or the group/ organization level.

So Pain Points can be valued in terms of time taken for the solution against the time consumed by the problem. This is the objective dollars oriented view. But taking a human orientation perspective is also of value. Measuring the level of angst, the level of stress, the cannot procrastonate on this any more, the another late night to do this, the gut checks that are associated with an activity, is the better mark. These ones affect your mood, your outlook, your enjoyment and your perception by others.

How do you attack dealing with a Pain Point?
First step in this process it to actually say what the pain point is. Is it doing something, reporting something or deciding something? Are there multiple components/actions that string together to compose what is your Pain Point? Note these and then look at the flow of action or information that goes between each of these. Now start looking for something that can be done within a component or action, something that flows information through or something that can just come out of the flow altogether. Do something to 20% and it will usually follow the 80:20 rule to give you 80% of the value. Look for where this activity or information could be captured at a per transaction basis, rather than a full review, to see if the pain can be spread out. Look for different sources of forms of information that would make processing the information easier and work with that. In short this is taking the time to look at the problem, breaking it down into components that individually can be improved. Even if you only do something about 2 of 5 steps involved in your pain point, at least 40% of it will be easier/more straight forward and will give you more time to do the other 60%. Maybe next month you do another piece and so on...

And also don't be afraid to experiment with solutions. Maybe a crude parse process is the first thought until you find all the exceptions of bad data that needs to be cleaned before that would work. But maybe the crude parse does identify the first things to clean. Maybe you define what is fair and what is the limits first and check that against the inputs you get after that definition. This may let you further narrow your limits or you may have to expand for additions situations you hadn't considered. Don't fuss for immediate perfection. Let it evolve. Let the 80:20 rule have it's 2-4 iterations. Be thankful for the new inputs that add to the richness of the solution ( people will be shocked that you thank them for identifying situations you had not though of or thought would not come up ).

Summary
Pain points affect us and out environments every day. The cause us stress in our lives, our careers and in our relationships with others. Doing anything about them demonstrates that you take those points seriously and that you are progressing. Eventually, with solutions to help them, they are covered and you have the time and energies to tackle the next ones that come along.

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Update 2021-02-21  rwh