A couple years ago, Larry Buckfire – firm president at Buckfire Law – placed a book on my desk with a sticky note attached to the cover, which read: “Let’s discuss.”
The book, titled Upstream, authored by Dan Heath, explores the psychological forces that push us downstream and offers insight into how to reduce the probability that problems will happen.
Long story short, it’s a book about how to solve problems before they become problems.
As Chief Operating Officer at Buckfire Law, I’m tasked with overseeing the day-to-day operational functions of our firm in the most efficient and effective way possible. In other words, my goal is to maximize customer satisfaction and firm profits, and put appropriate measures in place to help prevent problems in an effective way to achieve both goals.
Sounds simple enough, right? Depends on who you ask.
As a self-proclaimed data-centric nerd, I make decisions based largely on the analysis of metrics. In order to glean useful information from data, I rely heavily on measurables. In other words, I track everything. And, when I say everything, well, I’m the guy who wears an Apple Watch to bed to measure my sleep patterns.
This is precisely why upstream problem management was – and continues to be – a difficult problem-solving management technique for me to digest. Because, simply put, upstream work is difficult to measure. Unlike downstream, it doesn’t translate to short-term tangible results.
Downstream actions react to problems once they’ve occurred. That’s one reason why we instinctively tend to favor reaction: Because it’s more tangible. Downstream work is easier to visualize. Easier to track. Easier to measure.
Peter Drucker, coined the godfather of modern management, is famously quoted as saying, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.” It’s an adage I’ve applied to my work life, installing and implementing measurables across our firm in an effort to identify opportunities for betterment.
But with all due respect to Drucker, and much to my chagrin, you can, in fact, improve what you can’t measure at times, and you can do so by taking an upstream approach to problem-solving.
There is an infuriating uncertainty about upstream efforts as it correlates to successfully solving problems. Namely, what constitutes success? And how can you measure success when success is defined as things not happening?
Downstream solutions can answer those questions. It’s why we naturally gravitate towards this type of problem-solving. There’s a clear, visible solution.
The time, energy, and financial commitment to address preventable problems can oftentimes deter executives and managers from upstream thinking. In today’s workplace environment, it’s easy to push a non-issue to the side and say, “I’ll deal with it when it becomes a problem.”
Psychologists Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan refer to this approach as “tunneling” – the theory that when people are juggling a lot of problems, it creates stress that triggers tunnel vision. As outlined in their co-authored book, titled Scarcity, tunnel vision helps us focus on the crisis at hand, but makes us “less insightful, less forward-thinking, less controlled.” People who are tunneling have difficulty engaging in systems thinking, and they often fail to prevent problems, because they react.
For example: Your neighbor’s dog, Rotten Ralph, has jumped his fence, and your neighbor has asked for your help finding him. If you track down Ralph and bring him back to the owner, you’ve successfully solved the problem, right? But what if Ralph runs away again? And again? Sure, you can continue to track him down and bring him back to your neighbor, but you’re only reacting to the problem. Until your neighbor takes preventive measures to stop Ralph from running away, the dog will keep jumping the fence.
Oftentimes, we fail to identify a problem until it’s too late, forcing us to take a reactive approach to address an issue. In the case of Rotten Ralph, it’s easier for your neighbor to simply scold Ralph, ignore the primary problem, and “hope” his furry friend has learned his lesson. If you’re lucky, Ralph will have learned his lesson. But, let’s be honest, that likely won’t happen.
Instead, train Ralph to be obedient, keep him indoors, raise the height of the fence, or install an electric fence – applying these forward-thinking actions is an upstream solution to your neighbor’s problem.
Similar problem-preventing solutions can be applied to any business in any industry.
At Buckfire Law, we recently implemented an upstream solution within our intake department in an effort to address hangups and disconnected calls.
We currently use Call Tracking Metrics for quality assurance and marketing attribution. This platform offers a feature that provides caller details, including phone numbers, which our intake team will refer to if there is a hangup prior to completing an intake.
In an attempt to address this problem, intake specialists were instructed to return calls that were prematurely disconnected. Looking back, it was a downstream solution to our problem.
More often than not, hangups and disconnections were intentional, but on occasion, a returned call from one of our intake specialists would lead to a referral or case signup. But, our “fix” didn’t address the overarching issue: how to reduce hangups and avoid disconnections altogether.
After discussing the Upstream management strategy with Larry, we devoted the necessary resources to reduce the probability that future hangups would occur by changing our existing system.
In the process, we discovered our toll-free telephone number was mistakenly being promoted online as a help desk service line for a large retail company. And we identified that a staff member employed by our third-party after-hours service provider was unintentionally forwarding potential clients to an outdated general mailbox that was no longer in use.
Our solution? We enabled a feature through our call tracking platform that recorded all incoming calls and identified the source of where the call was initiated, which allowed us to identify the online location of the erroneous help desk service line. Furthermore, we listened to the audio recordings of incoming calls forwarded to our after-hours call center and – as such – became aware of the call-center employee who mistakenly forwarded calls to a dormant phone line.
Once we put the corrective measures in place to address both issues, we saw immediate success, as our hangups were reduced by more than 50 percent month-over-month.
That’s not to say downstream thinking isn’t an effective management technique. In fact, we still instruct our intake specialists to identify any missed calls or hangups and call them back in a timely fashion. And, we still – on occasion – will sign up a case as a result of those efforts.
Treat your problem management style like your financial portfolio – diversify. Upstream thinking isn’t always necessary to address problems – but, in our case, it’s been a very useful tool in helping us prevent problems before they happen. And, even when we can’t prevent them entirely, upstream solutions can help soften the blow.
