"These Instructions S*ck!"
Don’t make it hard for employees to find the information they need
Welcome to the Gazebo! Grab a cup and join me for some tips to help you succeed at the intersection of management, communication, and technology.
«Sneak preview of a topic from my upcoming communication book.»
This Week’s Summary:
What a simple gauge reading can tell us about decision making
Training is only as effective as its match to the person and job
All task relevant information should be easily available to responsible employees
It takes conscious management forethought to match the training, employee, and communication
My introduction to advanced technology was courtesy of Uncle Sam and came in the form of weapons training while serving in the US Army. My Advanced Individual Training (AIT) school was nearly six months long and taught me how to troubleshoot and repair electronic circuity related to various weapon control systems. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I can say that the training was well done, and I learned a lot. The government can goof up a lot of stuff with the best of intentions, but this one they got right. Even to this day, habits I picked up in those classes and while serving in the field pop into my mind as analogous situations present themselves in civilian life.
The incident that came to mind in relation to writing today’s topic happened in a training course where we were learning the operation and maintenance of a new weapon system. There were around 15 of us in this class and the class had been around for only a few years. The word had gotten around that nobody had ever earned a 100% in the class and that the best grade ever achieved was 99%, which got me intrigued. Why was this course so hard? With this in mind I read the manuals and listened to the lectures with a questioning mind: “Is this the question that people got wrong?” It turns out all of the extra attention was for naught.
Image created by Ed Paulson using Copilot in Windows and edited with Adobe Photoshop
The final exam arrived, and I was sporting a perfect 100% score … so far! I knew that this must be the exam where folks got tripped up, so I was extra alert. My confidence was high as I worked my way through the questions until I hit this one related to the actions we were to take based on a pressure gauge reading. The manual instructions were clear that we were supposed to take one set of actions if the pressure reading was above a certain level, and another set of actions if it was below a certain threshold level. The problem was that the question asked what we should do when the pressure reading was exactly at the threshold level – not greater than or less than. Exactly the reading. The portion of the manual that specifically related to this gauge reading did not contain instructions about what to do if the reading was exactly on the pressure level. Oh boy…
What had previously been a routine situation that was easily addressed using a set of established procedures, had just become more complicated. I sat there thinking, “This must be the question that tripped up everyone before me.” That insight didn’t help me much, because I still didn’t know the correct answer. The good news was that I had extra time before the test ended, so I decided to crawl back into the early course materials to see if there was anything there to help with the answer. (The test was open book, thank goodness!)1
While perusing the earlier materials, I stumbled across a sentence that offered the answer. “If the reading is exactly at the threshold, treat the reading as though it is less than the threshold.” This information buried in an early part of the manual was also one of the possible answers, so I picked it and was the first student ever to get 100%! It was fun and the entire class celebrated in a typical Army way – we had lunch at the mess hall! ☹
This was a simple scenario, but we can derive important lessons from it related to matching people to their jobs, the perceived complexity of their job, and the communication support systems they need to do their jobs.
Hundreds of smart students from various backgrounds had taken that test before me and missed this one question. Was the answer to the question in the manual? Yes. Was it easy to find? Obviously not. Was it a trick question? You bet!2
Operationally, we don’t want trick questions in our instruction manuals or operational instructions. We want employees to clearly understand what to do in common situations so that they can successfully complete their work.
If you think about it, the Army manual had a major flaw which had tripped up everyone before me.
The manual should have been updated to indicate the appropriate actions to take if the measurement was exactly on the threshold, and not only above and below … but it did not. Sure, there was a general rule presented early in the class … almost so that the writers could say “It’s in there” … but if technicians in the field were presented with the exact reading situation, prior test results indicated that their subsequent actions would not be predictable. They would likely be evenly split between above and below actions, which could be problematic because the system designers for some reason specifically wanted them to assume the lower reading in the case of an exact reading. The flaw highlighted here is that the technicians actions would be wrong about 50% of the time, which is clearly unacceptable.
When we are expecting employees without extensive experience to complete certain tasks then we must ensure that the instructions associated with those tasks are comprehensive and accurate for the situations they are most likely to encounter. Again, as a technician and as an engineer, I can’t count the number of times I have read instructions and thought, “The person who wrote these instructions has definitely never done this job.” Unfortunately, this is all too common as most of us know.
Companies benefit financially from using less expensive, less experienced, personnel to perform routine operational tasks, but this benefit does not come without a cost. To make it all work, management must set up the prior training and decision support structure in the form of manuals or online procedures along with the a method for escalating unique situations. This takes prior planning on your part.
Remember that situations and decisions come in three basic types: routine, non-routine, and ambiguous. Today we talked about a routine situation (the manual covered it) that became non-routine (aka, Oops! What now?) based on a gauge reading not easily referenced in the manual. Simple? Yes. Potentially a problem? Yes, because you would get inconsistent future personnel actions which could be problematic or even dangerous in the wrong circumstances.
Nobody can anticipate all possible situations, but by brainstorming with a few experienced people, you can probably predict the majority of scenarios and provide easily followed instructions for how to address them. Then make sure the documentation is updated every time a new situation comes along requiring a new set of actions.
This is important: Make sure you provide an action path that your inexperienced employees can follow to get answers when an unexpected set of circumstances makes a situation non-routine ... something not covered in the manual.
It is amazing to me how often this last step is forgotten, almost like we think we were able to accurately predict all possible future scenarios. “Ah, what fools these mortals be.”3
Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! ☮
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To this day I still try to use open book tests in my university courses. I am more interesting in how my students think than what they can parrot back from a book.
I have carried this memory with me throughout my years as a professor when creating tests to ensure there were no “gotcha’” questions.
“A Midsummer’s Night Dream” by William Shakespeare.
I should have been in your unit! Sounds like more fun! Yep. The German's know how to party. Thanks as always Ron.
Strong start to this one. Being personal makes the writing of these instructions more unique and vivid. Me, I served in an Army where the form of celebration was a beer bust, not lunch n a mess hall. Cans of Budweiser, not any fancy kegged beer. Not until Germany, anyway. Bless those Germans. My people.
Those Army manuals were some of the worst writing I’ve seen that contained no errors in fact. Not easy to do, being so accurate and opaque all at once. At least we didn’t lose that war. Didn’t win either. Sometimes we get something good out of bad writing: the gusto to communicate cleaner and leaner.