The Problem With Things That Kind of Work

Or, The Mediocre Effect

It’s 2003 and a marketing consultant by the name of Fred Reichheld has created quite a stir in the corporate landscape with an article in the prestigious Harvard Business Review titled “The One Number You Need To Grow.”

Reichheld puts forth a bold proposition, suggesting that by posing a single question — a question meticulously designed to gauge the loyalty of an organisation’s customers — management can gain valuable insights into the sentiments their customers hold toward their business.

Reichheld concludes his article with a resounding declaration: “This number is the one number you need to grow. It’s that simple and that profound.”

It turns out, it’s neither simple nor profound. It doesn’t help businesses grow. It doesn’t even tell the management how loyal the customer is.

For the uninitiated, this number Reichheld is referring to is called Net Promoter Score or NPS. Companies measure NPS by asking customers: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service?” Then, they calculate NPS by subtracting the percentage of Detractors (0–6) from the percentage of Promoters (9–10). If you’ve gotten such surveys from products or services you’ve engaged with, now you know what’s all that about.

Even though NPS has been solidly debunked in many smart research papers, it’s still solidly embedded into many businesses. We hear about companies rolling out new NPS measurement programs every day.

Why? Most likely because NPS meets all the common requirements of a “useful” business metric:

• It’s easy to measure

• It produces a number you can track

• It “feels” legitimate

It may not be the best, but it’s definitely not the worst. It’s just convenient; and that’s where the problem lies.

The first practical typewriter, invented by Christopher Sholes in 1868, featured an alphabetical keyboard layout. However, this layout had a significant problem — it frequently jammed because adjacent keys were often pressed in quick succession.

To address jamming issues, Sholes, along with Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden, reorganised the keyboard layout in 1873. They introduced the QWERTY layout, named after the first six letters in the top row. This layout spaced out frequently used letters to reduce jamming. However, it made typing less intuitive.

Then the Remington Company came in. They mass-produced the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and popularised the QWERTY layout. It became the standard for typewriters and, later, for computer keyboards.

The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout is designed to place the most commonly used letters and letter combinations on the home row, where your fingers naturally rest. This minimises finger movement and can lead to faster and more comfortable typing for users. However, it never gained widespread popularity due to the entrenched use of QWERTY.

QWERTY is not at all an optimal layout. Remember, Sholes deliberately spaced out frequently used letters in order to reduce efficiency.

Even though keyboard jamming is not an issue anymore, it still continues to be the most widely used keyboard layout. Why? Because it kind of works, and there’s a lot of friction to learn a whole new keyboard layout. The perceived ROI just doesn’t make any sense.

For similar reasons, standardised tests such as SAT and ACT are criticised for not accurately measuring a student’s true abilities.

Same for IQ tests. Even though we use “High IQ” to refer to someone intelligent, IQ tests are culturally biased and tend to favour only certain cognitive skills — undervaluing other essential traits such as creativity, emotional intelligence, and practical wisdom. IQ is a good measurement of how someone fares in an IQ test, but it has nothing to do with how someone would fare in the real world.

In government and large organisations, bureaucratic processes can persist for years, even when they are inefficient and complex. Similarly, less effective teaching methods and outdated educational materials can persist in schools, hindering student learning. Likewise, aging infrastructure, like roads, bridges, and public transportation systems, can persist in a deteriorating state for years or even decades. Often they aren’t rebuilt until they completely breakdown or cause some accident.

Bad things often become better. But mediocre things that “kinda work” rarely become better. That’s why less-than-optimal things can persist for a very long time — even when a good percentage of people know they are not good and wouldn’t recommend them to anybody. This is what I call The Mediocre Effect.

Human beings generally need a strong, clear, and urgent reason to change something. The Mediocre Effect is the reason why slow poisons like fast food and cigarettes exist. You know they are bad for you, but you don’t necessarily see an immediate effect, unlike a bridge that’s about to smash on you. That’s why it’s hard for them to go away completely.

It’s very hard to bring any kind of change when people’s reaction is mild. For example, had the British Raj really been benevolent, there most likely wouldn’t have been any uprising in India and other colonies. Why revolt against something that’s doing an okay job! They may not be the best, but at least they aren’t downright evil.

That’s why, unlike the really bad ones, it’s so hard to fire mediocre employees. But do that long enough and suddenly mediocrity becomes the norm.

Any mediocre idea, philosophy, solution, policy, product that get entrenched become permanent. It’s almost impossible to get rid of them. That’s why it’s very important not to let them take root in the first place.

But the problem is, anyone who claims to be able to do something great becomes a suspect. You want to takeover Google? You want to build the next iPhone? You want to send people to Mars? You want to build electric cars? No, it’s too ambitious! The status quo isn’t so bad after all, why do you want to make such massive bets? Take small, incremental steps instead. They are the only safe path forward.

From an early age, we’re taught that the right way to do things is to proceed one very small step at a time, day by day, grade by grade.

If you overachieve and end up learning something that’s not on the test, you won’t receive any credit for it. But in exchange for doing exactly what’s asked of you (and for doing it just a bit better than your peers), you’ll get an A. This process extends all the way up through the tenure track, which is why academics usually chase large numbers of trivial publications instead of new frontiers. This is the very reason mediocrity prevails.

It’s hard to overcome mediocrity unless we foster a mindset that recognises the limitations of “good enough” and encourages eliminating them before they become permanent.

Mediocre is worse than bad. “Okay” should not be okay. We should endeavour to promote a culture that encourages taking giant leaps. Otherwise, instead of being surrounded by ChatGPTs, iPhones, Teslas, we’re all gonna be surrounded by stuff that are not overtly objectionable, but also not very useful.

In closing, here‘s Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about the perils of “good enough.”

What if I’d stayed in Austria and become a police officer like my father? What if I hadn’t found bodybuilding, or if I’d kept it as a hobby instead of letting it become a calling? I’ve tried to imagine what life would have been like if I’d listened to those producers who told me to change my name; or if I’d let the opinions of reporters affect me when I told them I was going into acting. What would it look like, I wonder, if “good enough” had been good enough?

I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. A life of smaller dreams that I half-assed, doing some version of what everyone else does? That sounds like a slow death to me. I want no part of it, and neither should you.

Increase Your Odds, the Rest Is Chance