Business is a Puzzle
For the Christmas of 2016 my son Grant wanted all the sizes of Rubik’s cubes. We got him the 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 cubes along with a book on how to solve them. We played with them, read through the book, and watched a few YouTube videos but didn’t put in enough work to really learn how to solve them, the 3x3 at least. Fast forward to the Christmas of 2017, Grant dug up his cubes and was really interested in learning how to solve them.
We watched a YouTube video closely and I wrote down the steps it takes to solve the 3x3 Rubik’s cube. Over the next few days Grant really worked through the instructions and memorized how to solve it, getting faster and faster over the next few weeks. One thing I always tell Grant is that if he wants to get better at something he just needs to work at it and practice. This was a good example for him to see it work.
While working through this with him it struck me how learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube solve has many parallels in business.
The Rubik’s cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian Sculpter Erno Rubik. It has 6 individually colored sides made up of 9 cubes per side. The centers of each cube remain in the same position relative to the other colors while all the edges and corners move based on how the sides are rotated. Even with the centers remaining constant, there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different combinations that the cubes can fall. In business you have ~6 pillars that don’t change but sometimes one is more important than the other depending on circumstance. For instance, profitability, revenues, customer service, customer acquisition, culture, product quality, sales, marketing, etc. While these remain constant there are millions of variables that have to be taken into account to achieve the goal. How you treat these variables and respond to them determines if you’re successful at solving the puzzle of business.
Solving a Rubik’s cube is largely recognized as a sign of intelligence or ability but it isn’t something taught in school. I understand that it’s just a game but most things you encounter in business are not taught in school. Sure, in engineering school you’re taught how to calculate stresses based on certain situation, but you’re not taught how to create a slip out of composite that will hold 200,000 lbs during a frac. You’re taught about marketing strategies, usually B2C, but not how to communicate an innovative technology in a way that customers recognize what they’ve been doing for the past 10 years isn’t the most optimized solution. The only way to accomplish or learn how to do these things is through practice, repetition, and deliberate focus towards a goal. Grant didn’t get faster at solving the cube by reading the instructions or listening to a lecture, he did it through deliberate practice of the algorithms needed to complete it.
To solve the Rubik’s cube there are set algorithms to perform depending on how the colors are aligned on the cube at a certain time. When we were learning how to solve it I was focused purely on memorizing the proper algorithms. For instance, if you’ve solved the top layer and want to solve the middle layer you follow these several turns specifically to solve the second layer on so on. Over time I memorized those exact moves. If I make a wrong move and put a color in the wrong place I’m completely lost. I must go back to the beginning and try again. My son, however, learned the purpose of each move and how it affects the cube. He knows that if he follows a certain set of moves he is doing that to move one corner piece from one side to the other and why those steps allow the corner to move without affecting the rest of the puzzle. Rather than just memorizing the right steps, he understands the cause and effect of the moves. If he ever makes a wrong move, he can recognize his misstep and correct it without starting from scratch. This reminds me of businesses that get caught performing badly and saying “But that is how we’ve always done it.” They understand the steps they’ve taken in the past to achieve success, but not really the fundamental cause and effect of their actions. If they were more aware as they made the next “move” how the market responded it would allow them to adjust their strategy each time and more likely achieve success in a changing environment.
Further, because Grant understands how the moves affect the cube he was able to use those strategies to solve the 2x2 and pyramid Rubik’s cubes using what he learned in solving the 3x3. Businesses that understand the cause and effect relationships of different strategies & tactics allow them to achieve success in changing environments or new markets.
Business is a puzzle. Just like the Rubik’s cube, there are known strategies for success, however these strategies have to be deployed in context of the situation. The only way to understand the context and how strategies/tactics work in your industry is through deliberate practice of the craft.