Puzzles vs Mysteries
In a 2007 New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell writes about Puzzles vs Mysteries in the context of understand the collapse of Enron. To clearly explain the distinction he writes…
The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle. We can’t find him because we don’t have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large.
The problem of what would happen in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein was, by contrast, a mystery. It wasn’t a question that had a simple, factual answer. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much. The C.I.A. had a position on what a post-invasion Iraq would look like, and so did the Pentagon and the State Department and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and any number of political scientists and journalists and think-tank fellows. For that matter, so did every cabdriver in Baghdad.
He goes on to explain that identifying issues correctly can lead to better results. How we categorize problems (puzzles or mysteries) shapes how we approach the solution.
The distinction is not trivial. If you consider the motivation and methods behind the attacks of September 11th to be mainly a puzzle, for instance, then the logical response is to increase the collection of intelligence, recruit more spies, add to the volume of information we have about Al Qaeda. If you consider September 11th a mystery, though, you’d have to wonder whether adding to the volume of information will only make things worse. You’d want to improve the analysis within the intelligence community; you’d want more thoughtful and skeptical people with the skills to look more closely at what we already know about Al Qaeda.
In startups, it often appears that most problems are puzzles. We collect and extract more data, analytics and other measurements to try and solve issues.
- Traffic decreasing -> let’s measure something and figure it out
- User retention dropping -> what is the data behind our users behavior
- Sales channel slowing down -> what are the metrics of low performing sale people
But it is clear that not all issues one faces in a startup are puzzles. One way to navigate this issue is to look at a company in two lenses, your product and your business.
Product issues are puzzles and oftentimes the solution lies in missing data or information. Most engineers are great at solving puzzles. They know that the solution exists and believe it is simply a lack of information preventing them from completing the task. Thus developer resources like GitHub, Stack Overflow and Google Code are all heavily utilized. It can take a lot of time and a tremendous amount of brainpower but the product will be produced in some shape or form.
Puzzles come to satisfying conclusions. Mysteries often don’t.
Business issues are mysteries. Business development, marketing, PR and revenue generation decision are rarely lacking in information. We can look at market size data, revenue models for comparable companies, demographics and more, and still not be comfortable in our ability to come to a solution. It is how we process, distill and execute on top of the information that leads to mysteries being solved.
Business development is a great example. if you ask 20 people how your startup can do a deal with American Express, trust me, you will not be lacking in data or information on how this can be done. But asking 100 more people will not get the deal done. At some point you have to take the information and execute on a plan of action. Mysteries are often never solved or completed but are a continuous process of progress, refinement and improvement.
The above is a simplistic framework for looking at problems within a startup. There are numerous examples that could cross over to either product or business. But understanding the distinction between puzzles and mysteries has helped us to better resolve some of the issues that we face day to day in our startup.
