Idiot Proof

I was on a call this morning with the tech and ad teams from a client of mine.  We’re spending a bunch of time trying to reconfigure the ad system to be more target-able (is that a word?) and flexible for sponsors.  As we discussed a number of options for changing the existing content management system the discussion kept coming back to the change in work flow that the changes would mean for the editors and producers.  The tech guys, who are very good at what they do, were trying to figure out logic which would prevent a CMS user from categorizing a piece of content incorrectly which could mess up the ad targeting.  Given that these changes are kind of pressing and also given that the logic they were building would take a lot of time to implement, I felt a need to comment on that incongruity with some excellent advice I was given and which I’d like to pass along.

Don’t hire morons.  OK, maybe that’s a cheap way to get you to laugh, but you get the point.  Don’t hire people who aren’t willing to use their brains as they work.  Train people carefully and then hold them accountable to learn and practice what you teach them.  In this case, it’s producers but I’m sure you run into similar concerns in your business.

Yep – pretty simple, but you’d be surprised how much time and energy we spend in trying to make things idiot-proof.  As anyone who’s ever heard of  a Darwin Award can tell you, people do really dumb things and as idiot-proof as you try to make things, idiots of a higher level will always surface.

I said to the folks on the call that letting someone drive my car doesn’t give them the right to do so with their eyes closed.  The reality is that you can’t protect your business from faulty processes if the people involved in those actions are careless, detached, and under-trained.  The only protection is not to hire morons.

Thoughts?