If you're like me, you might remember and go with the solution that is most easy to remember from past experience or education. Often this solution is complicated which makes it stand out in my mind over a more mundane or common solution. In medical field slang, the phenomenon where the complicated or obscure stands out over the common and mundane diagnosis and treatment is sometimes referred to as a zebra.
In construction, I see mainly see zebras as new tools, technologies and processes. Given that our overall productivity has lagged compared to overall industry, it could be argued that the issues we diagnose and the treatments that we prescribe aren't working. We could just be complicating things in the name of building better but not actually making progress to build better and heal an often slow and dangerous construction process. After we implement a change or "improvement" do we reevaluate the results to determine if the right decision was made? Do we stop treatment if something isn't working or do we add another tool or process to the work? Are the solutions we propose and implement controlling or reducing the number of variable inherent to construction processes or adding variables while reducing control of the process?
As builders we can and do identify areas for improvements. When we identify problems we need to put serious thought to whether we have enough understanding to find and implement the right solution. Should we slow down to gather more information for proper problem diagnosis, start researching solutions or immediately implement a solution? Wherever possible, we should use already used and off the shelf solutions vs novel tools, technologies and processes.
Our problems are varied and complicated with tons of variables. We need to take the time to properly identify and diagnose a problem then we should do our best to make our solutions as simple and variable free as possible so that positive or negative results can be easily identified for adjustment or continued work on the new path. If we blend old school wisdom with cutting edge insights and tools we can do our part in building a better world.
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